In the foregoing pages a slight sketch has been given of the principal groups of ruins visited during my eight winters’ wanderings in Central America, and I will now attempt to formulate some results of my observations. The first point that is noticeable is the marked limitation in range of the hieroglyphic inscriptions. I have never heard of any Maya inscriptions being found beyond the area marked on the map which accompanies this volume. The geographical features of this area have probably had a very considerable influence on the evolution of Maya civilization, for when once the Mayas were settled on the high land to the north of the great volcanic range which follows the trend of the Pacific coast, and on the peninsula of which this range forms the base, they were in an exceptionally strong position for defence and may have existed there for many centuries, slowly developing their civilization undisturbed by later migrating tribes from Mexico, which would have passed along the natural roadway of the Pacific slope. This idea gains strength when we note that although tribes of distinctly Nahuatl origin are found in Nicaragua, only one small tribe of that stock, the Pipiles, is to be found within the area marked as that of Maya inscriptions, and this tribe is located on the Pacific seaboard.

It seems probable that the Mayas and the so-called Toltecs were originally the same people, but whether the migration from Mexico to the valleys of the Usumacinta and Motagua was merely owing to the natural expansion of the race or to expulsion by force there is no evidence to show. It is usually assumed as most probable that the general movement of population has been from Mexico to Central America, but all we know is that there are to be seen in Mexico remains, such as those at Teotihuacan, which bear more resemblance to the work of the Mayas than to that of the Nahuas, and these ruins are believed to be pre-Aztec. However, the true Maya area is apparently to be distinguished by the existence in it of Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions, and, judging from the evidence at present available, it seems clear that a distinctly progressive movement, marked by the development of this hieroglyphic writing, must have taken place after the Mayas had left Mexico and settled to the east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. With what other races the Mayas may have been brought in contact in their eastern home we do not know, but they were almost certainly people of lower culture, and it seems probable that we may possess specimens of their art in the rude images found near Guatemala city, which are shown on page 15, and that we may judge of their appearance from the figures of the prisoners carved on the Stela at Ixkun[8]. After a period of time, which must have included the age during which the race reached the highest point of its development, the centres of population were abandoned and the Mayas disappeared from the southern part of the Maya area, their places being taken by the races whom the Spaniards found in occupation of the country—races speaking languages derived from the Maya stock, and possibly allied to the Mayas by blood, but certainly behind them in the arts of peace and probably inferior in social organization. When and why the valleys of the Usumacinta and Motagua were deserted by the Mayas there is no evidence to show; there are not even vague traditions such as those which have been handed down regarding the disappearance of the Toltecs from Mexico. Famine and pestilence, civil strife, and the attacks of warlike neighbours have all been suggested as the causes, and all may have contributed to the result, but there is some reason for giving preference to the last. Mr. Mercer and other investigators have shown us that in Northern Yucatan the Mayas were the original inhabitants of the country and that they brought their culture with them from elsewhere, and there seems little reason to doubt that they brought it from the southern part of the Maya area. Judging from the sculptures and mural paintings at ChichÉn ItzÁ, this change from south to north seems also to have been a change from a peaceful to a warlike condition, and it therefore appears likely that the peopling of Yucatan may have taken place after the Mayas had been driven by force from their peaceful southern homes, and had been compelled to cultivate the arts of war in order to save their race from extinction.

It is true that we do not possess, and are never likely to find, an account of the abandonment or destruction of Palenque or TikÁl, and it cannot be actually proved that at the time of the Spanish conquest they had ceased to exist as living cities, but it can be shown that the absence of all mention of these cities in the Spanish accounts of the invasion and conquest of the country is incompatible with the theory of their existence at that time.

In Chapter XXI. we followed the earlier expeditions which coasted along the shores of Yucatan until finally, in April 1519, Hernando CortÉs landed in Mexico on the site of the modern city of Vera Cruz. During the next few years the conquest of Mexico absorbed the attention of the Spanish adventurers and the land of the Mayas was neglected, but on the 12th of October, 1524, CortÉs left Mexico city behind him and started on his celebrated march to Honduras, a march which occupied him for nearly two years, and carried him through regions where some of the most magnificent of the Maya ruins are still to be found. Although we have an account of this expedition both from CortÉs’s own pen and from that of his stout-hearted follower Bernal Diaz, it is by no means an easy matter to trace the exact course of the march and to identify the places named. The task has, however, been made easier by the researches of my friend Dr. Sebastian Marimon, who, a few years before his death, discovered, in the Lonja at Seville, a map of the Province of Tabasco drawn in the year 1579 by Melchor de Santa Cruz, which contains some place-names which have disappeared in later maps.

