The Cocomes of Yucatan history were Cukulcan’s descendants or followers, and had a prosperous history, as we are told; and there came to live among them the Totul Xius, by some considered a Maya people, who like the Quichés had been subjected to Nahua influences, and who implanted in the monuments and institutions of Yucatan those traces of Nahua character which the archæologists discover.[855] The Totul Xius are placed in Uxmal in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, where they flourished along with the Cocomes, and it is to them that it is claimed many of the ruins which now interest us in Yucatan can be traced, though some of them perhaps go back to Zamná and to the Xibalban period, or at least it would be hard to prove otherwise.
When at last the Cocome chieftains began to oppress their subjects, the Totul Xius gave them shelter, and finally assisted them in a revolt, which succeeded and made Uxmal the supreme city, and Mayapan became a ruin, or at least was much neglected. The dynasty of the Totul Xius then flourished, but was in its turn overthrown, and a period of factions and revolutions followed, during which Mayapan was wholly obliterated, and the Totul Xius settled in Mani, where the Spaniards found them when they invaded Yucatan to make an easy conquest of a divided people.[856]
[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]
FROM the conquerors of New Spain we fail to get any systematic portrayal of the character and history of the subjugated people; but nevertheless we are not without some help in such studies from the letters of Cortes,[857] the accounts of the so-called anonymous conqueror,[858] and from what Stephens[859] calls “the hurried and imperfect observations of an unlettered soldier,” Bernal Diaz.[860]
MS. OF BERNAL DIAZ.
Fac-simile of the beginning of Capitulo LXXIV. of his Historia Verdadera, following a plate in the fourth volume of J. M. de Heredia’s French translation (Paris, 1877).
We cannot neglect for this ancient period the more general writers on New Spain, some of whom lived near enough to the Conquest to reflect current opinions upon the aboriginal life as it existed in the years next succeeding the fall of Mexico. Such are Peter Martyr, Grynæus, Münster, and Ramusio. More in the nature of chronicles is the Historia General of Oviedo (1535, etc.).[861] The Historia General of Gomara became generally known soon after the middle of the sixteenth century.[862] The Rapport, written about 1560, by Alonzo de Zurita, throws light on the Aztec laws and institutions.[863] Benzoni about this time traversed the country, observing the Indian customs.[864] We find other descriptions of the aboriginal customs by the missionary Didacus Valades, in his Rhetorica Christiana, of which the fourth part relates to Mexico.[865] Brasseur says that Valades was well informed and appreciative of the people which he so kindly depicted.[866] By the beginning of the seventeenth century we find in Herrera’s Historia the most comprehensive of the historical surveys, in which he summarizes the earlier writers, if not always exactly.[867] Bandelier (Peabody Mus. Repts., ii. 387) says of the ancient history of Mexico that “it appears as if the twelfth century was the limit of definite tradition. What lies beyond it is vague and uncertain, remnants of tradition being intermingled with legends and mythological fancies.” He cites some of the leading writers as mainly starting in their stories respectively as follows: Brasseur, B. C. 955; Clavigero, a.d. 596; Veytia, a.d. 697; Ixtlilxochitl, a.d. 503. Bandelier views all these dates as too mythical for historical investigations, and finds no earlier fixed date than the founding of Tenochtitlan (Mexico) in a.d. 1325. “What lies beyond the twelfth century can occasionally be rendered of value for ethnological purposes, but it admits of no definite historical use.” Bancroft (v. 360) speaks of the sources of disagreement in the final century of the native annals, from the constant tendency of such writers as Ixtlilxochitl, Tezozomoc, Chimalpain, and Camargo, to laud their own people and defame their rivals.
In the latter part of the sixteenth century the viceroy of Mexico, Don Martin Enriquez, set on foot some measures to gather the relics and traditions of the native Mexicans. Under this incentive it fell to Juan de Tobar, a Jesuit, and to Diego Duran, a Dominican, to be early associated with the resuscitation of the ancient history of the country.