The proper names in the legend have nothing of a Nahuatl appearance. They are all pure Maya. The “kinsman of Moctezuma,” the second reading of whose name is the correct one, is given as tan u pol chicbul, “in front of the head of the jay-bird,” the chicbul being what the Spaniards call the mingo rey, which I believe is a jay (Beltran, Arte del Idioma Maya, p. 229). The other long name is a compound of Zuhuy kak camal cacal puc. The historian Cogolludo informs us that Zuhuy Kak, literally “virgin fire,” was the daughter of a king, afterwards deified as goddess of female infants (Historia de Yucatan, Lib. IV, cap. VIII). Camal was and is a common patronymic in Yucatan; cacalpuc means “mountain land,”[121-1] and thus the whole name is easily identified as Maya. Possibly the member of the family Camal who bore the name was a priest of the goddess.
It will be noticed that neither the legend nor the legal testimony speaks of these foreigners as of a different language or lineage, but leaves us to infer the contrary. Had they been of Aztec race it would certainly have been noticed, for the Mayas had frequent mercantile relations with these powerful neighbors, they borrowed many words from the Nahuatl tongue, and single chiefs in Yucatan formed alliances with the Aztec rulers, and introduced Aztec warriors even into Mayapan, as is shown by the Chronicles I publish in this work, and also by the fact that a small colony of Aztecs, descendants of these mercenaries, was living in the province of Canul, west of Merida, when the Spaniards conquered the country (Landa, Relacion, p. 54). Therefore the Aztecs were no strangers to the Mayas, and doubtless the learned members of the priesthood and nobles in the fifteenth century were quite well aware of the existence of the powerful empire of Anahuac.
But regarding the legend I have quoted as, in part at least, based on actual history, we may accept the fact that there was an important emigration from Mexico, and yet not one of either Aztecs or “Toltecs.” It must be remembered that the Huastecas, an important branch of the Maya family, occupied from time immemorial the coast of the Mexican Gulf north of Vera Cruz, and west to the mountains of Meztitlan, a province inhabited by a Nahuatl speaking race, but not subject to the dynasty of the Montezumas.
I have already referred briefly to their history, and it is possible that after their serious reverses, about 1450, they sent migratory bodies to their relatives in Yucatan. At any rate, there seems a consensus of testimony that the general trend of migration of the Maya race, was from north to south, and in Central America, from west to east.
We have in this paragraph examples of the use of three of the “numeral particles.” Cante bin ti katun, literally, “it (i. e. time) went on for four katuns,” and a few lines later hunpel haab, one year, hunpiztun, the first year.
The correct translation of peten has been debated; it is from the root pet, anything round, a circle, and usually means “island.” By a later use it signifies any locality with definite boundaries, hence a province, or kingdom. The following is the entry in the Diccionario de Motul:
“Peten; isla, item provincia, region, comarca—uay tu petenil Yucatan, aqui en la provincia de Yucatan.”
The name of the first leader, Holon Chan Tepeuh, does not recur in the Annals. Its signification is: holon, a generic name for large bees and flies; chan, sufficient, powerful, still in use in Yucatan as a surname; tepeuh, ruler, from tepeual, to rule. This last word is marked in the Diccionario de Motul as a “vocablo antiquo.” It is of Aztec origin, as in the Nahuatl language tepeuani means “conqueror.” The name we are considering should probably be rendered “Holon Chan, the ruler.” The province ruled by the Chan family at the time of the conquest was on the eastern coast, south of that of the Cupuls.
The name Chacnouitan is elsewhere, as we shall see, spelled Chacnovitan and Chacnabiton. I am inclined to believe the last mentioned is nearest the correct form. By Pio Perez it was supposed to be an ancient name of Yucatan, and he translates the phrase, uay ti petene Chacnouitan, by “à esta isla de Chacnavitan (Yucatan).” Dr. Valentini says: “the translation could as well stand for ‘that distant island,’” and that “Chacnouitan was neither the whole nor the northern part of Yucatan, but a district situated in the southwest of the peninsula,” (loc. cit. p. 38).
With this I cannot agree, as the adverb uay always refers to the place (in no matter how wide an accepation) where the speaker is. Therefore I translate it “here, (i. e. to this general country of Yucatan, and at first) to the province Chacnouitan.” The province referred to was, I doubt not, somewhere around Lake Peten. The word chac is often used in local names in Yucatan, and usually means either “water” or “red,” as it is a homonym with several significations.