The North Americans of Antiquity / Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization considered

by John T. Short

TRADITIONAL HISTORY OF THE ORIGIN OF THE MAYA NATIONS.

Ancient Civilization of Tabasco and Chiapas—The Tradition of Votan—The First Emigrants to America—City of Nachan—The Votanic Document—Ordoñez—Brasseur and Cabrera on the Tzendal Document—The Empire of the Chanes—The Oldest Civilization—The Earliest Home of the Mayas—The Quichés—Their Origin Tradition—The Quiché Cosmogony—The Creation of Man—The Quiché Migration—Tulan—Mt. Hacavitz—Human Sacrifices instituted—Four Tulans—Association of the Mayas and Nahuas—Heroic Period of the Quichés—Xibalba and its Downfall—Exploits of the Quiché Chieftains—War of the Sects—Xibalba and Palenque the same—Mayas of Yucatan and their Traditions—Culture-Heroes—Zamna and Cukulcan—Christ Myth.

THE most ancient civilization on this continent, judging from the combined testimony of tradition, records, and architectural remains, was that which grew up under the favorable climate and geographical surroundings which the Central American Region southward of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec afforded. The great Maya family with its numerous branches, each in time developing its own dialect if not its own peculiar language, at an early date fixed itself in the fertile valley of the River Usumasinta, and produced a civilization which was old and ripe when the Toltecs came in contact with it. Here in this picturesque valley region in Tabasco and Chiapas we may look for the cradle of American civilization. Under the shadow of the magnificent and mysterious ruins of Palenque a people grew to power who spread into Guatemala and Honduras, northward toward Anahuac and southward into Yucatan, and for a period of probably twenty-five centuries exercised a sway which, at one time, excited the envy and fear of its neighbors. We are fully aware of the uncertainty which attaches itself to tradition in general, and of the caution with which it should be accepted in treating of the foundations of history; but still, with reference to the origin and growth of old world nations, nothing better offers itself in many instances than suspicious legends. The histories of the Egyptians, the Trojans, the Greeks, and of even ancient Rome rests on no surer footing. It is certain that while the legendary history of any nation may be confused, exaggerated, and besides full of breaks, still there are some main and fundamental facts out of which it has grown, and this we think is especially true of the new world traditions. Clavigero says: “The Chiapanese have been the first peoplers of the new world, if we give credit to their traditions. They say that Votan, the grandson of that respectable old man who built the great ark to save himself and family from the deluge, and one of those who undertook the building of that lofty edifice which was to reach up to heaven, went by express command of the Lord to people that land. They say also that the first people came from the quarter of the north, and that when they arrived at Soconusco, they separated, some going to inhabit the country of Nicaragua and others remaining in Chiapas.”[308] The tradition of Votan, the founder of the Maya culture, though somewhat warped, probably by having passed through priestly hands, is nevertheless one of the most valuable pieces of information which we have concerning the ancient Americans. Without it our knowledge of the origin of the Mayas would be a hopeless blank, and the ruins of Palenque would be more a mystery than ever. According to this tradition, Votan came from the East, from Valum Chivim, by the way of Valum Votan, from across the sea, by divine command, to apportion the land of the new continent to seven families which he brought with him. It appears that he had been preceded in America by two others named Igh and Imox, if the researches of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg can be relied upon. In the Tzendal calendar, Votan’s name appears as that of the third day, while Igh and Imox are the first and second respectively. If, as is supposed, the names represent the true succession of the Maya chiefs, there is some ground for the Abbé’s view.[309] The doubtful portions of the tradition which may be interpolations are the ambiguous assertions that he saw the Tower of Babel, and was present at the building of Solomon’s temple. Probably the remains only of the former structure may be referred to.

