When the author of the Troano MS., speaks of the "Master of the land" par excellence, that is king Can deified, he pictures him sometimes with a human body, painted blue, and the head of a mastodon. On the façade of the building at Chichen Itza called by the natives Kuna, the house of God, to which Stephens, in his work on Yucatan, gives the name of Iglesia, is a tableau representing the worship of that great pachyderm, whose head, with its trunk, forms the principal ornament of the temples and palaces built by the members of king Can's family.
This tableau is composed of a face intended for that of the mastodon. Over the trunk and between the eyes formerly existed a human head, which has been destroyed by malignant hands. It wore a royal crown. This is still in place. On the front of it is a small portrait cut in the round of some very ancient personage. On each side of the head are square niches containing each two now headless statues, a male and a female; they are seated, not Indian fashion, squatting, but with the legs crossed and doubled under them, in a worshiping attitude. Each carries a symbol on their back; totem of the nation or tribe by which the mastodon was held sacred. Under these figures, are two triangles
emblems of offerings and worship in Mayax as in Egypt. So also was the other symbol
image of a honey-comb, an oblation most grateful to the gods, since with the bark of the Balche tree, honey formed the principal ingredient of Balche, that beverage so pleasing to their palate: the same that under the name of nectar, Hebe served to the inhabitants of Olympus. It is the Amrita, still enjoyed, on the day of the full moon, by the gods, the manes and the saints, according to the Hindoos; although it was the cause of the war between the gods and the Titans, and is the origin of many sanguinary quarrels among the tribes of equatorial Africa even in our days.
These symbols leave no doubt as to the fact that the personages represented by the statues are in the act of worshiping the mastodon.
The corona of the upper cornice, that above the mastodon's head, is formed of a peculiar wavy adornment often met with in the ornamentation of the monuments erected by the Cans. Emblematic of the serpent, it is composed of two letters N juxtaposed, monogram of Can