The earlier part of CortÉs’s march from the city of Mexico to the town of Guacacualcos, on the northern side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, does not now concern us. On leaving Guacacualcos he entered the province of Tabasco and crossed the low-lying and swampy plain seamed by the intricate network of streams which flow towards the Gulf of Mexico. There was no road to follow, for the good reason that no roads were in existence, the natives passing from place to place in their canoes; yet across this difficult country CortÉs, with wonderful persistency, led his troops, wading through swamps, cutting his way through dense jungle, and building innumerable bridges across the streams, bridges of such dimensions that Bernal Diaz wrote, in his old age, “people to this day speak of the bridges of CortÉs as they speak of the Pillars of Hercules.” We can trace the line of march with something like accuracy through the province of Copilco to Zaguatan, where the Rio Grijalva was crossed, and thence on to Chilapa and Tepititan on the Rio Tulija. From Tepititan to Ciguatecpan on the Usumacinta the actual route is obscure, as CortÉs and his followers were for some days lost in the forest, but there can be little doubt that Ciguatecpan (a name which is not to be found on the maps) was a town on the banks of the Rio Usumacinta in the near neighbourhood of Tenosique. A line drawn from Tepititan to Tenosique is between fifty and sixty miles in length, and in passing from one place to the other, CortÉs must have passed within twenty miles of Palenque, yet, although he and his men were half starved, and were eagerly seeking for any trace of a track which would lead them to an Indian settlement, nothing was seen of Palenque and no track was crossed which might have led to it. Arrived at Ciguatecpan, CortÉs asked the Indians to direct him to AcalÁ, which was probably the next place of importance marked on his map of the country drawn on a cloth, with which he had been furnished by the natives of Guacacualcos; and on this request a great discussion arose, some saying that his best way lay through the villages up the river, others saying that that route was by far the longest and passed through difficult and uninhabited country, and that the nearest way was to cross the River Usumacinta at Ciguatecpan and follow a small track to AcalÁ much used by pedlars. This last counsel was followed, and it was probably the better of the two. Had CortÉs continued his journey up the course of the river he must have passed Piedras Negras and MenchÉ, both the sites of important ruins, which could hardly have been living cities at that time without some report of their existence having come to his ears or those of his numerous Indian followers. The position of the chief town of the Province of AcalÁ has never been determined, but it may with some confidence be placed on the upper waters of the Rio San Pedro. CortÉs says that the whole province was thickly peopled and of considerable commercial importance; the historian Villagutierre tells us that a few years later the province was brought into subjection by an expedition from Merida under the leadership of Don Francisco Tamayo Pacheco, but that the Spaniards were soon driven out again by the Lacandones and other wild forest tribes. No account of Pacheco’s expedition has come to light and AcalÁ is no more mentioned. From AcalÁ CortÉs marched through a thinly peopled country to the Lake of Peten and visited the island of Tayasal, the modern Flores, which was then the chief town of the warlike ItzÁes, where he was well received by the chief and people. In his letter to Philip II. of Spain, CortÉs says: “At this village, or rather at the plantations that were close to the lake, I was obliged to leave one of my horses, owing to his having got a splinter in his foot. The chief promised to take care of the animal and cure him, but I do not know if he will succeed or what he will do with him.”

From the Lake of Peten CortÉs continued his march into what is now British Honduras, and after crossing the River Sarstoon, arrived at the mouth of the Rio Dulce, near where Livingston now stands. Before we follow him through this latter part of his arduous task, let us return to Tayasal and the ItzÁes and see how far our knowledge of the people and country can be brought to bear on the question of the existence of TikÁl as a living city. Fortunately we know something of the subsequent history of the ItzÁes, for Tayasal was visited by missionaries from Yucatan in 1618, 1619, and 1623, and in the year 1697 an expedition from Yucatan reached the lake, defeated the ItzÁes, and captured Tayasal itself.

