Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I.

by John L. Stephens

I am happy thus early in these pages to have an opportunity of recurring to the opinion expressed in my former volumes, in regard to the builders of the ancient American cities.

The conclusion to which I came was, that "there are not sufficient grounds for belief in the great antiquity that has been ascribed to these ruins;" "that we are not warranted in going back to any ancient nation of the Old World for the builders of these cities; that they are not the works of people who have passed away, and whose history is lost; but that there are strong reasons to believe them the creation of the same races who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or of some not very distant progenitors."

This opinion was not given lightly, nor without due consideration. It was adverse to my feelings, which would fain have thrown around the ruins the interest of mystery and hoary age; and even now, though gratified at knowing that my opinion has been fully sustained, I would be willing to abandon it, and involve the reader and myself in doubt, did circumstances warrant me in so doing; but I am obliged to say that subsequent investigations have fortified and confirmed my previous conclusions, and, in fact, have made conviction what before was mere matter of opinion.

When I wrote the account of my former journey, the greatest difficulty attending the consideration of this subject was the absence of all historical record concerning the places visited. Copan had some history, but it was obscure, uncertain, and unsatisfactory. Quirigua, Palenque, and Uxmal had none whatever; but a ray of historic light beams upon the solitary arch in the ruined convent of Merida.

In the account of the conquest of Yucatan by Cogolludo it is stated, that on the arrival of the Spaniards at the Indian town of Tihoo, on the site of which, it will be remembered, Merida now stands, they found many cerros hechos a mano, i. e., hills made by hand, or artificial mounds, and that on one of these mounds the Spaniards encamped.

This mound, it is stated, stood on the ground now occupied by the plaza major. East of it was another large mound, and the Spaniards laid the foundation of the city between these two, because, as it is assigned, the stones in them were a great convenience in building, and economized the labour of the Indians. These mounds were so large, it is added, that with the stones the Spaniards built all the edifices in the city, so that the ground which forms the plaza major remained nearly or quite level. The buildings erected are specified, and it is added that there was abundance of material for other edifices which the Spaniards wished to erect.

Other mounds are mentioned as obstructing the laying out of streets according to the plan proposed, and there is one circumstance which bears directly upon this point, and, in my opinion, is conclusive.

In the history of the construction of the Franciscan convent, which was founded in the year 1547, five years after the arrival of the Spaniards in Tihoo, it is expressly stated that it was built upon a small artificial mound, one of the many that were then in the place, on which mound, it is added, were some ancient buildings. Now we must either suppose that the Spaniards razed these buildings to the ground, and then constructed this strange arch themselves, which supposition is, I think, utterly untenable, or that this corridor formed part of the ancient buildings which, according to the historical account, stood on this artificial mound, and that for some purpose or other the monks incorporated it with their convent.

There is but one way to overthrow this latter conclusion, and that is by contending that these mounds were all ruined, and this building too, at the time when it was made to form part of the convent; but then we are reduced to the necessity of supposing that a great town, the fame of which reached the Spaniards at Campeachy, and which made a desperate and bloody resistance to their occupation of it, was a mere gathering of hordes around the ruined buildings of another race; and, besides, it is a matter of primary importance to note that these artificial mounds are mentioned, not in the course of describing the Indian town, for no description whatever is attempted, but merely incidentally, as affording conveniences to the Spaniards in furnishing materials for building the city, or as causing obstructions in the laying out of streets regularly and according to the plan proposed. The mound on which the convent stands would perhaps not have been mentioned at all but for the circumstance that the Padre Cogolludo was a Franciscan friar, and the mention of it enabled him to pay a tribute to the memory of the blessed father Luis de Villpando, then superior of the convent, and to show the great estimation in which he was held, for he says that the adelantado had fixed upon this mound for the site of one of his fortresses, but on the application of the superior he yielded it to him readily for the site of the convent; and, more than all this, even in the incidental way in which these mounds are referred to, there is one circumstance which shows clearly that they were not at that time disused and in ruins, but, on the contrary, were then in the actual use and occupation of the Indians; for Cogolludo mentions particularly and with much detail one that completely obstructed the running of a particular street, which, he says, was called El grande de los Kues, adoratorio que era de los idolos. Now the word "Kues," in the Maya language, as spoken by the Indians of Yucatan at the present day, means their ancient places of worship, and the word "adoratorio," as defined in the Spanish dictionary, is the name given by the Spaniards to the temples of idols in America. So that when the historian describes this mound as El grande de los Kues el adoratorio de los idolos, he means to say that it was the great one, or the greatest among the places of worship of the Indians, or the temples of their idols.

It is called the "great one" of their places of worship, in contradistinction to the small ones around, among which was that now occupied by the Franciscan convent In my opinion, the solitary arch found in this convent is very strong, if not conclusive, evidence that all the ruined buildings scattered over Yucatan were erected by the very Indians who occupied the country at the time of the Spanish conquest, or, to fall back upon my old ground, that they were the work "of the same race of people," or "their not very distant progenitors."