3. Citan Qatu, son of Cay Noh, who also ruled.
4. His son, Citan Tihax Cablah, who does not seem to have enjoyed the leadership. It was regained by
5. His son, Vukubatz, by the aid of the Quiche king, Quikab.
6. Oxlahuh Tzii, eldest son of Vukubatz, died A. D., 1509.
7. Succeeded by his eldest son, Hun Yg, who died, together[59] with his eldest son Balam, the father of the author, in the year 1521.
Allowing to these seven who outlived their parents an average survival of twenty years, we are carried back to about the year 1380, as that on which the migration, headed by Gagavitz, began its wanderings, little more, therefore, than the length of two lives as protracted as that of the author himself. This result is that generally obtained by a careful scrutiny of American traditions. They very rarely are so far-reaching as has usually been supposed. Anything spoken of as more than three or four generations distant, may safely be assumed as belonging to myth, and not to history.
It was the expressed intention of the Abbé Brasseur to edit the original text with his translation, but this he did not live to accomplish. He incorporated numerous extracts from it in his Histoire des Nations Civilisées du Mexique et de l’Amerique Centrale, and added a few paragraphs in the original at the end of the first volume of that work; but these did not give much idea of the document as a whole.
When, with the aid of the previous partial translations and the assistance of some intelligent natives, he had completed a version into French, of that portion composed by the first two writers he gave a copy of it to Don Juan Gavarrete. This antiquary translated it into Spanish, and published it serially, in the Boletin de la Sociedad Economica de Guatemala, beginning with No. 29, September, 1873, and continuing to No. 43. Copies of this publication are, however, so scarce that I have been unable to learn of a complete file, even in Guatemala. The dissolution of the Sociedad Economica by order of the late President Barrios, scattered the copies in its own archives.[60]
Synopsis of the Annals of Xahila.
The work opens with a statement that the writer intends to record the ancient traditions of his tribe, as handed down from their early heroes, Gagavitz and Zactecauh. He begins with a brief genealogical table of the four sub-tribes of the Cakchiquels (Secs. [1-3]), and then relates their notions of the creation of man at one of the mythical cities of Tulan, in the distant west ([4], [5]). Having been subjected to onerous burdens in Tulan, they determine to leave it, and are advised to go by their oracles ([6-14]).