With these contradictions we have nothing to do, as they do not in any way affect the subsequent history of the Votanites, or interfere with the probability of their old world origin. To attempt to designate the point from which Votan started or the means by which he reached the new world, would be the height of folly. Votan is said to have made four journeys to the land of his nativity. His achievements in the new world were, however, as great as those of any of the heroes of antiquity. His great city was named “Nachan,” (city of the serpents), from his own race, which was named Chan, a serpent. This Nachan is unquestionably identified with Palenque. The date of his journey is placed at 1000 years B. C.[310] The kingdom of the serpents flourished so rapidly that Votan founded three tributary monarchies whose capitals were Tulan, Mayapan, and Chiquimula.[311] The former is supposed to have been situated about two leagues east of the town of Ococingo; Mayapan is well-known to have been the capital of Yucatan, and Chiquimula is thought to have been Copan in Honduras.[312] One of the great works of this hero was the excavation of a tunnel or ‘snake hole’ from Zuqui to Tzequil. He also deposited a great treasure at Huehuetan, in Soconusco, which he left under the vigilant care of a guard, directed by one of the most honorable women of the land. Finally, he wrote a book in which he recorded his deeds and offered proof of his being a Chane (or serpent). This ancient document, which is claimed to have been written by one of Votan’s descendants, of the eighth or ninth generation and not by himself,[313] was in the Tzendal language, a dialect or branch of the Maya, spoken in Chiapas and around Palenque. Its history is, however, quite checkered, and the information which it contained comes very indirectly. For generations the Votanic document was scrupulously guarded by the people of Tacoaloya, in Soconusco, but was finally discovered by Francisco Nuñez de la Vega, Bishop of Chiapas. In the preamble of his Constituciones, § xxx,[314] he claims to have read this document, but it is probable that only a copy, still in the Tzendal language but written in Latin characters, had come into his possession.[315] He fails to give any definite information from the document except the most general statements with reference to Votan’s place in the calendar, and his having seen the Tower of Babel, at which each people was given a new language. He states that he could have made more revelations of the history of Votan from this document but for bringing up the old idolatry of the people and perpetuating it. With the zeal of a true Vandal, the bishop committed the dangerous documents, together with the treasure which he claims Votan to have buried in the dark-house, to the flames in 1691. There seems to have been other copies, however, of this remarkable manuscript, for about the close of the eighteenth century, Dr. Paul Felix Cabrera was shown a document in the possession of Don Ramon de Ordoñez y Aguiar, a resident of Ciudad Real in Chiapas, which purported to be the Votanic memoir.[316] Ordoñez, at the time, was engaged upon the composition of his work on the “History of the Heaven and Earth.”[317] It appears that Cabrera was admitted to the confidence of Ordoñez, and availed himself of a few facts communicated to him by the latter, which he supplemented by drawing from his imagination for the rest of his account.[318] Brasseur de Bourbourg accuses Cabrera of seriously misrepresenting Ordoñez and of warping his account.[319] The following, which is Cabrera’s account may be of interest to the reader: “He (Votan) states that he conducted seven families from Valum Votan to this continent and assigned lands to them; that he is the third of the Votans; that having determined to travel until he arrived at the root of Heaven, in order to discover his relations, the Culebras, and make himself known to them, he made four voyages to Chivim (which he expressed by repeating four times from Valum Votan to Valum Chivim, from Valum Chivim to Valum Votan); that he arrived in Spain, and that he went to Rome; that he saw the great house of God building; that he went by the road which his brethren, the Culebras, had bored; that he marked it, and that he passed by the houses of the thirteen Culebras. He relates that in returning from one of his voyages he found seven other families of the Tzequil nation who had joined the first inhabitants, and recognized in them the same origin as his own, that is, of the Culebras. He speaks of the place where they built the first town, which, from its founders, received the name of Tzequil; he affirms the having taught them refinement of manners in the use of the table, table-cloth, dishes, basins, cups, and napkins; they taught him the knowledge of God and of his worship; his first ideas of a king and of obedience to Him; that he was chosen captain of all those united families.” It is not necessary for us to point out the hand of the interpolator in this account; it is sufficiently apparent. However, its obnoxious prominence need not destroy our faith in the general facts of the account. The interpretation of the document we submit to the reader with the simple reminder that the symbol of life and power among the Central Americans and Mexicans has ever been a serpent, a fact which may have derived its significance from the meaning of the name of the Votanites together with the power attained by Palenque.