In 1618, when the Padres BartolomÉ de Fuensalida and Juan de Orbita set out from Merida on their missionary expedition to Peten, the extreme Spanish outpost in Yucatan was at Tipu, on the upper waters of the Rio Hondo, near the present frontier of British Honduras, and within a few days’ march of the Lake of Peten. On reaching Tayasal the missionaries were well received by the chief of the ItzÁes, and on the day after their arrival they were conducted round the town. “The padres estimated the number of houses at about two hundred; these stood along the shore of the lagoon, at a little distance one from the other, and in each one of them dwelt parents and sons with their families. On the higher ground in the middle of the island stood the cuÉs, or oratories, where they kept their idols. They (the padres) went to see them and found twelve or more temples equal in size and capacity to any of the churches in this province of Yucatan, and according to their account each one could hold more than a thousand persons. In the middle of one of these temples there was a great idol in the form of a horse, made of stone and cement (cal y canto). It was seated on the floor of the temple on its haunches with its hind legs bent under it, raising itself on its fore legs. It was worshipped as the God of Thunder and called Tzimin Chac, which means the horse of thunder or the thunderbolt. The reason why they possessed this idol was that when Don Fernando CortÉs passed through this land on his way to Honduras, he left behind him a horse which could travel no further. As the horse died the Indians, terrified at the thought of not being able to give it up alive, should CortÉs by chance return that way and ask them for it, had a statue made of the horse and began to hold it in veneration, so that it might be clear (coligiessen) that they were not to blame for its death. Believing the horse to be an intelligent being (animal de razon), they gave it to eat chickens and other meat and offered it garlands of flowers as they were wont to do to their own chieftains. All these honours, for such they were in their sight, helped to bring about the death of the poor horse, for he died of hunger. It was given its name (the god of the thunderbolt) because they had seen some of the Spaniards discharging their arquebuses or guns when on horseback hunting the deer, and they believed that the horses were the cause of the noise, which appeared to them like thunder, and the flash from the muzzle of the gun and the smoke of the powder they mistook for lightning. Upon this the Devil took advantage of the blindness of their superstition so to increase the veneration in which the statue was held that, by the time the missionaries arrived, this idol had become the principal object of their adoration.

“As soon as the Padre Fray Juan de Orbita caught sight of the idol (says the Padre Fuensalida) it seemed as if the spirit of our Lord had descended on him, for, carried away by a fervid and courageous zeal for the glory of God, he took a great stone in his hand, climbed to the top of the statue of the horse and battered it to pieces, scattering the fragments on the ground”[9].

This act naturally roused the anger of the Indians, who, however, refrained from attacking the missionaries, but a few days later the padres, finding that their preaching was of no effect, left the island and returned to Tipu.

The following year the missionaries again visited Tayasal, but at the end of a few weeks they were driven out by the Indians, and returned to Tipu after suffering great hardship on the way.

In 1623 another attempt was made to Christianize the ItzÁes. Padre Diego Delgado reached Tayasal from Tipu accompanied by a few Spanish soldiers and eighty Indians; the Spaniards were apparently received with courtesy, but as soon as they had been thrown off their guard the ItzÁes turned on them and massacred the whole party.

Towards the end of the 16th century the Spaniards began to press upon the unconquered Indians from all sides. Expeditions from Chiapas and Guatemala met on the Rio Lacandon and founded the settlement of Dolores de los Lacandones, and exploring parties descended the river to its junction with the Pasion, and then ascended that stream for a considerable distance. With the exception of the small clusters of ranchos inhabited by the Lacandones, no Indian settlements were met with, but the discovery of the ruins of an ancient stone-built town of great size is incidentally mentioned in one of the reports.

About the same time missionary expeditions were pressed forward into the northern forests by way of Cajabon, but met with little success amongst the Choles, Mopanes, and other scattered tribes of forest Indians, and when at last a small advance-guard of Spanish soldiers under Captain Juan Dias de Velasco actually reached the shores of the Lake of Peten they were attacked and annihilated by the ItzÁes.

