The American Egypt: A Record of Travel in Yucatan

by Channing Arnold; Frederick J. Tabor Frost

That a people were living in Mexico before the Aztec invasion cannot be doubted; but if, as these Toltec enthusiasts would have us believe, they were apart from any and all other American peoples, where are they to-day? From the Land of Ice to the Land of Fire, there was not a spot that was so thickly populated at the discovery of America that a weaker tribe need have been wiped out. America was so sparsely inhabited that a conquered tribe could always find some direction to flee and form a new settlement. But if we accept the Toltec myth, we have to believe that a nation numbering some four or five millions in the eleventh century had at the time of the Conquest, four centuries later, disappeared. It is just possible, but it is most improbable. But if they did not disappear, where are we to look for this mislaid nation? Tradition says they went south. But was the country to the south of Mexico uninhabited then? For if these Toltecs were not strong enough to withstand the attacks of the Aztecs in their own strongholds, it is scarcely reasonable to suppose they would be of sufficient strength or in sufficient numbers to possess themselves of and conquer the inhabitants of a country along the fertile plains of one part of which, Guatemala, they would have found, it may be reasonably supposed, as dense a population as the Spaniards found later. The Toltec theory presumes that the expelled architects went south and found vast empty spaces where they continued their building operations. This is presuming altogether too much. Yucatan, Chiapas, Guatemala, were all inhabited at that time: what the Spaniards found there proves that much.

But if you accept our suggestion that the Toltecs were but an outlying branch of the great Mayan race which possessed all Central America from Arizona and Texas to the frontier line of Nicaragua, then the miraculous disappearance of the Toltecs is not miraculous at all. They fled south among their own people, and became absorbed by a natural process in the various parts of Mayan territory, where they found buildings as great and greater than any they had built in their northern Mexican home. Far from the fugitives from the militant Aztecs being the founders of the wonderful cities in Yucatan and Guatemala, they were at the time of their flight probably much less civilised than their cousins at Chichen or Palenque.

But who were these Mayans, and where did they obtain their knowledge of building? No race can develop the art of building in stone without leaving well-marked traces of its slow growth. First, there is the rough stone building, which would be traceable in heaps of crumbling rough-hewn stones where they had fallen. Next, would come that stage when they would learn to mortar the stones together, perhaps adding rude ornamentation on the exterior walls. Very slowly the roughness would give place to better-hewn stones; patterns in the ornamentation would be evolved; and finally you would get the same ornamentation all over the country, identical as is the decoration of such cities as Kabah, Chichen, and Uxmal. But there is no crude work in Yucatan. The unornamented buildings, such as the Akad-Tzib at Chichen, are obviously of the same date as the ornamented structures. They have the same form, the same finish of stone; and everything points to the fact that the plainness of buildings was deliberate and in some way in keeping with the purpose of the edifice.

We have searched for the early stages of the Mayan building civilisation in the caves of Yucatan, where traces, if anywhere, of the embryonic efforts of the architects might be expected, but we searched in vain. Of those caves that have been inhabited there are but few that have any signs of building inside, and none with any traces of carvings. A typical cave of those which had been built in we found in Cozumel island; but it was almost certain that it had not been used as a habitation for any long period. Its front, which had stood exposed to weather and the intrusion of wild beasts, had been built up, with a doorway in the centre. Its floor of earth was found some four feet beneath the débris that had blown in and collected since its ancient occupiers had deserted it; and just under this level was found a small jar of beads and scattered around were potsherds in a layer of charcoal where the cave-dweller had done his cooking. It is the opinion of Mr. Henry C. Mercer (Hill-Caves of Yucatan: Philadelphia, 1896), who in 1896 examined most of the caves of the Southern Sierras, that they were not dwellings but mere halting-places of a wandering people. He could find in them no trace of an evolution of stone-building. Of those that had any kind of carving, he says "they are random, sketchy figures, many of which suggested pictographs of North American Indians. With a few exceptions there was little of the mannerism of Yucatan about them; and if they had been inscribed on a cliff-side on the Sasquehana or in Ohio, few of them would have seemed out of place."

