“All the circumstances,” observes Juarros, “lead to a belief that there must have been some intercourse between the inhabitants of the old and new world at very remote periods.”
The information given traditionally by the Indians living at Copan, is singularly in accordance with the traditions of the priests and caciques in Mexico and Yucatan with respect to the arrival of a stranger who commanded temples and pyramids to be built and then went away and never returned.
It is remarkable that, in the first interview between Montezuma and Cortes, a singular tradition was mentioned by that Emperor. Cortes in his second letter (Segunda carta-relacion) dated 30th October, 1520, relates that Montezuma spoke to him as follows:—“We know from our writings that we received from our ancestors, that I and all those who live in this land are not the natives of it. We are strangers and came into it from very distant regions. We also know that our nation was led here by a chief whose vassals all were. He afterwards went back to his native country. Afterwards he returned and found that those he had left had married the native women (mujeres naturales) and had many children, and had built villages where they lived, and when he wished them to proceed with him they did not want to go, or even receive him as their chief and therefore he went away.”
The author of the Popol Vuh, does not mention the tradition about Votan.
Las Casas in commenting upon the subject of the Cozumel cross, mentions that it was ten palms high. In the course of the extensive explorations carried out by M. Desiré Charnay, in 1880–82, a similar stone was discovered at Téotihuacan. It is considered to be the emblem of Tlaloc, the god of rain.
Professor Rau in his memoir upon the Palenque tablet, states that it is his belief that the Maya language, or a kindred dialect, was spoken by the builders of Palenque.
With regard to this subject it has to be observed that when the Toltec tribes, or the tribe that built the temples, settled at Palenque they had possibly forgotten their own original language, which may have been a Pawnee or Dakota dialect.