"With their spirits now peaceful and happy, they entertained us on that afternoon and night, with such a confusion of shouts and outcries in their songs, that, had we not considered that those extravagant signs of joy were the wild ways of those rural hills and the fashion with them, our hearts would have suffered some anxiety and sadness, the more so when we saw before us, those carved, striped and painted faces, made in the very likeness of the devil."
The Padres Please Other Indians by Means of Little Gifts. "I gave them, as they came up to the novel sight, some necklaces and other trinkets and trifles for their wives and daughters, and for the men some knives, for the desire to possess which all came again, thus obliging me to give them presents a second time, all which I did with pleasure, one reason being the abundance of what our benefactors in their kind zeal had given me, and the other in order to draw them to our Catholic faith, which comes to them more through the eye than through the hearing, since they are covetous in the extreme. They approached me to get what I had remaining in some hampers, in which I carried for the petty King an entire suit of clothes, in the fashion of the Indians of this Province, which the Governor gave me, and other things which I was carrying for the chiefs of Peten Ytza, in order the better to gain their good will, besides other things necessary for our ministry and support. And they made a request of me to let them see these things, carried away by their gross inquisitiveness as much as by their excessive covetousness. And scarcely did I yield and show them what I had in the said hampers, when, with an insatiable desire they began to covet all, the act of touching and the desire to take everything becoming uppermost with them, rather than the modest civility of asking for it...."
The Padres Renew their March. "With great demonstrations of love they loaded themselves with all our goods and supplies (except the sacred robes, since we did not bring them till we knew that the outcome was safe) without giving an opportunity to any of the singers whom we had brought with us to carry anything. With this accompanying we set out on the road which leads in the direction of the East, for Peten Ytza, which is about five leagues off, all the Indians who lived round Cha Kan Ytza accompanying us with their wives and children, giving shouts of joy in order to excite the rest to accompany us."
Nich. "We went on in this manner to the landing place of the lake where one enters the said Peten Ytza, on the shore of which is found a little town called Nich, which consists of about ten houses. In one of them I saw an Indian, the oldest one I had seen up to that time in the nation of the Cehaches, nor up to the present time in that of the Ytzaes, since they have the custom of beheading them when they pass fifty years, so that they shall not learn to be wizards and to kill; except the priests of their idols, for whom they have great respect. And this man must have been one without doubt.
"In the region of the said road, there are many hills and great density of woods on the hills, many cedar and mahogany trees, which in this tongue are called punabes, besides many others which I do not mention so as to avoid annoyance. There are many overflowed places called Akalchees; there are also three rivers, one of moderate size, which from its falling from a high rock, makes noise enough; the other two, although they too fall from a rather high place, are not so full of water, though they wet us all because their streams are wide and because there is no bridge to cross them. We came then to the said town, Nich, whose cacique is called Ahtul, and this little town is the chief town of Cha Kan Ytza, which consists of other very small towns, but of many settlements, and each of these possesses a cacique or captain, although all the Cha Kan Ytzaes, with their wives and children, as far as I saw, will be about six hundred souls, more or less."
Indians Arrive from Tayasal. "We ate very heartily in the said town, for the sake of giving them pleasure, so that they showed that they were pleased and they entertained us with their instruments from twelve o'clock of the day that we arrived till two o'clock in the afternoon, when, in answer to the previous messenger which I sent to the petty King of my coming to his territory, there came up some eighty canoes, full of Indians, painted and dressed for war, with very large quivers of arrows, though all were left in the canoes,--all the canoes escorting and accompanying the petty King, who with about five hundred Indians came forward to receive us. They hurried us on board with great speed and with very rude actions, without taking notice of the music of the clarions with which we awaited him, nor of the peace, which as its messengers I brought him in the name of the King, our Lord. Nor on our part, could we fulfill our embassy, since, without giving us an opportunity to do so, they began suddenly to take us across the lake (which in that part probably is three leagues in distance across).[9.2] In a small bay on its shore, a nephew of the King, whom I had rewarded with some Spanish trinkets, coveting the image of a Santo Christo, which I wore on my neck, and which I had refused to give him on two occasions when he had asked me for it, on my giving a cutlass with its blade to the petty King, his uncle, seized the hand of his uncle with excessive insolence, and snatching the blade from its sheath, turned it to my breast, and passing the blade across my throat, cut the string with one blow and took the image of Christ from me. I reproached him for his improper act and what he said to me was, 'Well, if you have not wished to give it to me, what am I to do?', by which it is plainly seen that if one does not give them what they see and ask for, the life of him who should refuse it is at risk from moment to moment. On seeing this the King, his uncle, laughed at it, instead of reproving him, and he began with more vanity and pride than a Lucifer, to say to me many things very foreign to that first meeting. By this insulting and hasty reception, they did not give us an opportunity to look after our baggage, although the Chakan Ytzaes had the opportunity to put our things under such good guard that up to now we had not seen it, we being left from that time without more comfort than the clothes on our backs, nor more sustenance than that which their savage generosity might choose to give us."
