A Glimpse at Guatemala / And Some Notes on the Ancient Monuments of Central America

by Anne Cary Maudslay; Alfred Percival Maudslay

“There is on the top, near the opening, a small building where I found Idols made in honour of each of the principal buildings of the land, almost like the Pantheon of Rome. I do not know if this was a contrivance of the ancients or one of the people of to-day, so that they might meet with their Idols when they went to the pool with their offerings.”

In the year 1579, in answer to a despatch from the Spanish Government, a report was drawn up by three of the founders of Valladolid describing the Indian towns in the neighbourhood, in which the following passage occurs:—

“Eight leagues from this town stand some buildings called Chicheniça, amongst them there is a Cu[5] made by the hand (of man) of hewn stone and masonry, and this is the principal building.

“It has over ninety steps, and the steps go all round, so as to reach to the top of it, the height of each step a little over the third of a vara high. On the summit stands a sort of tower with rooms in it.

“This Cu stands between two zenotes of deep water—one of them is called the Zenote of Sacrifice. They call the place Chicheniça, after an Indian named Alquin Itzá, who was living at the foot of the Zenote of Sacrifice.

“At this zenote the Lords and Chiefs of all the provinces of Valladolid observed this custom. After having fasted for sixty days without raising their eyes during that time even to look at their wives, nor at those who brought them food, they came to the mouth of this zenote and, at the break of day, they threw into it some Indian women, some belonging to each of the Lords, and they told the women that they should beg for a good year in all those things which they thought fit, and thus they cast them in unbound, but as they were thrown headlong they fell into the water, giving a great blow on it; and exactly at midday she who was able to come out, cried out loud that they should throw her a rope to drag her out with, and she arrived at the top half dead, and they made great fires round her and incensed her with Copal; and when she came to herself she said that below there were many of her nation, both men and women, who received her, and that raising her head to look at some of them, they gave her heavy blows on the neck, making her put her head down, which was all under water, in which she fancied were many hollows and deeps; and in answer to the questions which the Indian girl put to them, they replied to her whether it should be a good or bad year, and whether the devil was angry with any of the Lords who had cast in the Indian girls, but these Lords already knew that if a girl did not beg to be taken out at midday it was because the devil was angry with them, and she never came out again. Then seeing that she did not come out, all the followers of that Lord and the Lord himself threw great stones into the water and with loud cries fled from the place.”

I fear that this slight description of Chichén must wholly fail to convey to my readers the sensation of a ghostly grandeur and magnificence which becomes almost oppressive to one who wanders day after day amongst the ruined buildings. Although Chichén is not to be compared in picturesqueness with some of the ruined towns in Guatemala and Tabasco, there is a spaciousness about it which is strangely impressive, and the wide horizon, broken only here and there by a distant mound or lofty temple, is more suggestive of the easy access and free movement of a large population than the narrow valley of Copan or the terraced hillsides of Palenque. It is difficult to estimate accurately the actual size of the ancient city, for we were not able to carry our clearings beyond the neighbourhood of the principal buildings still left standing, whose position is shown in the plan; but it is almost impossible to penetrate the surrounding jungle in any direction without coming across artificial mounds and terraces and other signs of human handiwork.

Had Chichén Itzá been fully peopled in the year 1528, it is almost incredible that Montejo could have held it for two years with a force which numbered only four hundred men, and during a great part of the time must have been reduced to less than half that number[6]. It seems more reasonable to suppose either that the historians were at fault in describing Chichén Itzá as the site of Montejo’s camp, or that the city was in a state of decadence and had already been partly abandoned by its population. The latter supposition is strengthened by the passage quoted above from the Valladolid document, in which no mention is made of a great population, and no word occurs which would lead one to suppose that in 1542 Chichén Itzá was still a great living city, although it was undoubtedly still looked on as a sacred place where certain time-honoured ceremonies were performed.

In comparing the ruins of Chichén with those of Copan and Quirigua, one notices at Chichén the greater size of the buildings, the free use of columns, the absence of sculptured stelæ, the scarcity of hieroglyphic inscriptions, and, most important of all, the fact that every man is shown as a warrior with atlatl and spears in his hand; the only representation of a woman depicts her watching a battle from the roof of a house in a beleagured town, whereas at Copan and Quirigua there are no representations of weapons of war, and at Copan a woman was deemed worthy of a fine statue in the Great Plaza. I am inclined to think that it must have been the stress of war that drove the peaceable inhabitants of the fertile valleys of the Motagua and Usumacinta and the highlands of the Vera Paz to the loss hospitable plains of Yucatan, where, having learnt the arts of war, they re-established their power. Then again they passed through evil times: intertribal feuds and Nahua invasions may account for the destruction or abandonment of their great cities, such as Chichén Itzá and Mayapan, and in these latter contests they may have learned the use of the bows and arrows with which they fought the Spaniards.