Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. II.

by John L. Stephens

"On Friday, the sixth of May, the commandant ordered one hundred men to arm themselves. They embarked in the boats, and landed. They were accompanied by a priest, and expected to be attacked by a great number of Indians. Being prepared for defence, they arranged themselves in good order, and came to the tower, where they found no one; and in all the environs they did not see a single man. The commandant mounted upon the tower with the standard bearer, the flag unfurled. He planted this standard upon one of the façades of the tower, took possession in the name of the king, in presence of witnesses, and drew up a declaration of said taking possession.

"The ascent to this tower was by eighteen steps; the base was very massive, one hundred and eighty feet in circumference. At the top rose a small tower of the height of two men placed one upon the other. Within were figures, bones, and idols that they adored. From these marks we supposed that they were idolaters. While the commandant was at the top of the tower with many of our people, an Indian, followed by three others who kept the doors, put in the interior a vase with very odoriferous perfumes, which seemed of storax. This Indian was old; he burned many perfumes before the idols which were in the tower, and sang in a loud voice a song, which was always in the same tone. We supposed that he was invoking his idols.... These Indians carried our commandant with ten or twelve Spaniards, and gave them to eat in a hall constructed of stones very close together, and covered with straw. Before the hall was a large well, from which everybody drank.... They then left us alone, and we entered the village, where all the houses were built of stone. Among others, we saw five very well made, and commanded by small towers. The base of these edifices is very large and massive; the building is very small at the top. They appeared to have been built a long time, but there are also modern ones.

"That village, or bourg, was paved with concave stones. The streets, elevated at the sides, descended, inclining toward the middle, which was paved entirely with large stones. The sides were occupied by the houses of the inhabitants. They are constructed of stone from the foundation to half the height of the walls, and covered with straw. To judge by the edifices and houses, these Indians appear to be very ingenious; and if we had not seen a number of recent constructions, we should have thought that these buildings were the works of the Spaniards. This island appears to me very handsome.... We penetrated, to the number of ten men, three or four miles in the interior. We saw there edifices and habitations separated one from another, and very well constructed."

On the tenth of February, 1519, the armament of Cortez rendezvoused at this island. Bernal Dias was again a companion, and was an actor in a scene which he describes as follows: "There was on the island of Cozumel a temple containing some hideous idols, to which all the Indians of the neighbouring districts used to go frequently in solemn procession. One morning the courts of this temple were filled with Indians, and curiosity having also drawn many of us thither, we found them burning odoriferous resins like our incense, and shortly after an old man in a large loose mantle ascended to the top of the temple, and harangued or preached to the multitude for a considerable time. Cortez, who was present, at length called to him Melchorejo, an Indian prisoner taken on a previous voyage to Yucatan, to question him concerning the evil doctrines which the old man was delivering. He then summoned all the caciques and chief persons to come before him, and as well as he could, by signs and interpretations, explained to them that the idols which they worshipped were not gods, but evil things, which would draw their souls down to hell, and that, if they wished to remain in brotherly connexion with us, they must pull them down, and place in their stead the crucifix of our Lord, by whose assistance they would obtain good harvests and the salvation of their souls, with many other good and holy reasons, which he expressed very well. The priests and chiefs replied that they worshipped these gods as their ancestors had done, because they were kind to them, and that, if we attempted to molest them, the gods would convince us of their power by destroying us in the sea. Cortez then ordered the idols to be prostrated, which we immediately did, rolling them down some steps. He next sent for lime, of which there was abundance in the place, and Indian masons, by whom, under our direction, a very handsome altar was constructed, whereon we placed an image of the Holy Virgin; and the carpenters having made a crucifix, which was erected in a small chapel close to the altar, mass was said by the reverend father Juan Dias, and listened to by the priests, chiefs, and the rest of the natives with great attention."

These are the accounts given by eyewitnesses of what they saw on the first visits of the Spaniards. The later historians are more explicit, and speak of Cozumel as a place containing many adoratorios and temples, as a principal sanctuary and place of pilgrimage, standing to Yucatan in the same relation as Rome to the Catholic world. Gomarra describes one temple as being "like a square tower, broad at the base, having steps on the sides, and at the top a chamber covered with straw, with four doors or windows, with their breastworks or corridors. In the hollow, which seems like a chapel, they seat or paint their gods. Such was that which stood near the seacoast."