Meanwhile the Governor of Yucatan had been clearing a road through the forest and was approaching Peten from the opposite direction. In the autumn of 1695 the road was open to ChuntuchÍ, in lat. 17° 30´ N., and at the close of the year Padre Fray Antonio de AvendaÑo, accompanied by two Spanish monks and a few Indians, set out thence on an embassy to the chief of the ItzÁes. After six days’ rough march they reached the outlying villages of the ItzÁes, whence they were conducted to Tayasal. The embassy was well received by the chief, but at the end of three or four days, as it was evident that mischief was brewing amongst the people, he advised the Spaniards to leave the island at once and return by way of Tipu, so as to avoid observation. With the help of some of his family the chief secretly conveyed the Spaniards to the mainland during the night, and entrusted them to the care of one of his dependents, who was to furnish them with guides. The guides proved faithless and soon deserted the unfortunate Spaniards, who, after wandering on for ten days in the direction of Tipu, gave up all hope of reaching that settlement and, turning to the westward, groped their way for twenty-five days through the uninhabited forest, when fortunately they struck the new road from Merida to ChuntuchÍ and were saved from starvation by a party of Indian cargadores who were carrying food to the road-makers.

By February 1697 the road had been carried to within two leagues of the lake, and Don Martin Ursua, the Governor of Yucatan, arrived to take command of the expedition in person. When the Lake was reached, boats were built and launched, and on the 13th March the Governor embarked in his galley to cross to the Island of Tayasal. As the galley approached the island, canoes manned by Indian warriors came out in swarms to attack it, and for a time it seemed to rain arrows, but Ursua would not allow a shot to be fired in return, and ordered his interpreters to shout to the Indians that he came in peace. However, his words were of no avail, the patience of the Spanish soldiers was exhausted, and a shot fired by a wounded Spaniard was the signal for a general fusillade; then, as the galley touched the shore, the soldiers jumped overboard and stormed the town.

The effect of the firing from the guns was instantaneous and marvellous, the ItzÁes, who had up to this time shown such a bold front, at once took to flight, jumping out of their canoes and swimming to the mainland, and the crowds of natives who lined the shores of the island and swarmed about the buildings followed the example set them, so that within a few minutes the Spaniards were in possession of a deserted town and the lake was black with Indian heads.

If we turn to such descriptions of the buildings of the ItzÁes as have come down to us, we can see that a comparison of Tayasal with TikÁl would be much the same as a comparison of Utatlan with Copan. There are the statements of eye-witnesses that the temples on the island were built with low stone walls into which posts were fixed to support a thatch roof, and, as I shall show later on, CortÉs unconsciously confirms this statement when describing the town of ChacujÁl in Guatemala. There are no remains of pyramidal foundation-mounds now to be seen on the island such as support all the well-known Maya temples; and although the statement, attributed to the missionary fathers, that the temples would each have held a thousand persons was probably a gross exaggeration, it is hardly possible to imagine such a statement could have been made about any stone-roofed building erected by American Indians. To me it appears probable that Tayasal was a stronghold of much the same character as Utatlan and Uspantan, and that it was in no way comparable to the great centres of Maya civilization; moreover, that it could never have become, as it undoubtedly had become, the most important town in that part of the country as long as TikÁl was in existence.

The later history of the island is uneventful. Notwithstanding the efforts of the Spanish authorities the ItzÁes could never be persuaded to return in any numbers to their old home, and they probably scattered in small settlements in the forest and on the borders of the numerous smaller lakes, where they must have rapidly diminished in numbers and importance, for little more is heard of them. Tayasal sank to the position of an insignificant village, and a few years after its conquest it passed from the rule of Yucatan to that of Guatemala.

It is only fair to assume that the missionaries who faced such great perils and suffered such hardships in their efforts to convert the ItzÁes, the soldiers who led the expeditions from Yucatan and Guatemala, and the officials who subsequently took over the government of the country must all have been keenly alive to the necessity of collecting trustworthy information regarding the ItzÁes and their neighbours. We know that the missionaries must have passed within twenty miles to the east of TikÁl on their journeys between Tipu and Tayasal, that the Yucatan road on nearing the lake must have approached within the same distance to the south-west, and that Fray Antonio de AvendaÑo must have passed close by the site of the ruins when wandering through the forest from the neighbourhood of Tipu to ChuntuchÍ, but not one word has reached us from Spanish sources about the existence of a large and important centre of population and culture where the ruins of TikÁl now stand.

