Only the poorer classes of the Yucatecs buried their dead. These placed corn in the mouth of the corpse, together with some money as ferriage for the Maya Charon. The body was interred either in the house or close to it. Some idols were thrown into the grave before it was filled up. The house was then forsaken by its inmates, for they greatly feared the dead.[1181] The books of a priest were buried with him, as were likewise the charms of a sorcerer.[1182] The Itzas buried their dead in the fields, in their every-day clothes. On the graves of the males they left such implements as men used, on those of the females they placed grinding-stones, pans, and other utensils used by the women.[1183] In Nicaragua, property was buried with the possessor if he or she had no children; if the contrary was the case, it was divided among the heirs. Nicaraguan parents shrouded their children in cloths, and buried them before the doors of their dwellings.[1184] Among the Pipiles the dead were interred in the house they had lived in, along with all their property. A deceased high-priest was buried, clad in the robes and ornaments appertaining to his office, in a sepulchre or vault in his own palace, and the people mourned and fasted fifteen days.[1185]
Cremation or partial cremation seems to have been reserved for the higher classes. In Yucatan, an image of the dead person was made, of wood for a king, of clay for a noble. The back part of the head of this image was hollowed out, and a portion of the body having been burned, the ashes were placed in this hollow, which was covered with the skin of the occiput of the corpse. The image was then placed in the temple, among the idols, and was much reverenced, incense being burned before it, almost as though it had been a god. The remainder of the body was buried with great solemnity. When an ancient Cocome king died, his head was cut off and boiled. The flesh was then stripped off, and the skull cut in two crosswise. On the front part of the skull, which included the lower jaw and teeth, an exact likeness of the dead man was molded in some plastic substance. This was placed among the statues of the gods, and each day edibles of various kinds were placed before it, that the spirit might want for nothing in the other life, which, by the way, must have been a poor one to need such terrestrial aliment.[1186] When a great lord died in Nicaragua, the body was burned along with a great number of feathers and ornaments of different kinds, and the ashes were placed in an urn, which was buried in front of the palace of the deceased. As usual, the spirit must be supplied with food, which was tied to the body before cremation.[1187]
MOURNING FOR THE DEAD.
According to the information we have on the subject, the mourning customs of the Mayas appear to have been pretty much the same everywhere. For the death of a chief or any of his family the Pipiles lamented for four days, silently by day, and with loud cries by night. At dawn on the fifth day the high-priest publicly forbade the people to make any further demonstration of sorrow, saying that the soul of the departed was now with the gods. The Guatemalan widower dyed his body yellow, for which reason he was called malcam. Mothers who lost a sucking child, withheld their milk from all other infants for four days, lest the spirit of the dead babe should be offended.[1188]
The Mayas, like the Nahuas, were mostly well-made, tall, strong, and hardy. Their complexion was tawny. The women were passably good-looking, some of them, it is said, quite pretty, and seem to have been somewhat fairer-skinned than the men. What the features of the Mayas were like, can only be conjectured. Their sculpture would indicate that a large hooked nose and a retreating forehead, if not usual, were at least regarded with favor, and we know that head-flattening was almost universal among them. Beards were not worn, and the Yucatec mothers burned the faces of their children with hot cloths to prevent the growth of hair. In Landa's time some of the natives allowed their beard to grow, but, says the worthy bishop, it came out as rough as hog's bristles. In Nicaragua it would seem that they did not even understand what a beard was; witness the following 'pretie policy' of Ægidius Gonsalus: "All the Barbarians of those Nations are beardlesse, and are terribly afraide, and fearefull of bearded men: and therefore of 25. beardlesse youthes by reason of their tender yeres, Ægidius made bearded men with the powlinges of their heades, the haire being orderly composed, to the end, that the number of bearded men might appeare the more, to terrifie them if they should be assailed by warre, as afterwarde it fell out."[1189] Squinting eyes were, as I have said before, thought beautiful in Yucatan.[1190]
CHARACTER OF THE MAYAS.
Of all the Maya nations, the Yucatecs bear the best character. The men were generous, polite, honest, truthful, peaceable, brave, ingenious, and particularly hospitable, though, on the other hand, they were great drunkards, and very loose in their morals. The women were modest, very industrious, excellent housewives, and careful mothers, but, though generally of a gentle disposition, they were excessively jealous of their marital rights; indeed, Bishop Landa tells us that upon the barest suspicion of infidelity on the part of their husbands they became perfect furies, and would even beat their unfaithful one.[1191] The Guatemalans are spoken of as having been exceedingly warlike and valorous, but withal very simple in their tastes and manner of life.[1192] Arricivita calls the Lacandones thieves, assassins, cannibals, bloody-minded men, who received the missionaries with great violence.[1193] The fact that the Lacandones strove to repel invasion, without intuitively knowing that the invaders were missionaries, may have helped the worthy padre to come to this decision, however. The Nicaraguans were warlike and brave, but at the same time false, cunning, and deceitful. Their resolute hatred of the whites was so great that it is said that for two years they abstained from their wives rather than beget slaves for their conquerors.[1194]
Next after the collecting of facts in any one direction comes their comparison with other ascertained facts of the same category, by which means fragments of knowledge coalesce and unfold into science. This fascinating study, however, is no part of my plan. If in the foregoing pages I have succeeded in collecting and classifying materials in such a manner that others may, with comparative ease and certainty, place the multitudinous nations of these Pacific States in all their shades of savagery and progress side by side with the savagisms and civilizations of other ages and nations, my work thus far is accomplished. But what a flood of thought, of speculation and imagery rushes in upon the mind at the bare mention of such a study! Isolated, without the stimulus of a Mediterranean commerce, hidden in umbrageous darkness, walled in by malarious borders, and surrounded by wild barbaric hordes, whatever its origin, indigenous or foreign, there was found on Mexican and Central American table-lands an unfolding humanity, unique and individual, yet strikingly similar to human unfoldings under like conditions elsewhere. Europeans, regarding the culture of the conquered race first as diabolical and then contemptible, have not to this day derived that benefit from it that they might have done. It is not necessary that American civilization should be as far advanced as European, to make a perfect knowledge of the former as essential in the study of mankind as a knowledge of the latter; nor have I any disposition to advance a claim for the equality of American aboriginal culture with European, or to make of it other than what it is. As in a work of art, it is not a succession of sharply defined and decided colors, but a happy blending of light and shade, that makes the picture pleasing, so in the grand and gorgeous perspective of human progress the intermediate stages are as necessary to completeness as the dark spectrum of savagism or the brilliant glow of the most advanced culture.
CONCLUSION.