By these accounts I had been induced to visit the island of Cozumel; and an incidental notice in the Modern Traveller, speaking of existing ruins as remains of Spanish buildings, led me to suspect that their character had been mistaken, and that they were really vestiges of the original population; but on the ground we asked ourselves where to look for them. Amid all the devastations that attended the progress of the Spaniards in America, none is more complete than that which has swept over the island of Cozomel. When I resolved to visit it I was not aware that it was uninhabited; and knowing it to be but thirty miles long, I supposed that, without much difficulty, a thorough exploration could be made; but even before landing we saw that it would be impossible to accomplish this, and idle to make the attempt. The whole island was overgrown with trees, and, except along the shore or within the clearing around the hut, it was impossible to move in any direction without cutting a path. We had only our two sailors, and if we should cut by the compass through the heart of the island, we might pass within a few feet of a building without perceiving it. Fortunately, however, on the borders of the clearing there were vestiges of ancient population, which, from the directions of Don Vicente Albino, we had no difficulty in finding. One of them, standing about two hundred feet distant from the sea, and even now visible above the tops of the trees to vessels sailing by, is represented in the engraving that follows. It stands on a terrace, and has steps on all four of its sides. The building measures sixteen feet square; it had four doors facing the cardinal points, and, as will be seen by the figure of a man sitting on the steps, it is very low. The exterior is of plain stone, but was formerly stuccoed and painted, traces of which are still visible. The doorways open into a narrow corridor only twenty inches wide, which encompasses a small room eight feet six inches long and five feet wide, having a doorway opening to the centre.

South-southeast from this, near an opposite angle of the clearing, and five or six hundred feet from the sea, stands another building raised upon a terrace, consisting of a single apartment, twenty feet front and six feet ten inches deep, having two doorways and a back wall seven feet thick. The height is ten feet, the arch is triangular, and on the walls are the remains of paintings.

These were the only buildings in the clearing, and though, doubtless, many more lie buried in the woods, we saw no other on the island; but to us these were pregnant with instruction. The building presented in the engraving, standing close to the sea, answers, in all its general features, the description of the "towers" seen by Grijalva and his companions as they sailed along the coast. The ascent is by steps, the base is very massive, the building is small at the top, it is about the height of two men placed one above the other, and at this day we may say, as the Spaniards did, that, to judge by their edifices, these Indians appear to be very ingenious. It is an interesting fact, moreover, that not only our patron and sailors called this building a "tower," but in a late article published in the proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society at London, entitled "Sketch of the Eastern Coast of Central America, compiled from Notes of Captain Richard Owen and the Officers of her Majesty's Ship Thunder and Schooner Lark," this building, with others of the same general character, is indicated by the name of a "tower." So far as the route of Grijalva can be traced with certainty, there is strong reason to believe that the Spaniards landed for the first time in the bay on the shore of which this building stands, and there is no violence in the supposition that the building presented is the very tower in which the Spaniards saw the performance of idolatrous rites; perhaps it is the same temple from which Bernal Dias and his companions rolled the idols down the steps. And more than this, establishing the great result for which we had visited this island, these buildings were identically the same with those on the mainland; if we had seen hundreds, we could not have been more firmly convinced that they were all erected and occupied by the same people; and if not a single corroborating circumstance existed besides, they afford in themselves abundant and conclusive proof that the ruined cities on the continent, the building of which has been ascribed to races lost, perished, and unknown, were inhabited by the very same Indians who occupied the country at the time of the conquest.

At the rear of the last building, buried in the woods, so that we should never have found it but for our patron, is another memorial, perhaps equal in interest to any now existing on the island of Cozumel. It is the ruins of a Spanish church, sixty or seventy feet front and two hundred deep. The front wall has almost wholly fallen, but the side walls are standing to the height of about twenty feet. The plastering remains, and along the base is a line of painted ornaments. The interior is encumbered with the ruins of the fallen roof, overgrown with bushes; a tree is growing out of the great altar, and the whole is a scene of irrecoverable destruction. The history of this church is as obscure as that of the ruined temples whose worship it supplanted. When it was built or why it was abandoned, and, indeed, its very existence, are utterly unknown to the inhabitants of New Spain. There is no record or tradition in regard to it, and, doubtless, any attempt at this day to investigate its history would be fruitless. In the obscurity that now envelops it we read a lesson upon the vanity of human expectations, showing the ignorance of the conquerors in regard to the value of the newly-discovered countries in America. Benito Perez, a priest who accompanied the expedition of Grijalva, solicited from the king the bishopric of this island. At the same time, a more distinguished ecclesiastic was asking for that of the island of Cuba. The king advanced the latter to the higher honour of the bishopric of Cozumel, and put off Benito Perez with what was considered the comparatively insignificant see of Culhua. Cozumel is now a desert, and Culhua, or Mexico, is the richest bishopric in New Spain.