In the concluding chapters of Villagutierre’s ‘History,’ which was published two years after the fall of Tayasal, a good deal of information is given about the ItzÁes and the villages on the borders of the lake, but nothing whatever is said relating to TikÁl or even to the existence of the ruins. It is, of course, possible that the existence of the ruins may have been known and passed over as not worthy of record, as the Spaniards were so frequently meeting with similar remains in Yucatan, but that the existence within a day’s march of a living town or great religious centre could under the circumstances have been either overlooked or ignored is absolutely impossible.

To return to the march of CortÉs from Tayasal to Honduras. It was not until he arrived at the mouth of the Rio Dulce that he got into touch with the Spaniards of whom he had come in search. The first of his countrymen whom he met with were forty men and twenty women belonging to the party under the command of Gil Gonzales de Avila. These unfortunate people were even in a more pitiable condition than his own half-starved followers. Expeditions had at once to be despatched into the surrounding country in search of food, but they proved singularly unsuccessful until CortÉs himself took the matter in hand. In a “brigantine” and boats belonging to Gonzales’s men he set out with a party of forty Spaniards and fifty Indians, ascended the Rio Dulce, and landed on the south side of the great lake, probably somewhere to the east of the site of Yzabal. Leaving his boats in charge of a guard, CortÉs and his followers pushed on during the next few days across the spurs of the Sierra de las Minas and crossed the innumerable streams which score the mountain sides, finding, as he says, the path so rough and steep that they had to make use of both hands and feet in climbing. Some villages were met with on the way, but at the approach of the Spaniards the natives fled to the forest, and the Spaniards found no stores of food—indeed, they barely obtained enough to supply their immediate wants.

In his letter to the King, CortÉs writes:—“Having asked some of the Indian prisoners whether they knew of any other village in the vicinity where dry maize could be obtained they answered me that they knew of one called ChacujÁl, a very populous and ancient one, where all manner of provisions might be found in abundance.”

The Spaniards reached the neighbourhood of this village at sunset, and CortÉs made his arrangements to take it by surprise on the following morning. To quote his own words:—“I had laid down on some straw, in order to rest, when one of the scouts came to me, and said that by the road communicating with the village he saw a body of armed men coming down upon us; but that they marched without any order or precaution, speaking to each other, and as if they were ignorant of our being on their passage. I immediately summoned my men up, and made them arm themselves as quickly and noiselessly as they could; but as the distance between the village and the place where we had encamped was so short, before we were ready to meet them the Indians discovered the scouts, and letting fly on them a volley of their arrows began to retreat towards their village, fighting all the time with those of my men who were foremost. In this manner we entered the village mixed up with them; but the night being dark, the Indians suddenly disappeared in the streets, and we could find no enemies. Fearing some ambush, and suspecting that the people of the village had been somehow informed of our arrival, I gave orders to my men to keep well together, and marching through the place, arrived at a great square, where they had their mosques and houses of worship; and as we saw the mosques and the buildings round them just in the manner and form of those of CulÚa, we were more overawed and astonished than we had been hitherto, since nowhere since we left Aculan had we seen such signs of policy and power.... We passed that night on watch, and on the following morning sent out several parties of men to explore the village, which was well designed, the houses well built and close to each other. We found in them plenty of cotton, woven or raw, much linen of Indian manufacture and of the best kind, great quantities of dried maize, cacao, beans, peppers and salt, many fowls, and pheasants in cages, partridges, and dogs of the species they keep for eating, and which are very tasteful to the palate, and in short every variety of food in such abundance, that had our ship and boats been near at hand, we might easily have loaded enough of it to last us for many a day; but unfortunately we were twenty leagues off, had no means of carrying provisions except on the backs of men, and we were all of us in such a condition that, had we not refreshed ourselves a little at that place, and rested for some days, I doubt much whether we should have been able to return to our boats.”

