SACRED CENOTÉ OF CHICHEN-ITZA.
Sec. 4. Nakuk-Peck, writing of Montejo’s expedition to Chichen-Itza, 1527, says: “He set out to reconnoitre the place called Chichen-Itza, whence he invited the chief of the town to come and see him; and the people said unto him: ‘There is a King, my Lord, there is a King, even Cocom aun Peck, King Peck, King Chel of Chicantum;’ and Captain Cupul said to him: ‘Stranger warrior, take your rest in these palaces.’ So spoke Captain Cupul.” After this, can it be further doubted that Chichen was inhabited at the Conquest? Of Izamal he says:
Sec. 18. “When the Spaniards established themselves at Merida in 1542, the chief orator, the high-priest Kinich-Kakmó and the King of the Tutulxius from Mani, made their submission.” Obviously Kinich-Kakmó was the generic name for the high-priests at Izamal who were in full possession of their religious prerogatives at the coming of the Spaniards; consequently the temples and palaces of both Izamal and Chichen were then inhabited. These passages tell us, moreover, what we did not yet know—that after the fall of Mayapan the head of the Cocomes took possession of the principality of Chichen (the fall of Mayapan and the migration of the Chichemecs were probably contemporaneous events), that Kinich-Kakmó was the ally of Tutulxiu, King of Mani, since, jointly with him, he offered his alliance to Montejo, and that the latter and Cocom, both of Toltec descent, were enemies struggling for supremacy over the province.[135]
We read in Torquemada and other writers that the first to arrive in the country were the Cocomes, penetrating the peninsula from Tabasco towards the end of the twelfth century, under the command of their chief Quetzalcoatl, after they had already subdued and civilised most of the northern portion of Yucatan. They were succeeded a century later by the Tutulxius, who marked their passage through the Usumacinta Valley by the erection of Lorillard and Tikal.
Herrera and Landa tell us that “several tribes came from Chiapas, having entered Yucatan by the south, although this is not generally known to the natives themselves, but he (Landa) conjectures it from the great number of names and verbal constructions common to Chiapas and Yucatan, as from considerable vestiges of deserted localities (Palenque, Ocosingo, and Lorillard, etc.). These tribes dwelt in the wilderness south of the peninsula, journeying hence to the hilly region of Kabah, Uxmal, etc., where they settled down under their chief Tutulxiu, spreading everywhere the worship of the Sun, the Moon, Tlaloc, and Quetzalcoatl, their chief deities. They lived in great peace with the former inhabitants, and with one another. They had no arms, snaring animals with nets or taking them with lazos.”[136] Yet these kindred tribes, the Cocomes and Tutulxius, so mild in disposition, became fierce and quarrelsome soon after the settlement of the latter in the district, both struggling for supremacy. In this conflict, Mayapan was successively occupied by the victorious party, while both succumbed to the caciques, who, taking advantage of these inter-tribal contentions, consolidated their power, when the peninsula was divided into eighteen independent provinces, continually at war with each other, which finally worked the destruction of the Maya-Toltec civilisation.
Aware of the treasures the cenoté might contain, I had provided myself with two automatic Toselli sounding-machines, one of which is capable of bringing up half a cubic metre deposit; but unfortunately I could not get it to work, owing to the height of the walls, the depth of the water, and the enormous detritus of several centuries.
SMALL TEMPLE IN THE TENNIS-COURT OF CHICHEN-ITZA.