Meanwhile, our unpacking and our plans for the immediate future are almost completed; the cantaros have come, and as water is one of our great requirements, as the cenoté is at some distance, and there are ninety steps to our abode, ten men are told off for it; other ten are set to cleaning the place, while an equal number will open up the paths and clear the monuments we wish to explore.
Here it may be remarked that Yucatan had centres rather than cities; for the groups of dwellings and palaces we find resemble in no way our cities of the present day, although they are continually compared to Spanish places, notably Sevilla, by the conquerors. They consist everywhere of temples and palaces, either of the reigning prince or caciques, of public edifices scattered about, apparently at random, covering a vast area, with cemented roads and gardens intervening, while the avenues were occupied by the dwellings of dependents and slaves. This is borne out by Landa, who says: “Before the arrival of the Spaniards the aborigines lived in common, were ruled by severe laws, and the lands were cultivated and planted with useful trees. The centre of their towns was occupied by the temples and squares, round which were grouped the palaces of the lords and the priests, and so on in successive order to the outskirts, which were allotted to the lower classes. The wells, necessarily few, were found close to the dwellings of the nobles, who lived in close community for fear of their enemies, and not until the time of the Spaniards did they take to the woods.”[121]
These last words plainly indicate the sudden desertion of Indian cities at the coming of the Spaniards.
The word used by Landa is pueblo, “hamlet,” meaning, perhaps, town; at all events, it shows that even after the breaking up of the Maya empire (from great provinces) into small independent principalities, the people had preserved their ancient customs. Chichen-Itza, “the mouth of the wells,” from the two cenotés around which the town was built, is more recent than Izamal or Aké, but older than Uxmal, although it belongs, like the latter, to the “cut stone period.”
Our information respecting it is of the vaguest, and Aguilar and Montejo are equally silent on the subject, while E. Ancona is of opinion that the greater portion of the writings and documents treating of the conquest of Yucatan have been lost, or at any rate have escaped our investigations. Nevertheless, we find in a letter of Montejo to the King of Spain, April 13th, 1529, published by Brinton, of Philadelphia, from the unpublished documents and archives of the Indies, this remarkable passage: “This region is covered with great and beautiful cities and a dense population” (“ciudades muy frescas,” recent, new). Could he have expressed more clearly that the cities he had visited were lately built? Can these places have disappeared and left no trace? Who were the builders of the noble ruins that have filled with admiration every one who has visited them?
Unfortunately, whether we consult the traditions collected too late, or the Perez manuscript with its doubtful dates, we find no certain data to go upon; in the latter we read that the Toltecs travelled in 360 from Bacalar (Ziyancan) to Chichen; left it in 452 to return in 888, when they remained until 936; that a governor of Chichen was defeated in 1258 by a prince of Mayapan, etc.; in fact, a mere roll of obscure names without any meaning. If we would find an ascertained historical fact, we must turn to Cogolludo and Landa, who wrote from 1420 to 1460, where the Chichemec exodus is recorded, corresponding to the capture and destruction of Mayapan.
The cause of this emigration (or elopement, since there was a lady in the case) is thus told by Cogolludo: “A king of Chichen, called Canek (a generic name of the sovereigns of the Iztaes), fell desperately in love with a young princess, who, whether she did not return his affection, or whether she was obliged to obey a parent’s mandate, married a more powerful Yucatec cacique. The discarded lover, unable to bear his loss, moved by love and despair, armed his dependents and suddenly fell upon his successful rival; when the gaiety of the feast was exchanged for the din of war, and amidst the confusion the Chichen prince disappeared, carrying off the beautiful bride. But conscious that his power was less than his rival’s, and fearing his vengeance, he fled the country with most of his vassals.”[122]
Thus runs the legend; the historical fact is that the inhabitants of Chichen did emigrate, and did establish in the Peten lagoons, one hundred leagues to the south, a little principality with Tayasal for its capital, seen by Cortez in his journey to Honduras, and brought under the Spanish sway as late as 1696. That a whole population should abandon their native city, is an example of the facility with which these peoples moved from one place to another at a moment’s notice; nevertheless, we cannot accept the reasons given by Cogolludo for this migration, so little in accordance with the deep-seated love of the Mayas for their country. It is more likely that one or a series of calamities incident to a primitive race, such as war, pestilence, famine, more or less periodical among the aborigines, was the true cause of their migration.
One thing is clear, that Chichen was inhabited scarcely sixty years before the Conquest, when her monuments were entire; and it is equally clear that a city possessed of two considerable cenotés, so important in a country without water, was not left uninhabited, and that the vacuum left by the exodus was soon filled up, the city preserving its normal existence down to the time of the Spaniards. I am well aware that this kind of evidence will not suit people fond of the marvellous, yet the paucity of documents allows us only a tentative theory, but it will be our care to collect probabilities in such vast numbers, knitting them into a cumulative whole by a patient comparison of monuments, sculptures, bas-reliefs, customs, arms, and public ceremonies, so as to make the evidence absolute. Had Aguilar, who was wrecked and made prisoner on this coast, and lived for nearly eight years as factotum of a powerful cacique, been more observant, we might have a graphic and thorough description of the public and private life among the Mayas; but like the rest of his countrymen, his ideas were turned into quite a different channel, so much so that he has not even recorded the name of the place where later Cortez found him. Ancona tells us that the conquest of Yucatan was hastened by Aguilar, who, when in Mexico with Cortez, persuaded Montejo that “the region was fertile and covered with magnificent monuments”—words of paramount importance, since Aguilar could not have mentioned them in such terms, had they been in ruins or hid away in the woods. It may also be inferred from the incessant mutual warfare of the caciques, that the country had lost its unity and was split up into several provinces, which Herrera says were “eighteen in number covered with stately edifices.”[123] According to the same authority Montejo had a return of the whole population taken, that he might apportion them among his followers, when every one received no less than two or three thousand.[124] This, however, is obviously a gross exaggeration, for supposing the 400 soldiers of Montejo to have dwindled down to 300, the mean population of the district would have amounted to 750,000, which is quite impossible.[125] At all events, the Spaniards occupied Chichen-Itza for two years, but nothing is known of their doings, for Montejo was no writer, nor did he, like Cortez, have chroniclers to record his deeds. At first the submission of the natives was complete; but after a time they rallied from the stupor into which the unparalleled success of the Spaniards had plunged them, and tiring of ministering to the insatiable wants of the Spanish marauders, who consumed in one day what would have kept in comfort a native family for a month, they disappeared, and the Spaniards were soon reduced to foraging in distant villages. This gave rise to daily skirmishes and a more active hatred on the part of the Indians against the foreigners, until at last exasperated, relying moreover on their numerical strength, they came in great numbers and laid siege to Chichen, during which the Spaniards lost 150 of their number, while the rest were all covered with wounds. In this strait, Montejo, despairing of holding the place much longer, determined to evacuate it; this it was not easy to do, for the whole country round was occupied by the Indians; but a pitch-dark night seemed to favour their flight: Montejo took the precaution of having the horses’ hoofs muffled, not to arouse the natives’ suspicions respecting their movements, while he left a dog tied to a pole beneath a piece of meat with a bell attached, which the animal rang every time he tried to reach the prey, thus keeping the Indians in the full belief that the enemy was entrenched behind the walls. Only on the morrow did the natives find out their mistake; they gave instant but unavailing pursuit, for the Spaniards had several hours’ start of them and were able to reach the territory of a friendly cacique, not far from their own ships.