[320] Votan’s followers were called Tzequites by their predecessors, probably by the descendants of Igh and Imox, the signification of which term is ‘men with petticoats.’ The Tzendal traditions refer always to the city of Nachan as the capital of the kingdom of the Chanes or Serpents, and the most significant feature of the traditional names of this people is the fact that the name Culhua, applied by the Nahua nations and especially by the Toltecs to a powerful people who had preceeded them at the south, is the exact equivalent of Chanes; the same is true of Culhuacan.[321] The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg obtained a copy of the fragmentary MS. of Ordoñez, which he informs us was written in two separate parts in quarto, at different times. The first or mythological part exists in a copy owned by the Abbé.[322] The second or historical part, if ever written, has never reached the light, and from the description of its contents found in the first part, we should think that the author might have made a rather imaginative historian.[323] While some of the details of the Votanic tradition are not worthy of a moment’s consideration, it is quite certain that in the general facts we have a key to the origin of what all Americanists agree in pronouncing the oldest civilization on this continent, one which was gray and already declining when the Toltecs entered Mexico. There is not the slightest evidence that it originated in any other place than in Chiapas, where it is found, and extended itself into Guatemala, Yucatan, and possibly branched northward in a colony as remote as Culhuacan. Sr. Orozco y Berra has found fifteen languages or dialects to be related to the Maya language, a fact which indicates the age and extent of that remarkable civilization.[324] Sr. Orozco is convinced from linguistic and other researches, that the inhabitants of Cuba and others of the West India Islands were Mayas, and points out the intermediate location of Cuba between Florida and Yucatan. He thinks the earliest home of the Mayas on this continent was on the Atlantic coast of the United States, from whence they emigrated to Cuba and thence to Yucatan.[325] Though we are not fully satisfied that the Mayas ever occupied Florida, it is quite likely that the islands of the Gulf were inhabited by them at an early day. The culture hero Votan is a mystery, and to arrive at his true character or office is simply an impossibility. For those disposed to speculate, there is abundant opportunity.[326] The most interesting traditionary history which has been discovered is that of the Quichés of Guatemala. By the name Quiché, in this immediate connection, we do not mean to speak of that people after they became amalgamated with the Nahua nations from Central Mexico, but as a branch of the great Maya monarchy, in all probability located at first at Tulha or Tula, which, it is believed, was situated near Ococingo. At first, we think, the Quichés developed their own institutions, dialects, etc., as one of the allied powers associated with the capital city Nachan, but gradually assumed an individuality which became distinctive, until a rivalry between the capital and its allied neighbor sprang up, which ultimately ended in the overthrow of the former. Sr. Pimentel, on the authority of an ancient author, states that the name Quiché was applied to the first empire of Palenque and signified many trees. It was employed by the “innumerable families of different nations which composed it, to symbolize its various branches.”[327] The tradition of their origin states that they came from the far East, across immense tracts of land and water; that in their former home they had multiplied considerably and lived without civilization, and with but few wants; they paid no tribute, spoke a common language, did not bow down to wood and stone, but lifting their eyes toward heaven, observed the will of their Creator, they attended with respect to the rising of the sun, and saluted with their invocations the Morning Star; with loving and obedient hearts they addressed their prayers to Heaven for the gift of offspring. “Hail, Creator and Maker! regard us, attend us. Heart of Heaven, Heart of the Earth, do not forsake us, do not leave us. God of Heaven and Earth, Heart of Heaven, Heart of Earth, consider our posterity always. Accord us repose, a glorious repose, peace and prosperity, justice, life and our being. Grant to us, O Hurakan, enlightened and fruitful, Thou who comprehendest all things great and small.”[328] In the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Quichés, we are enabled to arrive more closely at the cosmogony and worship of that remarkable people.[329] The reader may not be prepared for the irreconcilable contradictions and for the obscure and figurative language in which this work abounds; but with the remembrance that all nations of antiquity delighted in the use of figures, parabolic disguises and personifications under which the truth was couched, we may be able to profit by even the seeming foolishness and confusion of the Quiché record. The strange, wild poetry of the Quichés, can only be fully enjoyed by pursuing the unabridged accounts for which we regret we have not space.[330] In the order of the Quiché creation, the heavens were first formed and their boundaries fixed by the Creator and Former, by whom all move and breathe, by whom all nations enjoy their wisdom and civilization. At first there was no man or animal or bird or fish or green herb—nothing but the firmament existed, the face of the earth was not yet to be seen, only the peaceful sea and the whole expanse of heaven. Silence pervaded all; not even the sea murmured; there was nothing but immobility and silence in the darkness—in the night.