The objects which he found, and the depth at which he found them, only went further to prove that his conclusions were correct. Bones of animals which had served as food, charcoal, and potsherds, with earth of sometimes a foot deep between the layers, went to show that the cave was inhabited and evacuated, and then left for some years before it was again occupied. From the fact that horses' teeth were found in many of them, but always of course in the topmost layers, it may be assumed that the caves were in use (perhaps only when a rout was taking place) after the arrival of the Spaniards. But the fact that none of the potsherds discovered in the caves are like those usually found among the ruins, and especially the fact that no vases with hieroglyphics on them are found, go to show that the caves in Yucatan were but little in use, if at all, among the building Mayans. From all this it would seem safe to conclude that if these caves were ever permanent habitations, it was at a period anterior to the great building age of the Mayan race, when their civilisation was in the crude stage to which many of the North Americans had attained. This conclusion is certainly supported by the fact above referred to, that the coarse carvings at Opichen are almost facsimiles of those of the pictographs of the Northern tribes.

Thus everything would seem to point to the conclusion that, whoever these Mayan builders were, their knowledge of architecture was not slowly evolved by them, but came to them, a veritable gift of the gods, already developed, from some foreign source. What that source was we shall endeavour to show in the next chapter. The point to be dealt with here is, What were the ethnical affinities of the Mayans themselves? To what branch of the great American family do they belong? We have endeavoured to show that the mysterious disappearance of the Toltecs and the traditionary account of their flight south point very clearly to the conclusion that the country south of Mexico was at the arrival of the Aztecs inhabited by the kindred of these so-called Toltecs.

A curious corroboration of this is to be found in the existence of a tribe known as the Huastecas, who form a colony around the Panuco River in the east of Mexico, and on the adjoining coast of the Gulf. Every ethnologist agrees that these people are pure Mayans; but the puzzle has been to explain their presence in Mexico, where to-day there are no other pure Mayans. The usual explanation is that they represent a solitary migration from Yucatan. Is this at all likely? Is it possible to believe that a mere handful of emigrants could have succeeded in making a lodgment on the Mexican coast in the face of the certain opposition they would have met with from the militant Aztecs? It would have been almost an impossibility; nor does the piece of country held by the Huastecas possess any of those features which might be expected to attract immigrants. It seems to us far more likely that these Huastecas represent a remnant of the original inhabitants of Mexico expelled by the Aztecs; that while the bulk fled southward, a small band moved eastward unnoticed, and established themselves on the Panuco River, the Aztecs being too occupied with their conquests in the south to trouble much about them. Thus with some years to consolidate their position, they either remained unmolested or were actually able to hold their own against the Aztecs till the Conquest. This seems a far more reasonable explanation of the presence of these undoubted Mayans in the east of Mexico.

As the Aztecs pushed their way into the north of Mexico, the vast majority of peaceful Mayans, no match for the warlike strangers, fled naturally south, save these few Huastecas, who, going eastward, were either strong enough to repulse their foes or took refuge in lands which did not attract the Aztecs so much as the rich valleys of Central Mexico; and thus formed a permanent settlement on the east coast, while their kinsfolk joined the Mayan populations of Yucatan and Guatemala.

But when you have assumed that the Toltecs were Mayans, you are still confronted by an ethnological problem. It has proved curiously difficult to classify the Mayans among the other peoples of America. The Aztecs are satisfactorily accounted for as Shoshonees, a tribe of the Athapascans; and some ethnologists have tried to prove that the Mayans are also of the same stock. These efforts have proved futile. All available evidence is against such a conclusion. Physically the two peoples are quite separate, even to-day. The most casual observer, travelling in the two countries of Mexico and Yucatan, must be struck, as were we, by the marked distinction in features and general physique between the two. But a still more cogent proof of their separation is afforded by a study of the two languages. They are quite different in structure, vocabulary and everything.