The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

Each cacique maintained a small bodyguard; but the army for the defence of the State was the whole body of citizens capable of bearing arms. The cacique himself does not appear to have been commander-in-chief, but delegated this post to two subjects, one of whom held his military leadership by inheritance, transmitting it to his son, and the other being elective every three years. This latter official combined with his military duties certain sacerdotal functions, presiding at the feast of the War God, and during his term of office leading a hermit's life, maintaining complete chastity and abstaining from intoxicating liquor. The weapons of the soldiers were bows and arrows pointed with stone or fishbone, stone axes, and lances, swords and daggers of wood hardened by fire. They carried shields of plaited cane covered with deer-skin, and wore an armour of thickly woven cotton. Having no horses and no draught animals of any kind, each soldier had to be commissariat waggon for himself, and this difficulty of providing food for a long campaign made the wars short and sharp. Ordinary captives were usually reduced to the condition of slavery, but the general or cacique who was made prisoner was sacrificed to the War God as a thank-offering.

The centre of each town or village was occupied by the chief temple, around which were built the houses of the priests, the palace of the cacique and those of the chief men. Outside this sacred pale lived the poorer people in huts of the same type as those inhabited by the Mayans of to-day. Close to the temple was ordinarily the market-square, where stood the town hall in which all public business and reunions of the tribe took place, and justice was administered. Here presided a special functionary who ordered public festivals and ceremonies, and took the chair, so to speak, at general meetings of the people. As a matter of fact he appears to have rejoiced in the name of Holpop, which according to D. G. Brinton means literally "head of the mat," because at the tribal meetings when the elders squatted round on the mats, the Holpop sat at the end. He appears also to have been Master of the Music, and to have had in his keeping the musical instruments of the tribe—namely the tunkul, which seems to have been a small drum of wood, trumpets of conch-shell and flutes of cane. The tunkul, which produced a melancholy note, was used to summon the people to worship, to give notice of dances and festive meetings, to call together the warriors, and as an alarm signal in case of sudden attack. Thus the tunkul was in a special sense the sacred national instrument of the Mayans.

Justice was administered in a summary manner by the cacique, who personally heard plaints and disputes and gave such judgment as he thought fit. In the matter of damage to property the guilty party was made to compensate the injured by payment of his own goods. If he had no property, his relatives had to pay for him. This penalty of fining was the usual punishment for accidental homicide and unintentional arson and in the case of conjugal quarrels. Adultery was regarded as a grave offence when committed with a married woman. Accusation of adultery having been notified, the cacique, accompanied by the tribal elders, held a court, when with the greatest solemnity, and in the presence of the injured husband, the adulterer was tied hand and foot to a post of infamy. He was then at the disposal of the injured man. The latter could pardon him if he wished, or could take his life there and then by smashing in his head with a stone. The woman in fault suffered no bodily punishment, but was branded with infamy and usually repudiated by her husband. It is obvious that much respect was shown to women, for the penalty of death was meted out to any man who was guilty of outrage or rape, technical or actual. The cacique always condemned the offender to be stoned, and the penalty was inflicted by the whole village. Nobody, not even the highest noble, appears to have been able to escape the rigour of this law.

For murder the penalty was death, either by order of the cacique; or, if the criminal escaped, he could be pursued by the family of his victim and killed wherever they found him, his crime thus making him an outlaw. In the case of murder by a minor, the penalty of death was not inflicted nor could the injured family pursue him. But he became their slave for the rest of his life. Unintentional homicide was less rigorously punished. A fine either in goods or a slave was usually the penalty imposed. Other accidental injuries, such as the unmalicious firing of houses or crops, were made good by fining. In the case of intentional arson, however, the culprit was put to death; and the supreme penalty of the law was also inflicted on traitors.

Enslavement was the punishment of all robbers, who could only regain their liberty by restoring the stolen goods and making good the damage. So severe were the laws as to robbery that no excuse was found in circumstances of extreme want. The man who stole because he was starving was reduced to the condition of a slave just the same as the wanton or violent robber. Robbery and war were the chief sources of recruiting the ranks of the slaves. But if a theft was committed by a cacique, priest, noble or official, an exception was made in their favour. They did not become slaves, but were obliged to submit to a public degradation. The popular assembly was summoned, and there, before the eyes of all the people, the culprit was branded on both cheeks, from chin to forehead, with figures symbolical of his crime, tatooed on in paints with fishbones.