[331] The Creator, the Former, the Dominator—the feathered serpent—those that engender, those that give being, moved upon the water as a glowing light. Their name is Gucumatz, heart of heaven—God. “Earth,” they said, and in an instant it was formed and rose like a vapor cloud; immediately the plains and mountains arose and the cypress and pine appeared. Then Gucumatz was filled with joy, and cried out, “Blessed be thy coming, O Heart of Heaven, Hurakan, thunderbolt!”[332] Animals were next formed, but because they could not praise their Maker they were doomed to become objects of prey. Four creations of men then followed. The first man was made of clay, but he had no intelligence and he was consumed in the water. Upon a second trial a man and a woman were made of a sort of pith, but they too were unsatisfactory experiments; though they had life and peopled the earth, they were very inferior, living like beasts and forgetting the Heart of Heaven. The Creator then destroyed them with a flood of resin, allowing only a few to escape, that now exist as little apes in the woods. The persons of the Godhead, enveloped in the darkness which enshrouded a desolated world, counseled concerning the creation of a more perfect order, and as a result they formed four perfect men named: Balam-Quitzé, Balam-Agab, Mahucutah, and Iqi-Balam. These men were miraculously formed of white and yellow maize, and the Creator was content with his labors. “Verily, at last, were there found men worthy of their origin and their destiny; verily, at last, did the gods look upon beings who could see with their eyes and handle with their hands and understand with their hearts, grand of countenance and broad of limb, the four sires of our race stood up under the white rays of the morning star—sole light as yet of the primeval world—stood up and looked. Their great clear eyes swept rapidly over all; they saw the woods and rocks, the lakes and the sea, the mountains and the valleys, and the heavens that were above all; and they comprehended all and admired exceedingly. Then they returned thanks to those who had made the world and all therein was: we offer up our thanks, twice—yea, verily, thrice; we have received life, we speak, we walk, we taste, we hear and understand, we know both that which is near and that which is far off, we see all things, great and small, in all the heaven and earth. Thanks, then, Maker and Former, Father and Mother of our life, we have been created—we are.”[333] These four creatures were considered too perfect by the gods, and in order that their omniscience might be destroyed, they breathed a cloud of mist over their vision. To each of these men wives were made while they slept. A fourth creation seems to have taken place by which the ancestors of other races were formed.

The account which the Popol Vuh furnishes of the migrations of the ancient Quichés is somewhat confused, and it is scarcely possible to hope that the locations named should ever be fully identified. Their worship was at first purely spiritual. “Only they gazed up into heaven, not knowing what they had come so far to do.” In their original home, wherever that might have been, they grew weary of this kind of service—of watching for “the rising of the sun”—by which it seems they meant the coming of temporal power. The four men then forsook their abode and journeyed to Tulan-Zuiva, the seven caves or seven ravines. Here they found gods; to each of the four men a different deity was assigned. To Balam-Quitzé the god Tohil was given; to Balam-Agab the god Avilix; and to Mahucutah, the god Hacavitz; and though the fourth man Iqi-Balam also received a god, no special account is taken of him, since the latter of the four men left no progeny. The journey to Tulan is said to have been a very long one. Doubtless in this account we have an allusion to one of those modifications in religious notions which seems to have often attended a change of residence in early times. The abstract worship of the Creator is supplanted by the more material and ceremonial worship of intermediate deities (demi-gods). Tulan is described as a much colder climate than the eastern and tropical land which they had forsaken, and the god Tohil came to their relief by the creation of fire. But incessant rains, accompanied with hail, extinguished all their fires, which were again kindled repeatedly by the fire-god. Tulan was an unfavorable locality for permanent abode—rains, extreme cold, dampness, famine prevailed, and the peculiar misfortune of the confusion of tongues there befell them. No longer were the brother propagators of the race able to communicate with each other. “At Tulan there was as yet no sun,” is the significant but perplexing language of the narrative. At last Tulan, the mysterious land of the “seven-caves,” was forsaken, and under the leadership of Tohil the people began a migration which was attended with indescribable hardships and famine itself. Their way led through dense forests, over high mountains, a long sea passage, and by a rough and pebbly shore. We are, however, told that the sea was parted for their passage. Their tribulations were at an end when at last they arrived at a beautiful mountain, which they named after their god Hacavitz. Here they were informed that the sun would appear, and, as a consequence, the four progenitors of the race and all the people rejoiced. Here