Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I.

by John L. Stephens

There was no rancho, and no habitation of any kind nearer than the village. The buildings themselves offered good shelter; with the necessary clearings they could be made extremely agreeable, and on many considerations it was advisable again to take up our abode among the ruins; but this arrangement was not without its dangers. The season of El Norte seemed to have no end; every day there was rain; the foliage was so thick that the hot sun could not dry the moisture before another rain came, and the whole country was enveloped in a damp, unwholesome atmosphere. Besides, unluckily for us, it was a season of great abundance in the village; the corn crop had been good; the Indians had plenty to eat, and did not care to work. Already we had found difficulty in hiring them; it would require constant urging and our continual presence to secure them from day to day. As to getting them to remain with us, it was out of the question. We determined, therefore, to continue our residence at the convent, and go out to the ruins every day.

Late in the afternoon we returned to the village, and in the evening had a levee of visiters. The sensation we had created in the village had gone on increasing, and the Indians were really indisposed to work for us at all. The arrival of a stranger even from Merida or Campeachy was an extraordinary event, and no Ingleses had ever been seen there before. The circumstance that we had come to work among the ruins was wonderful, incomprehensible. Within the memory of the oldest Indians these remains had never been disturbed. The account of the digging up of the bones in San Francisco had reached them, and they had much conversation with each other and with the padrecito about us. It was a strange thing, they said, that men with strange faces, and a language they could not understand, had come among them to disinter their ruined cities; and, simple as their ancestors when the Spaniards first came among them, they said that the end of the world was nigh.

It was late the next day when we reached the ruins. We could not set out before the Indians, for they might disappoint us altogether, and we could do nothing until they came, but, once on the ground, we soon had them at work. On both sides we watched each other closely, though from somewhat different motives: they from utter inability to comprehend our plans and purposes, and we from the fear that we should get no work out of them. If one of us spoke they all stopped to listen; if we moved, they stopped to gaze upon us. Mr. Catherwood's drawing materials, tripod, sextant, and compass were very suspicious, and occasionally Doctor Cabot filled up the measure of their astonishment by bringing down a bird as it flew through the air. By the time they were fairly broken in to know what they had to do, it was necessary to return to the village.

The same labour was repeated the next day with a new set of men; but, by continual supervision and urging, we managed to get considerable work done. Albino was a valuable auxiliary; indeed, without him I could hardly have got on at all. We had not fairly discovered his intelligence until we left Uxmal. There all had a beaten track to move in, but on the road little things were constantly occurring in which he showed an ingenuity and a fertility of resource that saved us from many annoyances. He had been a soldier, and at the siege of Campeachy had received a sabre-cut in a fleshy part of the body, which rather intimated that he was moving in an opposite direction when the sabre overtook him. Having received neither pay for his services nor pension for his wound, he was a little disgusted with patriotism and fighting for his country. He was by trade a blacksmith, which business, on the recommendation of Doña Joaquina Peon, he had given up to enter our service. His usefulness and capacity were first clearly brought out at Kabah. Knowing the character of the Indians, speaking their language, and being but a few degrees removed from them by blood, he could get out of them twice as much work as I could. Him, too, they could ask questions about us, and lighten labour by the indulgence of social humour, and very soon I had only to give instructions as to what work was to be done, and leave the whole management of it to him. This doubled our effective force, as we could work with two sets of Indians in different places at the same time, and gave Albino a much greater value than that of a common servant. He had one bad habit, which was that of getting the fever and ague. This he was constantly falling into, and, with all our efforts, we could never break him of it, but, unluckily, we never set him a good example. In the mean time Bernaldo sustained his culinary reputation; and, avoiding the bad habit of Albino and his masters, while all the rest of us were lank as the village dogs of that country, his cheeks seemed always ready to burst open.

While we were working at the ruins, the people in the village were losing no time. On the eleventh began the fiesta of Corpus Alma, a festival of nine days' observance in honour of Santo Cristo del Amor. Its opening was announced by the ringing of church bells and firing of rockets, which, fortunately, as we were away at the ruins, we avoided hearing; but in the evening came the procession and the baile, to which we were formally invited by a committee, consisting of the padrecito, the alcalde, and a much more important person than either, styled El Patron del Santo, or the Patron of the Saint.