Bravery of Avendaño. "In the long time that we were on the lake, a temptation was offered to the King, such as belonged to the devil who inspired it and natural to his inhuman and cruel heart, so as to inspire me with fear, so that my heart might suffer some sadness or disturbance; but his purpose found itself frustrated, first, because when I started from Merida for this nation, I went prepared to die; and second, knowing that they were such savages in their ways, my courage stood prepared to suffer whatever insults they might say to me, as for instance to bear for God, who gives us courage, any unreasonable acts, whatsoever. Suddenly the said King placed his hand over my heart to see if it was at all agitated, and at the same time he asked me if I was so. I who was before very glad to see that my wishes and the work of my journey were being obtained, replied to him, 'Why should my heart be disturbed? Rather it is very contented, seeing that I am the fortunate man, who is fulfilling your own prophecies, by which you are to become Christians; and this benefit will come to you by means of some bearded men from the East; who by signs of their prophets,[9.3] were we ourselves, because we came many leagues from the direction of the east, ploughing the seas, with no other purpose than, borne by our love of their souls, to bring them, (at the cost of much work) to that favor which the true God shows them.' I at this time, with some freedom on my part, also placed my hand on his breast and heart, and asking him also if his was disturbed, he said, 'No.' To which I replied, 'If you are not disturbed, at seeing me, who am the minister of the true God, different in everything from you, in dress, customs and color, so that I inspire fear in the devil, and if your heart is not troubled, why should you expect me to be afraid of you, mere men like myself, whom I come to seek purposely, with great pleasure, merely for the love which I have for their souls, and having found them, in order to announce to them the law of the true God, as you shall hear when we come to Peten.' At this, changing the conversation, the devil tried to use him as his instrument for putting me in another greater temptation.
"It is a custom among them, that, on the day before killing any one or sacrificing him, especially if he is a stranger to their town, to give them something to eat, either the hot drink of barley and beans, which they use, or another of cacao, which is what they offer them. I was not ignorant of all these rites, through what history relates that they had done on the two occasions on which priests of my holy religion had gone there; although in one case did they kill the Padre Fray Diego Delgado, through the fault of some Spaniards who followed him. When in the same way the said King asked me if I was hungry, I, though I had just eaten, realizing the situation, said 'Yes,' so that his wickedness should not see any cowardice in me; and I asked him if they had anything to eat, that they should give me some. At once he ordered that all the canoes should halt, and made them give red peppers and herbs, or tamales, which they brought on purpose to give us in the middle of that lake. I ate it eagerly and asked him very pleasantly if there was any more; to which he replied, 'Then it has tasted good to you?' 'Finely,' I told him, 'and I would eat more if there were any.' I said this to him with some wit, at which they all laughed, but in a serious way, and they gave another which I ate with the same pleasure, at which they were all surprised,--at the sight of my coolness...."
The Landing at Tayasal; the Idol. "With this we continued our way to Peten Ytza, which is situated in the middle of the said lake, as well as in the midst also of other islands or Petens. On the shore of the landing place is situated the house of the said petty King at the distance of half a quarter of a league, in the middle of which, open to the street, stands the fragment of a column, of round stone, the circumference of each part of which is about three quarters of a yard across and one quarter high. It is made of stones placed on top of each other with mortar of lime and cah cab, which is usually used for that purpose; and the middle is filled in with bitumen, so that it is like a table, with a round pedestal, upon which and set in the foundation of the said stone column, there stands out toward the West a stone mask, very ill-formed, which, together with the stone column, the petty King and the rest of his family and followers worship. The said column is called, in the name by which they worship it, Yax cheel cab, which means in their language, 'the first tree in the world,' and, as is understood in their old songs (which few people understand) they wish to have it known they worship it because it was the tree of whose fruit our first father Adam ate, who in their language is called Ixanom. In the small part which is fortunately preserved, and the mask, which stands in the said foundation of the said column, they worship him with the title of the son of the very wise God. In their language they call him Ahcocahmut...."
At the Temple. "We came to the said temple which had more space than the hall of the petty King, although it is the same in its structure. Here we dimly saw a box suspended,[9.4] in which we saw indistinctly (although hastily) a bone of the leg or thigh, very large in size, which appeared to be that of a horse; and I confess that though we had much to do that afternoon, which was the time that we stayed in that temple, we acted a little unwisely, since we neither asked what that bone was, nor did we remember in the rest of the days to go and look at it more deliberately. This thought occurred to us when we had left Peten, when our error was irremediable (which was a cause of greater grief) because we remembered then that that bone was by chance from the horse which Cortes left in their care, which they had kept as a relic or to hold him in memory, since they rendered worship (as I said before) to his statue."