was everything beauteous and gladdening. The morning star shed forth a resplendent brightness, and the sun itself at last appeared, though then it had not the warmth which it possessed at a later day. Before the light of the sun, however, the gods Tohil, Avilix and Hacavitz, together with the tiger and lion and reptiles, were changed into stone. To interpret this paragraph, which is greatly condensed, is a difficult undertaking, still there are certain facts which seem to serve as the basis of intelligent speculation. The language is extremely figurative throughout the entire narrative, and especially so here. Their worship of the morning star at an early period seems to connect them with the Mediterranean peoples of the old world. The allusions to the sun not yet having come may be retrospective, indicating that the worship of the sun had not been adopted at that early day, or it may indicate that the period of national strength had not dawned. The fact that the morning star shone more brilliantly on Mt. Hacavitz than at Tulan (the seven caves), may mean either that the worship of the star was more splendidly celebrated, or it may have reference to an astronomical fact, that the star itself was more luminous, and furnish evidence in harmony with the statements of the narrative that Mt. Hacavitz was a more southern location than the tempestuous Tulan. The petrifaction of the three tribal gods may have been the result of an age of peace and prosperity which offered an opportunity for developing their cultus; or, upon the other hand, if the coming of the sun refers to the advent of a new religion, that which is known to have prevailed among the Nahuas, the old gods may have been sculptured in stone, that their national character and deeds might not be forgotten before the increasing importance of the new faith. There they instituted sacrifices of beasts to the three stone gods Tohil, Avilix and Hacavitz; they even drew blood from their own bodies and offered it to them. Finally, not content with these, the first four men, led by Balam-Quitzé, instituted human sacrifices. Captives were taken from neighboring tribes, kidnapping was practised extensively, until the hostility of their neighbors broke forth into open war. The contest, however, resulted favorably to the Quichés, and the surrounding tribes became subject to the victorious power. In Hacavitz they composed a national song called the Kamucu (“we see”)—a memorial of their misfortunes in Tulan—a lament for the loss of so many of their people in that unfortunate locality. This loss is described as occasioned by a portion of their race being left behind, rather than as the result of the misfortunes which attended them there. At last, at the noon-day of their national glory, it came to pass that the ancestors of their race, Balam-Quitzé, Balam-Agab, Mahucutah and Iqi-Balam, died—the men who came from the east, from across the sea, died—and their remains were enveloped in a great bundle and preserved as memorials of the ancestors of the race.[334] Then the Quichés sang the sad Kamucu, and mourned the loss of their leaders and that portion of their race which they left behind them in Tulan.

The definite location of Tulan is almost out of the question; it may only be conjectured. We have already stated, on the authority of Ordiñez, that there was a Tulan near Ococingo.[335] The Cakchiquel MS., known only through the writings of Brasseur de Bourbourg, but evidently a document containing the same facts as those stated in the Popol Vuh, gives the following information concerning Tulan: “Four persons came from Tulan, from the direction of the rising sun—that is one Tulan. There is another Tulan in Xibalbay, and another where the sun sets, and it is there that we came; and in the direction of the setting sun there is another, where is the god; so that there are four Tulans; and it is where the sun sets that we came to Tulan, from the other side of the sea where this Tulan is; and it is there that we were conceived and begotten by our mothers and our fathers.”[336] From this it appears that two of these Tulans were not upon the continent at all; one in the east across the sea, the birthplace of the race; another an imaginary locality somewhere toward the region of the setting sun, where the deity dwells; another Tulan is pretty certainly located in Chiapas near the capital of Xibalba; with this place, however, they do not state that they had any relationship, but another Tulan where the sun sets is designated as the locality to which they came from across the sea. Mr. Bancroft confounds the Tulan of their misfortunes with that which was located near Xibalba; but this view is plainly wrong, since the climatic surroundings of the Chiapan Tulan are quite the opposite of those described as prevailing at that Tulan where fire was so necessary. In the Tulan to which they journeyed they suffered from cold, and their god Tohil, whom they received there, gave them fire. Señor Orozco y Berra quite positively identifies this Tulan with the Toltec capital Tollan, north of Anahuac, and certainly with reason.[337] There their tongues were changed, there the Nahua language was encountered. No doubt that in the first period of the Toltec power in Tollan, the Maya-Quichés who had migrated northward from some locality in the Usumacinta region and intermingled with the Nahuas, sharing in their worship and appropriating certain elements of language, migrated southward to the elevated regions of Vera-Paz and founded a Quiché power in Guatemala.