I have mentioned that Nohcacab was the most backward and thoroughly Indian of any village we had visited. With this strongly-marked Indian character, its church government is somewhat peculiar, and differs, I believe, from that of all the other villages. Besides smaller saints, the favourites of individuals, it has nine principal ones, who have been selected as special objects of veneration: San Mateo, the patron, and Santa Barbara, the patroness of the village; Nuestra Señora de la Concepcion; Nuestra Señora del Rosario; El Señor del Transfigúracion; El Señor de Misericordia; San Antonio, the patron of souls, and El Santo Cristo del Amor. Each of these saints, while acting as patron in general, is also under the special care of a patron in particular.

The process of putting a saint under patronage is peculiar. Among the images distributed around the walls of the church, whenever one is observed to attract particular attention, as, for instance, if Indians are found frequently kneeling before it, and making offerings, the padre requires of the cacique twelve Indians to serve and take care of the saint, who are called mayoles. These are furnished according to the requisition, and they elect a head, but not from their own number, who is called the patron, and to them is intrusted the guardianship of the saint. The padre, in his robes of office, administers an oath, which is sanctified by sprinkling them with holy water. The patron is sworn to watch over the interests of the saint, to take care of all the candles and other offerings presented to him, and to see that his fête is properly observed; and the mayoles are sworn to obey the orders of the patron in all things touching the custody and service of the saint. One of these saints, to whom a patron had been assigned, was called El Santo Cristo del Amor, the addition having reference to the love of the Saviour in laying down his life for man. The circumstance of the Saviour being reverenced as a saint was as new to us as that of a saint having a patron. It was the fiesta of this saint which was now celebrated, and to which we were formally invited. We accepted the invitation, but, having had a hard day's work, we were taking supper rather leisurely, when the patron came in a hurry to tell as that the procession was ready, and the saint was only waiting for us. Not wishing to put him to this inconvenience, we hurried through our meal, and proceeded to the church.

The procession had formed in the body of the church, and at the head of it, in the doorway, were Indians bearing the cross. Upon our arrival it began to move with a loud chant, and under the direction of the patron. Next to the cross were four Indians, bearing on a barrow the figure of the saint, being that of the Saviour on the cross, about a foot high, and fastened against a broad wooden back with a canopy overhead, and a small looking-glass on each side. This was followed by the patron and his mayoles, the padrecito and ourselves, the vecinos, or white people of the village, and a long train of Indian men and women, bareheaded, in white dresses, and all bearing long lighted candles. Moving down the great steps of the church with a loud chant, and the cross and the figure of the saint conspicuous under the light of hundreds of candles, the coup d'œil of the procession was solemn and imposing. Its march was toward the house of the patron, and, on turning up the street that led to it, we noticed a rope stretched along it for perhaps a hundred yards, and presently a piece of fireworks was set off, called by them the idas, or goers, and known by pyrotechnists among us as flying pigeons. The flaming ball whizzed along the rope backward and forward, scattering fire on the heads of the people underneath, and threw the whole procession into confusion and laughter. The saint was hurried into a place of security, and the people filed off on each side of the rope, out of reach of the sparks. The idas went off with universal applause, and showed that the custody of the saint had not been placed in unworthy hands. This over, the chant was resumed, and the procession moved on till it reached the house of the patron, at the door of which the padrecito chanted a salve, and then the saint was borne within. The house consisted of a single long room, having at one end a temporary altar, adorned with flowers, and at the other a table, on which were spread dulces, bread, cheese, and various compound mixtures both for eating and drinking.

The saint was set up on the altar, and in a few minutes the patron led the way, through a door opposite that by which we had entered, into an oblong enclosure about one hundred feet long and forty wide, having an arbour of palm leaves overhead. The floor was of hard earth, and seats were arranged around the sides. All the vecinos followed, and we, as strangers and attendants of the padrecito and his family, were conducted to the principal places, being a row of large wooden arm-chairs, two of which were occupied by the padrecito's mother and sister. Very soon all the seats were occupied by whites and Mestiza women, and the whole enclosure, with the exception of a small space for dancing, was filled up with Indian servants and children sitting on the ground.

Preparations were immediately made for dancing, and the ball was opened by the patron of the saint. This patron was not very saintly in his appearance, but really a most respectable man in his deportment and character, and in his youth had been the best bull-fighter the village had ever produced.