There were no regular prisons or houses of detention. Indeed they were not needed, as justice was in all cases summary. Where possible the offender was brought before the cacique forthwith. If, however, the arrest took place during the night, or the carrying out of the sentence had to be delayed for some hours, the criminal was imprisoned in an enclosure of stakes. If the penalty was death it was executed immediately, except in those cases where the criminal was reserved for sacrifice, and then he was kept caged up until such day as the priests had ordained. A murderer condemned to slavery became the property of one of the chief men, if there was no kinsman of his victim to whom he could become servant.

There was a very marked differentiation of classes among the Mayans. There were the nobles, the priests, the people, and the slaves. The children of these latter inherited their parents' status and ipso facto became slaves. A free man who married a slave woman lost his freedom. Thus were class distinctions sternly maintained. Even sexual intercourse between a free man and a slave woman was severely punished on the first offence, and, if repeated, the man lost his liberty and became a slave to the owner of the girl. There appears to have been a regular slave-market in each large Mayan city. The Spanish chroniclers endeavour to denigrate this system of servitude, declaring it to be a cruel debasement of human beings to the position of beasts of burden. But though all slavery is detestable, there seems to have been little or no cruelty in the system in vogue among the Mayans, and it is quite obvious that it was untainted by that basest of all advantages which are taken of a slave class—namely, the using of them for immoral purposes. Spanish writers should recollect, in view of this very black page of their own history, a homely little proverb which begins "those who live in glass houses."

As has been said, the Mayan city had as its centre an open space where stood the temple and the chief houses. Thence branched off paths (they were not roads) connecting this central plaza with the houses of the nobles and middle class, the outlying suburbs of the city being occupied by the poor and the slaves. The richer people lived in stone houses, but those able to afford these were always few, and the average Mayan city consisted of huts built just as they are to-day by the modern Mayans; palm-thatched, oval-shaped enclosures of stakes bound together by lianas and sometimes plastered over with earth. The huts were of various sizes and shapes. The majority were oval, some were nearly round with a diameter of twenty-five feet, while a very few were rectangular. They were often divided into two apartments, a sleeping and a living room. There was no attempt at or need for foundation, the natural earth forming the flooring, as it does in the huts to-day. Each hut stood in its own garden, in which were cultivated plum-trees, the mamey and the sapota for their fruits, and other trees and shrubs, possibly a little cotton and henequen, and such flowering plants and sweet-scented herbs as wormwood, sweet basil, white and violet irises, and a small white flower, much like the English jasmine and strongly perfumed, which one sees growing everywhere in the woods of Yucatan to-day. Outside each city were the clearings devoted to agriculture, the chief products being maize, frijoles or black beans, a kind of pumpkin, sweet potatoes, cotton, and maize of different kinds. When the harvest was abundant it was stored in granaries as a reserve for bad years.

The Mayans had few domestic animals. They kept turkeys, which were indigenous to Central America, and they probably early domesticated the wild pig or peccary. They had a type of dog which one chronicler declares was incapable of barking, though an excellent hunter. These dogs were often fattened to form a dish at the feasts, being regarded as a great delicacy. The women and children appear to have made pets of the small Yucatecan racoon, the coati or pisotl, as the Indians call it, and birds were tamed and kept.

The Mayan family, irrespective of sex and age, all slept in that portion of the hut that was set aside as a sleeping apartment. They slept on beds of rushes loosely strewn or woven into mats. The hammock was unknown in Yucatan until the arrival of the Spaniards. It is a very common mistake to believe that the hammock was indigenous to Yucatan. Columbus is the first to mention the hammock, and he found it among the West Indians. It is said to have originated in San Domingo; but whether this is so or not, it is quite certain that the Mayans did not sleep in hammocks until the Spaniards introduced the custom. These Mayan rush beds were sometimes raised from the ground on a sort of rough table made of sticks bound together and supported on four legs. In the poorer huts this is quite a common form of bedstead to-day. As bed-clothes they had cloaks of cotton of varying degrees of thickness according to the wealth of the family.