Upon the downfall of the Toltec monarchy in the eleventh century, no doubt many noble Toltec families forsook the unfortunate and fallen capital and founded in Guatemala the Quiché-Cakchiquel monarchy, composed of Maya and Toltec elements, which spread itself southward in colonies and branches into various parts of Central America, and flourished with such power and fame at the time of the Conquest. It is not the province of this work to take up the annals of this or any other people, but only to treat of their most primitive period. The gap in Quiché history between that which we have been treating and the period of the Annals is considerable, and no document has yet been discovered which will fill it with the wanting record. Mr. Bancroft has placed the annals within the reach of the English reader in his fifth volume. Mt. Hacavitz was the point at which the scattered tribes collected and formed the nucleus of the subsequently powerful monarchy in Guatemala of which Utatlan was the capital. The two places may have been identical. Several facts point to the early association of the ancestors of the Quichés with the Nahuas who subsequently figure so conspicuously as Toltecs and Aztecs. The tribes which migrated northward were called Yaqui (according to the Popol Vuh), and the name ethnographically has the same meaning as Nahuatl.[338] The Quichés applied the name to the inhabitants of Mexico. The god Tohil was called by the Yaqui tribes Yolcuat Quitzalcuat while the Quichés were in Tulan. Quetzalcoatl, of whom we shall speak more fully hereafter, was the greatest of the Nahua divinities.[339] The Aztecs and Toltecs as well as the Quichés came from the “Seven Caves,” that Tulan which seems to have been the early home of the two great families speaking radically different languages—the Maya and the Nahua. The statement so often met with that Tulan was across the sea is perplexing. Can we look for it upon some of the islands of the Gulf or Caribbean Sea? or are we to look upon the reference to the sea passage as an earlier event in the history of both peoples, which because of the lack of records has been confounded with some of the adventures of the march toward the northern Tulan, which was undertaken at least by the Mayas and possibly by the Nahuas from their common home in the Usumacinta valley? We are inclined, in the light of a large margin of testimony, to accept the latter view, and consider the Tulan of the Chiapan region to have been the early home of both peoples—the primitive one of the Mayas and the adopted one of the Nahuas—after leaving Hue Hue Tlappalan, the accidental centre to which in their wanderings they converged, and in which they met; here in an age of simpler manners they lived in the enjoyment of peace, preserving each their own institutions and language, though considerably influencing each other’s customs. The Tulan of this Central American region may have been confounded in name and characteristics with the original home of each race “across the sea.”

The Quiché record furnishes us with the account of an epoch in the early Quiché history which we are justified in characterizing as their heroic period. It occupies the same place in their history as the Trojan war in the history of Greece. The tradition of the fall of Xibalba, the terror of its neighbors, the power which by its enemies was called infernal, is a heroic composition founded on a combination of events as mysterious and wonderful as those contained in the Iliad itself. To locate the events in their proper place, to assign them their true period, is attended with as many difficulties as attend the Homeric history. The authorities differ as to the proper chronologic order of the record. The Popol Vuh, both in the Ximinez and Brasseur editions, give the narrative to which we have reference immediately after the destruction of the men made of pith or wood—the result of the first creation. Mr. Bancroft is somewhat indifferent about the order and follows the narrative. Brasseur de Bourbourg, however, considers that chronologically the narrative follows the third creation, that of the four founders of the Quiché race.[340] If we look upon the so-called creations as simply tribal origins and not as mythical accounts of the origin of man, there is room for the heroic period before the days of the four ancestors of the Quichés; but if, on the contrary, the two creations preceding that of Balam-Quitzé and his associates are mythical, are the legendary accounts of a fancied order in creation and not the origin of tribes, the view taken by the Abbé is the only one which can be accepted. The question cannot at present be definitely settled. If we resort to the latter view, that of the Abbé, it is necessary for us to suppose that the long reign of Balam-Quitzé, Balam-Agab, Mahucutah and Iqi-Balam is that of a line, a dynasty, and not of individuals—which is altogether probable. Brasseur supposes the time of which the tradition speaks to have been about fifteen centuries before the Spanish conquest, and thinks Copan was the capital of a province called Payaqui (“in the Yaqui,” which we have seen was the name of the Nahuas), and that this capital, otherwise known as Chiquimula, owed its origin to a warrior known as Balam, who introduced human sacrifices. His authority is the Isagoge Historico MS. cited by Pelaez, to whose work we have already referred.[341] To attempt to determine upon the time definitely would be a hopeless undertaking. The mysterious tradition with its confused statements and allegorical allusions we will attempt to condense into intelligible shape. This has already been accomplished by Mr. Bancroft, and his version greatly facilitates our efforts in the same direction.

