Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I.

by John L. Stephens

At the end of a long street leading out beyond the campo santo we turned to the right by a narrow path, overgrown with bushes covered with wild flowers, and on which birds of beautiful plumage were sitting, but so infested with garrapatas that we had to keep brushing them off continually with the bough of a tree.

This path led us to the hacienda of San Francisco, the property of a gentleman of the village, who had reared the walls of a large building, but had never finished it. There were fine shade trees, and the appearance of the place was rural and picturesque, but it was unhealthy. The deep green foliage was impregnated with the seeds of death. The proprietor never visited it except in the daytime, and the Indians who worked on the milpas returned to the village at night.

A short distance in the rear of the hacienda were the ruins of another city, desolate and overgrown, having no name except that of the hacienda on which they stand. At this time a great part of the city was completely hidden by the thick foliage of the trees. Near by, however, several mounds were in full sight, dilapidated, and having fragments of walls on the top. We ascended the highest, which commanded a magnificent view of the great wooded plain, and at a distance the towers of the church of Ticul rising darkly above. The cura told me that in the dry season, when the trees were bare of foliage, he had counted from this point thirty-six mounds, every one of which had once held aloft a building or temple, and not one now remained entire. In the great waste of ruins it was impossible to form any idea of what the place had been, except from its vastness and the specimens of sculptured stone seen in the village, but beyond doubt it was of the same character as Uxmal, and erected by the same people. Its vicinity to the village had made its destruction more complete. For generations it had served as a mere quarry to furnish the inhabitants with building-stone. The present proprietor was then excavating and selling, and he lamented to me that the piedra labrada, or worked stone, was nearly exhausted, and his profit from this source cut off.

A few words toward identifying these ruins. The plan for reducing Yucatan was to send a small number of Spaniards, who were called vecinos (the name still used to designate the white population), into the Indian towns and villages where it was thought advisable to make settlements. We have clear and authentic accounts of the existence of a large Indian town called Ticul, certainly in the same neighbourhood where the Spanish village of that name now stands. It must have been either on the site now occupied by the latter, or on that occupied by the ruins of San Francisco. Supposing the first supposition to be correct, not a single vestige of the Indian city remains. Now it is incontestible that the Spaniards found in the Indian towns of Yucatan, mounds, temples, and other large buildings of stone. If those on the hacienda of San Francisco are of older date, and the work of races who have passed away, as vast remains of them still exist, though subject to the same destroying causes, why has every trace of the stone buildings in the Indian city disappeared?

And it appears in every page of the history of the Spanish conquest, that the Spaniards never attempted to occupy the houses and villages of the Indians as they stood. Their habits of life were inconsistent with such occupation, and, besides, their policy was to desolate and destroy them, and build up others after their own style and manner. It is not likely that at the early epoch at which they are known to have gone to Ticul, with their small numbers, they would have undertaken to demolish the whole Indian town, and build their own upon its ruins. The probability is, that they planted their own village on the border, and erected their church as an antagonist and rival to the heathen temples; the monks, with all the imposing ceremonies of the Catholic Church, battled with the Indian priests; and, gradually overthrowing the power of the caciques, or putting them to death, they depopulated the old town, and drew the Indians to their own village. It is my belief that the ruins on the hacienda of San Francisco are those of the aboriginal city of Ticul.

From the great destruction of the buildings, I thought it unprofitable to attempt any exploration of these ruins, especially considering the insalubrity of the place and our own crippled state. In the excavations constantly going on, objects of interest were from time to time discovered, one of which, a vase, was fortunately only loaned to us to make a drawing of, or it would have shared the fate of the others, and been burned up by that fire. The engraving below represents two sides of the vase; on one side is a border of hieroglyphics, with sunken lines running to the bottom, and on the other the reader will observe that the face portrayed bears a strong resemblance to those of the sculptured and stuccoed figures at Palenque: the headdress, too, is a plume of feathers, and the hand is held out in the same stiff position. The vase is four and a half inches high, and five inches in diameter. It is of admirable workmanship, and realizes the account given by Herrera of the markets at the Mexican city of Tlascala. "There were goldsmiths, feather-men, barbers, baths, and as good earthenware as in Spain."

It was not yet considered safe for me to return to Uxmal, and the sight of these vases induced me to devote a few days to excavating among the ruins. The cura took upon himself the whole burden of making arrangements, and early in the morning we were on the ground with Indians. Amid the great waste of ruins it was difficult to know what to do or where to begin. In Egypt, the labours of discoverers have given some light to subsequent explorers, but here all was dark. My great desire was to discover an ancient sepulchre, which we had sought in vain among the ruins of Uxmal. These were not to be looked for in the large mounds, or, at all events, it was a work of too much labour to attempt opening one of them. At length, after a careful examination, the cura selected one, upon which we began.

It was a square stone structure, with sides four feet high, and the top was rounded over with earth and stones bedded in it. It stood in a small milpa, or corn-field, midway between two high mounds, which had evidently been important structures, and from its position seemed to have some direct connexion with them. Unlike most of the ruined structures around, it was entire, with every stone in its place, and probably had not been disturbed since the earth and stones had been packed down on the top.

The Indians commenced picking out the stones and clearing away the earth with their hands. Fortunately, they had a crowbar, an instrument unknown in Central America, but indispensable here on account of the stony nature of the soil, and for the first and only time in the country I had no trouble in superintending the work. The cura gave them directions in their own language, and under his eye they worked actively. Nevertheless, the process was unavoidably slow. In digging down, they found the inner side of the outer wall, and the whole interior was loose earth and stones, with some layers of large flat stones, the whole very rough. In the mean time the sun was beating upon us with prodigious force, and some of the people of the village, among others the proprietor of the hacienda, came down to look on and have an inward smile at our folly. The cura had read a Spanish translation of the Antiquary, and said that we were surrounded by Edie Ochiltrees, though he himself, with his tall, thin figure and long gown, presented a lively image of that renowned mendicant. We continued the work six hours, and the whole appearance of things was so rude that we began to despair of success, when, on prying up a large flat stone, we saw underneath a skull. The reader may imagine our satisfaction. We made the Indians throw away crowbar and machete, and work with their hands. I was exceedingly anxious to get the skeleton out entire, but it was impossible to do so. It had no covering or envelope of any kind; the earth was thrown upon it as in a common grave, and as this was removed it all fell to pieces. It was in a sitting posture, with its face toward the setting sun. The knees were bent against the stomach, the arms doubled from the elbow, and the hands clasping the neck or supporting the head. The skull was unfortunately broken, but the facial bone was entire, with the jaws and teeth, and the enamel on the latter still bright, but when the skull was handed up many of them fell out The Indians picked up every bone and tooth, and handed them to me. It was strangely interesting, with the ruined structures towering around us, after a lapse of unknown ages, to bring to light these buried bones. Whose were they! The Indians were excited, and conversed in low tones. The cura interpreted what they said; and the burden of it was, "They are the bones of our kinsman," and "What will our kinsman say at our dragging forth his bones?" But for the cura they would have covered them up and left the sepulchre.