There are numerous mythic incidents in the continuation of the narrative after the creation. At Tulan the peoples were divided into seven tribes, and it was from Tulan that, with idols of wood and of stone, they set out at the oracular command of the Obsidian Stone. The auguries were mostly evil: "A bird called 'the guard of the ravine' began to complain within the gate of Tulan, as we were going forth from Tulan. 'Ye shall die, ye shall be lost, I am your portent,' the creature said to us. 'Do ye not believe me? Truly your state shall be a sad one.'" The owl prophesied similar disaster, and another bird, the parroquet, "complained in the sky and said, 'I am your portent; ye shall die.' But we said to the creature, 'Speak not thus; thou art but the sign of spring. Thou wailest first when it is spring; when the rain ceaseth, thou wailest.'" They arrived at the sea-coast, and there a great number perished while they awaited a means of crossing, which finally came when "a red tree, our staff, which we had taken in passing from the gate of Tulan," was thrust into the sands, whereupon the waters divided, and all passed over. Then it was that Gagavitz and Zactecauh were elected leaders; and next they fought with the people of Nonoualcat and Zuyva, but though at first successful in the fight, they were eventually defeated: "Truly, it was fearful there among the houses; truly, the noise was great, the dust was oppressive; fighting was going on in the houses, fighting with the dogs, the wasps, fighting with all. One attack, two attacks we made, and we ourselves were routed; as truly as they were in the air, they were in the earth; they ascended and they descended, everywhere against us; and thus they showed their magic and their sorcery." After this defeat, the various tribes received the gods which were to be their protectors. "When we asked each other where our salvation was, it was said to us by the Quiché men: 'As it thundered and resounded in the sky, truly the sky must be our salvation'; so they said, and therefore the name Tohohil was given them." The Zotzil received Cakix, the macaw, as their deity; and the Cakchiquel said: "'Truly, in the middle of the valley lieth our salvation, entering there into the earth.' Therefore the name Chitagah was given. Another, who said salvation was in the water, was called Gucumatz"; and so on, down the roll. The tribes then set forth and encounter "the spirit of the forest, the fire called Zakiqoxol," who kills many men. "Who are these boys whom we see?" says the spirit (who, it seems, is a giant); and Gagavitz and Zactecauh replied: "Let us see what kind of a hideous mole thou art? Who art thou? We shall kill thee. Why is it that thou guardest the road here?" "Do not kill me; I, who am here, I am the heart of the forest," and he asked for clothing. "They shall give to thee wherewith to clothe thyself," they answered; and "then they gave him wherewith to clothe himself, a change of garment, his blood-red cuirass, his blood-red shoes, the dying raiment of Zakiqoxol."
The narrative continues with episodes that may be historical. There are encounters, friendly and militant, with various tribes; Zactecauh is killed by falling down a ravine; the wanderers are delayed a year by the volcano which Gagavitz conquers; a certain being named Tolgom, son of "the Mud that Quivers," is captured and offered by the arrow sacrifice, this being the beginning of an annual festival at which children were similarly slain; and afterward the people come to the place where their dawn is to be and there they behold the sunrise. The warriors took wives from neighbouring tribes and "then also they began to adore the Demon.... It is said that the worship of the Demon increased with the face of our prosperity." To Gagavitz were born two sons, Caynoh and Caybatz, who were to be his successors; and "at that time King Gagavitz died, the same who came from Tulan; his children, our ancestors, Caynoh and Caybatz, were still very young when their father died. They buried him in the same place where their dawn appeared, in Paroxene."
Here the mythical part of the Annals ends. Caynoh and Caybatz may be a pair of heroes like Hunahpu and Xbalanqué, as some authorities deem; but the situation in which they are presented, subjects of a Quiché King, Tepeuh, indicates an historical situation, finally reversed, as the narrative later shows, in sanguinary wars in which the Cakchiquel threw off the Quiché yoke. And here, as elsewhere in the New World, the coming Spaniard was enabled to profit by local dissensions; for Alvarado, whose entrance into Iximche is described as by an eyewitness, first allied himself with the Cakchiquel for the destruction of their neighbours and then destroyed his allies for the sake of their gold. So out of this broken past speaks the Xahila narrative—the one native voice from a lost civilization.