The second division of the Popol Vuh contains the account of two attempts at the overthrow of the great Xibalban monarchy, founded by Votan. The first of these proved unsuccessful and fatal to the enemies of the great power; the second, undertaken by the descendants of the defeated chieftains, resulted in the downfall of the empire of the Serpents or Votanites, and in the revenge of the death of the unsuccessful warriors. The account is provokingly figurative; different allies of each of the powers being spoken of as owls, wild beasts, rabbits, deer, rats, lice, ants, etc., a custom which has always prevailed among savage and semi-civilized nations. Savages of the forests are usually referred to as wild beasts in early tradition. Xibalba is so hated by its enemies that its usual title is the “infernal regions.”[342] Torquemada refers to it as hell, and its king as the king of the “shades.”[343] The hatred was intense, and the worst invectives were mild in the estimation of the enemies of the no doubt oppressive power. We have already given the account of creation in which Gucumatz (the Plumed Serpent) figured conspicuously. He, however, is seen to have acted at the word of Hurakan (“Heart of Heaven”). The closing paragraphs of the first division of the Popol Vuh give some of the exploits of the young heroes Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who figure as the defendants of the worship of the Heart of Heaven. A certain Vucub-Cakix, who assumed to be the sun and god of the people, and who in his pride offended the Heart of Heaven, fell at their avenging hands. His sons Zipacna and Cabrakan, whose pride was as offensive to Hurakan as had been their father’s, shared the same fate; though the brothers lost four hundred of their allies in the undertaking, by Zipanca toppling over a house upon them while they were rejoicing at his supposed death in a pit in which they had buried him.

The second division of the account reverts to events which preceded those in the closing paragraphs of the first division by one or more generations. The exploits of the ancestors of the brothers are narrated. Xpiyacoc and Xmucane, grandparents of the sun and moon, had two sons, Hunhunahpu and Vukub Hunahpu. The former of these sons married, and to him were born also two sons, Hunbatz and Hunchouen, who grew up to be wise and skillful and great artists. With all these persons Hurakan, the Heart of Heaven, communicated through his messenger Voc. At last Hunhunahpu and Vukub Hunahpu undertook a journey toward Xibalba, playing ball as they went, by which we understand that they set out upon a march of conquest. Upon hearing of their approach, Hun Came and Vukub Came, kings of Xibalba, sent them a challenge to a game of ball by four messengers who were called owls. From the ball-ground of Nimxab Carchah (now the name of an Indian town in Vera Paz), they followed the messengers down the steep road to Xibalba, crossing rivers and ravines and a bloody stream. After arriving at the royal palace, and during the process of arranging for the contest in which their strength should be tried, they were so unfortunate as first to be made the subjects of ridicule for the whole court, then put to torture, and afterwards were cruelly and it seems treacherously murdered. The head of Hunhunahpu was hung upon a tree, which at once became overgrown with gourds so as to hide the head of the unfortunate chief. Notwithstanding the royal decree that no one should approach the tree, Xquiq, a virgin princess, a Xibalban, determined to taste its forbidden fruit, and in an hour of solitude was in the act of reaching forth to pluck it, when Hunhunahpu spat into her hand and she immaculately conceived. Her condition was discovered by her father, who delivered her to the owls, the royal messengers, to be put to death. By bribing her executioners she escaped and went to the dwelling of the old grandmother Xmucane, who upon the death of Hunhunahpu’s wife had taken charge of his sons, the youthful Hunbatz and Hunchouen. Xquiq, by miraculous performances, satisfied Xmucane that Hunhunahpu was the father of her unborn children, and was received into her home. The Xibalban virgin brought forth twin sons in the house of the enemies of her country. These she named Hunahpu and Xbalanque. From the very first their lot with their great-grandmother was a hard one. Their half-brothers Hunbatz and Hunchouen treated them harshly, but in time the twins revenged themselves by changing the former into monkeys, and succeeding to their artistic skill and musical fame.