Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I.

by John L. Stephens

In collecting the bones, one of the Indians picked up a small white object, which would have escaped any but an Indian's eye. It was made of deer's horn, about two inches long, sharp at the point, with an eye at the other end. They all called it a needle, and the reason of their immediate and unhesitating opinion was the fact that the Indians of the present day use needles of the same material, two of which the cura procured for me on our return to the convent. One of the Indians, who had acquired some confidence by gossiping with the cura, jocosely said that the skeleton was either that of a woman or a tailor.

The position of this skeleton was not in the centre of the sepulchre, but on one side, and on the other side of it was a very large rough stone or rock firmly imbedded in the earth, which it would have taken a long time to excavate with our instruments. In digging round it and on the other side, at some little distance from the skeleton we found a large vase of rude pottery, resembling very much the cantaro used by the Indians now as water-jar. It had a rough flat stone lying over the mouth, so as to exclude the earth, on removing which we found, to our great disappointment, that it was entirely empty, except some little hard black flakes, which were thrown out and buried before the vase was taken up. It had a small hole worn in one side of the bottom, through which liquid or pulverized substances could have escaped. It may have contained water or the heart of the skeleton. This vase was got out entire, and is now ashes.

One idea presented itself to my mind with more force than it had ever possessed before, and that was the utter impossibility of ascribing these ruins to Egyptian builders. The magnificent tombs of the kings at Thebes rose up before me. It was on their tombs that the Egyptians lavished their skill, industry, and wealth, and no people, brought up in Egyptian schools, descended from Egyptians, or deriving their lessons from them, would ever have constructed in so conspicuous a place so rude a sepulchre. Besides this, the fact of finding these bones in so good a state of preservation, at a distance of only three or four feet from the surface of the earth, completely destroys all idea of the extreme antiquity of these buildings; and again there was the universal and unhesitating exclamation of the Indians, "They are the bones of our kinsman."

But whosesoever they were, little did the pious friends who placed them there ever imagine the fate to which they were destined. I had them carried to the convent, thence to Uxmal, and thence I bore them away forever from the bones of their kindred. In their rough journeys on the backs of mules and Indians they were so crumbled and broken that in a court of law their ancient proprietor would not be able to identify them, and they left me one night in a pocket-handkerchief to be carried to Doctor S. G. Morton of Philadelphia.

Known by the research he has bestowed upon the physical features of the aboriginal American races, and particularly by his late work entitled "Crania Americana," which is acknowledged, in the annual address of the president of the Royal Geographical Society of London, as "a welcome offering to the lovers of comparative physiology," this gentleman, in a communication on that subject, for which I here acknowledge my obligations, says that this skeleton, dilapidated as it is, has afforded him some valuable facts, and has been a subject of some interesting reflections.

The purport of his opinion is as follows: In the first place, the needle did not deceive the Indian who picked it up in the grave. The bones are those of a female. Her height did not exceed five feet three or four inches. The teeth are perfect, and not appreciably worn, while the epiphyses those infallible indications of the growing state, have just become consolidated, and mark the completion of adult age.

The bones of the hands and feet are remarkably small and delicately proportioned, which observation applies also to the entire skeleton. The skull was crushed into many pieces, but, by a cautious manipulation, Doctor Morton succeeded in reconstructing the posterior and lateral portions. The occiput is remarkably flat and vertical, while the lateral or parietal diameter measures no less than five inches and eight tenths.

A chemical examination of some fragments of the bones proves them to be almost destitute of animal matter, which, in the perfect osseous structure, constitutes about thirty-three parts in the hundred.

On the upper part of the left tibia there is a swelling of the bone, called, in surgical language, a node, an inch and a half in length, and more than half an inch above the natural surface. This morbid condition may have resulted from a variety of causes, but possesses greater interest on account of its extreme infrequency among the primitive Indian population of the country.

On a late visit to Boston I had the satisfaction of examining a small and extremely interesting collection of mummied bodies in the possession of Mr. John H. Blake, of that city, dug up by himself from an ancient cemetery in Peru. This cemetery lies on the shore of the Bay of Chacota, near Arica, in latitude 18° 20' south. It covers a large tract of ground. The graves are all of a circular form, from two to four feet in diameter, and from four to five feet deep. In one of them Mr. Blake found the mummies of a man, a woman, a child twelve or fourteen years old, and an infant. They were all closely wrapped in woollen garments of various colours and degrees of fineness, secured by needles of thorn thrust through the cloth; The skeletons are saturated with some bituminous substance, and are all in a remarkable state of preservation. The woollen cloths, too, are well preserved, which no doubt is accounted for, in a great degree, by the extreme dryness of the soil and atmosphere of that part of Peru.