V. HONDURAS AND NICARAGUA[106]
South of the Mayan peoples, in the territories formed by the projection of Central America between the Gulf of Honduras and Lake Nicaragua, the aboriginal inhabitants were represented by some ten linguistic stocks. On the western coast were several groups of Nahuatlan tribes who had come from far in the north, probably in recent times; on the other hand, the large Ulvan stock, back from the Mosquito Coast, are regarded as probably of Chibchan kinship, and their territories were contiguous with the Chibchans of Costa Rica, who brought the influence of the southern continent as far northward as the southern shores of the lake; the remaining tribal groups—Lencan, Subtiaban, Payan, Mosquitoan, Chiapanecan, etc.—have no certain linguistic affinity with any other peoples. Culturally, the whole region was aboriginally marked by an obvious inferiority both to the Mayan peoples to the north and the Chibchan to the south; though at the same time it reflected something of the civilization of each of these regions. As a whole, however, it possessed no single level, but ranged from the primitive savagery of the Mosquito Coast to something approaching a native culture in the western highlands.
The mythic lore of these peoples (not extensively reported) is in no way remarkable. The Nahuatlan tribes—Pipil and Niquiran—worshipped gods whose kinship with those of the Aztec is apparent. Of the Pipil, Brasseur says[107]: "They adored the rising sun, as also statues of Quetzalcohuatl and Itzcueye, to whom they offered almost all their sacrifices," Itzcueye being a form of the earth goddess. Similarly the Niquiran deities mentioned by Oviedo, especially the creator pair, Tamagostad and Cipattonal, are identified with Oxomoco and Cipactonal of the Mexicans; while the calendar of the same tribe is Mexican in type. The chief centre of worship of the Pipil was named Mictlan, but the myth which Brasseur narrates in connexion with the establishment of this shrine is curiously analogous to certain Chibcha tales. The sacred city was on a promontory in Lake Huixa, and "it was there that one day a venerable old man was beheld to advance, followed by a girl of unequalled beauty, both clad in long blue robes, while the man was crowned with a pontifical mitre. They arose together from the lake, but they did not delay to separate; and the old man seated himself upon a stone on the summit of a high hill, where, by his order, was reared a beautiful temple called Mictlan." Similar cults of lake-spirits are indicated on the island of Zapatero, in Lake Nicaragua, where Squier discovered a whole series of remarkable idols, pillars surmounted by crudely carved crouching or seated figures, while statues of a similar type were found on another island, Pensacola. In several of these the human figure is hooded by an animal's head or jaw, or appears within the mouth of the monster—a motive which probably comes from the Mayan north.
The Chiapanecan people north of the Niquirian Nahua consulted an oracular Old Woman, who appears, as Oviedo relates the story,[108] to have been the spirit of the volcano Masaya. The caciques went in secret to consult her before undertaking any enterprise and sacrificed to her human victims, who, says Oviedo, offered themselves voluntarily. When Oviedo asked how the Old Woman looked, they replied that "she was old and wrinkled, with pendant breasts, thin, dishevelled hair, long teeth like those of a dog, a skin darker than that of the Indians, and glowing eyes," a description which scarcely makes the voluntary sacrifice plausible. With the coming of the Christians her appearances were more and more rare.
Of such character were the ideas of the more advanced tribes of the western coast. The Sumo (of the Ulvan stock) tell a tale of their origin, reported by Lehmann[109]: "Between the Rio Patuca and the Rio Coco is a hill named Kaun'ápa, where is a rock with the sign of a human umbilical cord. There in olden time the Indians were born; there is the source of the people. A great Father, Maisahána, and a great Mother, Ituána, likewise existed, the latter being the same as Itóki, whom the Mosquito know as Mother Scorpion. First, the Mosquito were born and instructed in all things; but they were disobedient to their elders (as they still are) and departed toward the coast. Thereafter the Tuáchca were born, and then the Yusco who live on Rio Prinzapolca and Bambana; but since the Yusco were bad and lewd, the rest of the Sumo fought against them and killed all but a few, who live somewhere around the source of Rio Coco, near the Spaniards. Last the Ulua were born, who are indeed the youngest; and they were instructed in all things, especially medicine and song, wherefore they are known as 'Singers.'"
The Mother Scorpion of this myth is regarded by the Mosquito as dwelling at the end of the Milky Way, where she receives the souls of the dead; and from her, represented as a mother with many breasts, at which children take suck, come the souls of the new-born—a belief which points to a notion of reincarnation. The Mosquito[110] possess also a migration-myth, with stories of a culture hero named Wakna, and an ancient prophecy that they shall never be driven back from the coasts to which he led them. Along with this are reminiscences of the coming of cannibals—doubtless Carib—from overseas; and the usual quota of superstitions as to monsters of forest and waters. They are said, moreover, to have vague notions of a supreme or superior god—which is altogether likely—and, in general, these Central American religions are, doubtless, as the early writers describe them, formed of an ill-defined belief in a Heaven Father, with deities of sun and stars as objects of worship, and spirits of earth and forest as objects of dread.