The Itzas seized the territory in and around Mayapan, but they were not the ones who destroyed the city. This was the work of Ahuitzilɔul, foreign mountaineers. Ɔul, is the common term for a foreigner in Maya, and is now-a-days applied especially to the whites. Uitz, mountain, is used with reference to the high sierra which runs through central Yucatan, and so Pio Perez understood ahuitzil, “los que tenian sus ciudades en la parte montañosa.” This is probably correct, though we do not know to whom this appellation refers. Yet it may be added that another meaning can be given to the phrase; uitz is the term applied by the natives in some parts of the peninsula to the artificial mounds or pyramids on which their temples were situated, which are usually called muul.[132-1] In this sense ahuitzil ɔul should be rendered “foreigners who had great pyramids.”
The words tan cah Mayapan (not Mayalpan as before) are rendered by Pio Perez and Brasseur as the name of a province or district; but as they simply mean “in the middle of the city of Mayapan,” it appears to be their signification here.
[Maya]
[English]12. “After the fortress was depopulated” or destroyed. This no doubt refers to the fortress of Mayapan, spoken of in the previous section. Aguilar and his companions were wrecked on the coast of Yucatan, in 1511, and this is probably the earliest date of any actual landing of Europeans, although in 1506, Pinzon had sighted the eastern shores.
[Maya]
[English]13. Mayacimil, “the death of the Mayas,” a term applied to a general and fatal pestilence. Such are referred to by Landa (Relacion, § X.) and Cogolludo (Historia de Yucatan, Lib. IV, cap. VI), The Diccionario de Motul, MS. has this entry:
“Mayacimil: una mortandad grande que fué en Yucatan. Y tomase por qualquier mortandad y pestilencia que lleva mucha gente.”
Noh kakil, noh, great, kak, fire, is the usual word for the smallpox.
The reference to the death of Ahpula, who, as we learn from another chronicle, was a member of the royal Xiu family, is especially valuable as assigning a definite date in both the Maya and European calendars. It is specified with great minuteness, and yet Pio Perez made the serious error in his computations regarding the Maya calendar of reading “the sixth year of the 13th ahau” instead of “six years from the close of the 13th ahau,” as, in fact, he himself elsewhere translated it.
The expression u xocol haab ti lakin cuchie, “the reckoning of the year was toward the East,” refers to the circle or wheel marked with the four cardinal points by which the years were arranged with reference to the four “year-bearers” Kan, Muluc, Ix and Cauac.
The last words of this section, “sixty years after the fortress was destroyed,” are an obvious error, as in the preceding section this date is said to be that of the first arrival of the Spaniards.
[Maya]
[English]14. Kul uincob, “mighty men,” from kul, strong, powerful, probably akin to ku, god, but not with the religious signification which kuyen has (see page [125]). Caputzihil, literally “to be born a second time.” Bishop Landa assures us positively that a rite of baptism was known to the Mayas before the arrival of the whites, and that this name was applied to it (Relacion, p. 144). As will be seen on a later page, Maya writers usually employed another term to express Christian baptism.