In Guatemala, Cortés saw temples like those of Mexico.[1154] The temple of Tohil, at Utatlan, was, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg, a conical edifice, having in front a very steep stairway; at the summit was a platform of considerable size upon which stood a very high chapel, built of hewn stone, and roofed with precious wood. The walls were covered within and without with a very fine and durable stucco. Upon a throne of gold, enriched with precious stones, was seated the image of the god.[1155]
The particular diseases to which the Mayas were most subject are not enumerated, but there is no reason to doubt that they suffered from the same maladies as their neighbors the Nahuas. They seem to have been greatly afflicted with various forms of syphilis,[1156] and in winter, with catarrh and fever.[1157] They were much troubled, also, with epidemics, which not unfrequently swept the country with great destruction.[1158]
TREATMENT OF THE SICK.
Medicinal practitioners were numerous. Their medicines, which were mostly furnished by the vegetable kingdom, were administered in the usual forms,[1159] and their treatment of patients involved the customary mummeries. Clysters were much used.[1160] For syphilis they used a decoction of a wood called guayacan, which grew most plentifully in the province of Nagrando in Nicaragua.[1161] For rheumatism, coughs, colds, and other complaints of a kindred nature, they used various herbs, among them tobacco,[1162] and a kind of dough made of 'stinking poisonous worms.'[1163] Sores arising from natural causes they washed in a decoction of an herb called coygaraca, or poulticed it with the mashed leaves of another named mozot.[1164] Wounds taken in battle they always treated with external applications.[1165] Cacao, after the oil had been extracted was considered to be a sure preventive against poison.[1166]
When a rich man or a noble fell sick a messenger was dispatched with gifts to the doctor, who came at once and staid by his patient until he either got well or died. If the sickness was not serious the physician merely applied the usual remedies, but it was thought that a severe illness could only be brought on by some crime committed and unconfessed. In such cases, therefore, the doctor insisted upon the sick man making a clean breast of it, and confessing such sin even though it had been committed twenty years before. This done, the physician cast lots to see what sacrifices ought to be made, and whatever he determined upon was always given even though it amounted to the whole of the patient's fortune.[1167] In Yucatan the practitioner sometimes drew blood from those parts of the patient's body in which the malady lay.[1168] Lizana mentions a temple at Izamal to which the sick were carried that they might be healed miraculously.[1169] In Guatemala, as elsewhere, propitiatory offerings of birds and animals were made in ordinary cases of sickness, but if the patient was wealthy and dangerously ill he would sometimes strive to appease the anger of the gods and atone for the sins which he was supposed to have committed by sacrificing male or female slaves, or, in extraordinary cases, when the sick man was a prince or a great noble, he would even vow to sacrifice a son or a daughter in the event of his recovery; and although the scapegoat was generally chosen from among his children by female slaves, yet so fearful of death, so fond of life were they, that there were not wanting instances when legitimate children, and even only sons were sacrificed. And it is said, moreover, that they were inexorable as Jephthah in the performance of such vows, for it was held to be a great sin to be false to a bargain made with the gods.[1170]
PRACTICE OF SORCERY.
The Mayas, like the Nahuas, were grossly superstitious. They believed implicitly in the fulfillment of dreams, the influence of omens, and the power of witches and wizards. No important matter was undertaken until its success had been foretold and a lucky day determined by the flight of a bird or some similar omen. Whether the non-fulfilment of the prediction was provided against by a double entendre, after the manner of the sibyls, we are not told. The cries or appearance of certain birds and animals were thought to presage harm to those who heard or saw them.[1171] They as firmly believed and were as well versed in the black art as their European brethren of a hundred years later, and they appear to have had the same enlightened horror of the arts of gramarye, for in Guatemala, at least, they burned witches and wizards without mercy. They had among them, they said, sorcerers who could metamorphose themselves into dogs, pigs, and other animals, and whose glance was death to their victims. Others there were who could by magic cause a rose to bloom at will, and could bring whomsoever they wished under their control by simply giving him the flower to smell. Unfaithful wives, too, would often bewitch their husbands that their acts of infidelity might not be discovered.[1172] All these things are gravely recounted by the old chroniclers, not as matters unworthy of credence, but as deeds done at the instigation of the devil to the utter damnation of the benighted heathen. Cogolludo, for instance, speaking of the performances of a snake-charmer, says that the magician took up the reptile in his bare hands, as he did so using certain mystic words, which he, Cogolludo, wrote down at the time, but finding afterwards that they invoked the devil, he did not see fit to reproduce them in his work. The same writer further relates that upon another occasion a diviner cast lots, according to custom, with a number of grains of corn, to find out which direction a strayed child had taken. The child was eventually found upon the road indicated, and the narrator subsequently endeavored to discover whether the devil had been invoked or not, but the magician was a poor simple fool, and could not tell him.[1173] Nor does there seem to have been any great difference between the credulity and superstition of conquerors and conquered in other respects. The Spanish Fathers, if we may judge from their writings, believed in the Aztec deities as firmly as the natives; the only difference seems to have been that the former looked upon them as devils and the latter as gods. When the Spaniards took notes in writing of what they saw, the Costa Ricans thought they were working out some magic spell; when the Costa Ricans cast incense towards the invaders telling them to leave the country or die,[1174] the Spaniards swore that the devil was in it, and crossed themselves as a counter-spell.
The Yucatecs observed a curious custom during an eclipse of the moon. At such times they imagined that the moon was asleep, or that she was stung and wounded by ants. They therefore beat their dogs to make them howl, and made a great racket by striking with sticks upon doors and benches; what they hoped to accomplish by this, we are not told.[1175]
FUNERAL RITES.
The Mayas disposed of the bodies of their dead by both burial and cremation. The former, however, appears to have been the most usual way. In Vera Paz, and probably in the whole of Guatemala, the body was placed in the grave in a sitting posture, with the knees drawn up to the face. The greater part of the dead man's property was buried with him, and various kinds of food and drink were placed in the grave that the spirit might want for nothing on its way to shadow-land.[1176] Just before death took place, the nearest relation, or the most intimate friend of the dying man, placed between his lips a valuable stone, which was supposed to receive the soul as soon as it passed from the body. As soon as he was dead, the same person removed the stone and gently rubbed the face of the deceased with it. This office was held to be a very important one, and the person who performed it preserved the stone with great reverence. When the lord of a province died, messengers were sent to the neighboring provinces to invite the other princes to be present at the funeral. While awaiting their arrival the body was placed in a sitting posture, in the manner in which it was afterwards to be interred,[1177] and clothed in a great quantity of rich clothing.[1178] On the day of the funeral the great lords who had come to attend the ceremony, brought precious gifts and ornaments, and placed them by the side of or on the person of the corpse. Each provided also a male or female slave, or both, to be sacrificed over the grave of the deceased. The body was then placed in a large stone chest,[1179] and borne with great solemnity to its last resting-place, which was generally situated on the top of a hill. The coffin having been lowered into the grave with its ornaments, the doomed slaves were immolated, and also cast in along with the implements which they had used in life, that they might follow their accustomed pursuits in the service of their new master in the other world. Finally, the grave was filled up, a mound raised over it, and a stone altar erected above all, upon which incense was burned and sacrifices were made in memory of the deceased. The common people did not use coffins, but placed the body in a sitting posture and wrapped up in many cloths, in an excavation made in the side of the grave, burying with it many jars, pans, and implements. They raised a mound over the grave of a height in proportion to the rank of the defunct.[1180]