Vestiges of the Mayas / or, Facts Tending to Prove That Communications and Intimate Relations Must Have Existed, in Very Remote Times, Between the Inhabitants of Mayab and Those of Asia and Africa

by Augustus Le Plongeon

From certain inscriptions and pictures—in which the Cans are represented crawling on all fours like dogs—sculptured on the façade of their house of worship, it would appear that their religion of the mastodon was replaced by that of the reciprocal forces of nature, imported in the country by the big-nosed invaders, the Nahualts coming from the west. These destroyed Chichen, and established their capital at Uxmal. There they erected in all the courts of the palaces, and on the platforms of the temples the symbols of their religion, taking care, however, not to interfere with the worship of the sun and fire, that seems to have been the most popular.

Bancroft in his work, “The Native Races of the Pacific States,” Vol. IV., page 277, remarks: “That the scarcity of idols among the Maya antiquities must be regarded as extraordinary. That the people of Yucatan were idolators there is no possible doubt, and in connection with the magnificent shrines and temples erected by them, and rivalling or excelling the grand obelisks of Copan, might naturally be sought for, but in view of the facts it must be concluded that the Maya idols were very small, and that such as escaped the fatal iconoclasms of the Spanish ecclesiastics were buried by the natives as the only means of preventing their desecration.”

That the people who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest had a multiplicity of gods there can be no doubt. The primitive form of worship, with time and by the effect of invasions from outside, had disappeared, and been replaced by that of their great men and women, who were deified and had temples raised to their memory, as we see, for example, in the case of Moo, wife and sister of Chaacmol, whose shrine was built on the high mound on the north side of the large square in the city of Izamal. There pilgrims flocked from all parts of the country to listen to the oracles delivered by the mouth of her priests; and see the goddess come down from the clouds every day, at mid-day, under the form of a resplendent macaw, and light the fire that was to consume the offerings deposited on her altar; even at the time of the conquest, according to the chroniclers, Chaacmol himself seems to have become the god of war, that always appeared in the midst of the battle, fighting on the side of his followers, surrounded with flames. Kukulcan, “the culture” hero of the Mayas, the winged serpent, worshipped by the Mexicans as the god Guetzalcoalt, and by the Quichés as Cucumatz, if not the father himself of Chaacmol, Can, at least one of his ancestors.

The friends and followers of that prince may have worshipped him after his death, and the following generations, seeing the representation of his totems (serpent) covered with feathers, on the walls of his palaces, and of the sanctuaries built by him to the deity, called him Kukulcan, the winged serpent: when, in fact, the artists who carved his emblems on the walls covered them with the cloaks he and all the men in authority and the high priests wore on ceremonial occasions—feathered vestments—as we learned from the study of mural paintings.

In the temples and palaces of the ancient Mayas I have never seen anything that I could in truth take for idols. I have seen many symbols, such as double-headed tigers, corresponding to the double-headed lions of the Egyptians, emblems of the sun. I have seen the representation of people kneeling in a peculiar manner, with their right hand resting on the left shoulder—sign of respect among the Mayas as among the inhabitants of Egypt—in the act of worshiping the mastodon head; but I doubt if this can be said to be idol worship. Can and his family were probably monotheists. The masses of the people, however, may have placed the different natural phenomena under the direct supervision of special imaginary beings, prescribing to them the same duties that among the Catholics are prescribed, or rather attributed, to some of the saints; and may have tributed to them the sort of worship of dulia, tributed to the saints—even made images that they imagined to represent such or such deity, as they do to-day; but I have never found any. They worshiped the divine essence, and called it Kú.

In course of time this worship may have been replaced by idolatrous rites, introduced by the barbarous or half civilized tribes which invaded the country, and implanted among the inhabitants their religious belief, their idolatrous superstitions and form of worship with their symbols. The monuments of Uxmal afford ample evidence of that fact.

My studies, however, have nothing to do with the history of the country posterior to the invasion of the Nahualts. These people appear to have destroyed the high form of civilization existing at the time of their advent; and tampered with the ornaments of the buildings in order to introduce the symbols of the reciprocal forces of nature.

The language of the ancient Mayas, strange as it may appear, has survived all the vicissitudes of time, wars, and political and religious convulsions. It has, of course, somewhat degenerated by the mingling of so many races in such a limited space as the peninsula of Yucatan is; but it is yet the vernacular of the people. The Spaniards themselves, who strived so hard to wipe out all vestiges of the ancient customs of the aborigines, were unable to destroy it; nay, they were obliged to learn it; and now many of their descendants have forgotten the mother tongue of their sires, and speak Maya only.

In some localities in Central America it is still spoken in its pristine purity, as, for example, by the Chaacmules, a tribe of bearded men, it is said, who live in the vicinity of the unexplored ruins of the ancient city of Tekal. It is a well-known fact that many tribes, as that of the Itzaes, retreating before the Nahualt invaders, after the surrender and destruction of their cities, sought refuge in the islands of the lake Peten of to-day, and called it Petenitza, the islands of the Itzaes; or in the well nigh inaccessible valleys, defended by ranges of towering mountains. There they live to-day, preserving the customs, manners, language of their forefathers unaltered, in the tract of land known to us as Tierra de Guerra. No white man has ever penetrated their zealously guarded stronghold that lays between Guatemala, Tabasco, Chiapas and Yucatan, the river Uzumasinta watering part of their territory.

The Maya language seems to be one of the oldest tongues spoken by man, since it contains words and expressions of all, or nearly all, the known polished languages on earth. The name Maya, with the same signification everywhere it is met, is to be found scattered over the different countries of what we term the Old World, as in Central America.