The Indians, however, did not return to their town, and CortÉs was left in peace to build rafts on which to convey the grain he had captured, and after an adventurous passage down the Rio Polochic he rejoined the brigantine in the Golfo Dulce and carried the much-needed supplies to his half-starved companions.

In 1882, when camped at Quirigua, I sent one of my men up the Rio Polochic to make enquiries for the ruins of ChacujÁl, pointing out to him the localities in which the ruins were most likely to be found. On his return he told me that he could hear nothing whatever of any place named ChacujÁl, but that there was a ruin known as Pueblo Viejo on the Rio Tinaja, on the south side of the Polochic a few miles from Panzos. This situation answers so exactly to the requirements of the description given by CortÉs that there can be little doubt that we had found the ruins of the town called by him ChacujÁl. In 1884 I was able to make a hurried visit to the ruins myself, and found a number of foundations surmounted by low walls somewhat similar to those in the neighbourhood of Rabinal already described in Chapter XII., but I could find no trace of sculptured stones or inscriptions. As the whole site was covered with a dense jungle it was not possible to make any plan of the ruins during the few hours at my disposal; however, I saw quite enough to convince me that, although the plan of the town had been carefully laid out, the buildings were of no great importance and in no way comparable to those at Copan or Palenque. Yet this is the town which CortÉs compares to CulÚa in Mexico, and deems to be of greater importance than any town he had seen since leaving AcalÁ, a statement which goes far to confirm the views which have been expressed in this chapter with regard to Tayasal, and to prove that CortÉs and his followers had met with none of the great centres of Maya art during their wonderful march.

I was not successful in connecting these ruins on the Rio Tinaja with the name of ChacujÁl, until one of my canoemen whom I was questioning on the subject, after repeating the name several times exclaimed “Chaki-jal! that is what the Indians of these parts call the ripe corn” (chaki = dry, jal = maize), and the origin of the name was at once evident.

I began this chapter with the intention of summing up in a few paragraphs the conclusions I had myself come to, but although the paragraphs have grown into pages I find that no definite statements have been made.

How can we assert that the Maya hieroglyphics were originated and developed within the Maya area until the ruins on the Rio Panuco, and at Teotihuacan, have been thoroughly excavated and explored, and up to the present they have only been scratched at? Did the development of Nahua culture affect that of the Mayas, and is that the reason why the art at ChichÉn has an indefinable Nahua flavour? We shall not know this for certain until the ruins in Tabasco, Campeche, and Peten have been thoroughly explored, and we can trace the connecting links. Amongst the many other puzzles, how are we to account for those curious mural paintings recently found by Dr. Gann in British Honduras, on the eastern limit of the Maya area, paintings essentially Nahua in style yet accompanied by a legend in Maya hieroglyphics? It is a fascinating subject for speculation, but the field offered for actual exploration is still more fascinating, and further research on the ground promises to supply facts worth more than volumes of dissertation built upon insufficient premises.

Within the Maya area there may, of course, have been many layers of culture widely removed in time which we cannot at present differentiate. Although it is not yet possible to trace the various stages which must have marked the evolution of the art which culminated in Copan and Palenque, it is not difficult to show that a great gap exists between the remains of those centres of ancient culture and the ruins of towns known to have been inhabited at the time of the Spanish invasion. I called attention to this fact when treating of the strongholds of the QuichÉs and Cachiquels, and have endeavoured in this chapter to show that the same gap yawns unbridged between Tayasal and TikÁl. Prescott’s picturesque account of the Aztec city of Mexico, and Stephens’s interesting description of the ruins he visited in Honduras, Tabasco, and Yucatan, aided by Fuentes’s fabulous stories of the glories of Utatlan, have engendered a popular belief that at the time of the Spanish conquest the Indians throughout Central America were living sumptuously in magnificent stone-built cities. Such beliefs die hard, indeed they lay such hold of the imagination that from time to time enterprising newspapers echo the story told to Stephens sixty years ago by the Padre of Santa Cruz QuichÉ, and favour us with reports of Indian cities still inhabited and flourishing, hidden from the gaze of the vulgar by a wall of impenetrable forest.