52 In abbreviated form I note here, inviting special comparison with
Mexico, that the Zuñi Upper world was symbolized by the sun, eagle
and turquoise; the Lower world by the rattlesnake, water and toad.
53 Landa states that Mayapan signified “the banner of Maya,” the latter
being the name of the “tongue of land” on which the capital was
situated. This explanation is, however, scarcely satisfactory, for
pantli is Nahuatl. If the entire word be regarded as Nahuatl, we
obtain “the banner of the hand.” As another Maya name for the
capital was Ho and this means five it seems possible that this
numeral and sound were actually expressed by an open hand and that
the Nahuatl name thus arose.
54 As throughout America four brothers are always found associated, in
consequence of the general spread of the quadruple organization, the
fact that three rulers only are mentioned here and that three
powerful tribes were found in possession of Yucatan, indicates that
these must have separated themselves from their original State. The
subsequent reduction of their number to two shows further
dissension.
55 It seems reasonable to refer to this date the expulsion of the Maya
tribe, the Huaxtekans, who founded their colony at Panuco, named
their capital Tuch-pan and carried with them their execrable
practices and ideas. At the same time they possessed and handed down
such a proficiency in the art of weaving that at the time of
Montezuma the most beautiful textile fabrics, furnished to him as
tribute, were the Huaxtecan “centzon-tilmatli” or mantles of four
hundred colors, “finely woven and covered with intricate and
artistic designs.” This circumstance points to a possible connection
with Zilan, the reputed Maya centre of female industry. It has been
stated by good authorities that the only antiquities thus far found
in America, which testify to the existence of a degraded and obscene
cult, are from the region of Panuco.
56 It is interesting to note in the above description absolutely no
mention of woman in the organization of Mayapan. It is therefore to
be presumed that they were excluded from this capital, and
inhabited, as in Mexico, their own town, under female rulership and
that of the “lords of the Night.”
57 See the Atlatl or Spear-thrower of the Ancient Mexicans. Peabody
Museum Papers, vol. 1, no. 3. Cambridge, 1891.
58 Relacion. ed. Brasseur de Bourbourg, p. 52. In a note the Abbé
states that the above description recalls the monoliths of Copan and
Quirigua.
59 We are told that the Cheles inhabited a province named Ah-bin-chel,
and that their capitals were Tikoh and Izamal (literally, Ah=they
who are of, kin=sun, chel=sort of bird and the ancient name of a
sacerdotal lineage in Yucatan). Thence the title Chelekat=holiness,
highness, grandeur, given to the head of this lineage (Brasseur de
Bourbourg). Ix-chel=the woman-bird, was the high-priestess or
medicine-woman and midwife. The Cheles, Tutul-xius and Cocomes were
the three most powerful tribes at the time of the Conquest. It is
noteworthy that they all had bird names and that the word chel, the
totemic bird of the Cheles, so closely resembles ché=tree, that the
combination of a ché or tree as a symbol of the tribe and the
chel-bird would have been suggested by the language.
60 According to Señor Garcia Cubas, “this peninsula of Yucatan must
have been united at one time, to the island of Cuba, the determining
cause of their separation being the impetuous current of the Gulf of
Mexico” (Atlas Metodico, Mexico, 1874, p. 32).
61 For a general account of the ruins of Copan and for a plan on which
the position of the different structures, stelæ, altars and
prominent sculptures are given, I refer to the Memoirs of the
Peabody Museum vol. I, no. 1, containing a preliminary report, of
the Explorations by the Museum. Cambridge, 1896.
62 Historia de la Provincia de Yucathan, by Friar Diego Lopez
Cogolludo, Madrid, 1688.
63 It seems to me that this statement establishes once and for all the
order in which these sculptured glyphs are to be read. It is evident
that in fastening them to the walls the idea was that of building up
the calculiform record by placing the stones above each other, in
the same manner that a stone wall would be raised. Accordingly, the
earliest records would form the base and the last be at the top.
64 See Biologia Centrali Americana, pt. I, Copan “a” pl. 9. Casts of
this sculpture and of two others nearly identical, from Copan, are
in the Peabody Museum.
65 It is my intention to reproduce these plans of Copan and Quirigua
and of other ancient American capitals in the publication I have
undertaken to make in co-editorship with Mr. E. W. Dahlgren of
Stockholm, of the beautiful map of the City of Mexico and its
surroundings, painted by Alonzo de la Cruz, the cosmographer of
Philip II of Spain. Mr. Dahlgren published an interesting account of
this map, which is preserved in the library of the university at
Upsala, in 1889, with its uncolored reproduction on a reduced scale.
In his monumental work on ancient cartography, Baron Nordenskjöld
also published an uncolored production of this map and, with Dr.
Bovallius, exhibited a beautiful facsimile of this precious
document, at the Historical Exposition in Madrid, in October, 1892.
During the previous summer at Stockholm, I had personally
superintended the painting of a perfect facsimile copy of the map
which I exhibited in the Anthropological Building of the World’s
Columbian Exposition in 1893. The original map was exhibited in
Stockholm during the meeting of the Congress of Americanists at
Stockholm in 1894, and I suggested that it ought to be published in
exact facsimile and in colors, particularly on account of the many
hieroglyphic names of localities it exhibits. It was thereupon
agreed by Mr. Dahlgren and myself that we should jointly publish the
map with an accompanying text in English, my share of the work being
principally the decipherment of the hieroglyphs of localities, the
classification of the tribes inhabiting them, as well as the
presentation of all historical facts connected with them that I
could obtain from the native and early Spanish chronicles. With
characteristic liberality the Duc de Loubat most kindly supported
the proposed publication by subscribing to twenty copies of it in
advance and depositing the payment for these at the Academy of
Sciences. The reproduction of the map has been facilitated by this
generous action and I take great pleasure in expressing here our
grateful appreciation to the Duc de Loubat, who has been patiently
awaiting the achievement of our undertaking. Both Mr. Dahlgren and I
have been prevented from completing this up to the present, by work
planned previously to the publication of the map. The present
publication will prove, however, that the social organization of the
Mexicans has been the object of my painstaking study and that, until
I had satisfactorily set forth the fundamental principles which
influenced not only the distribution of the population, but the
ground-plan of the capital itself, any text I could publish with the
map would be incomplete. As matters now stand, I propose to treat of
the City of Mexico as a type of an ancient American sacred city, to
compare its ground plan with those of other native capitals and to
trace, as far as possible, the localization of the various tribes
and classes of the ancient population, so that we can form an
adequate idea of the topography and machinery of the great state
known as the Empire of Montezuma. I hope and expect to complete this
publication in a reasonable period of time but dare not define its
limits, as all scientific research demands more time and strength
than can be determined upon in advance. In conclusion I would state
that, at the Congress of Americanists which took place at the city
of Mexico in 1895, the distinguished Mexican cartographer, Señor
Garcia Cubas, whose splendid maps of Mexico are well known, made an
interesting communication on this map, of which he had seen a copy.
66 It has been surmised that the name Palenque is of Spanish origin and
means “a palisade;” but it seems far more likely to be the
approximate rendering of the sound of the old native word by a
Spanish word, in the same way that the Nahuatl Quauh-nahuac became
the Spanish Cuerna-vaca, literally cow’s horn.
67 Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Maya Vocabulary contains an interesting
instance of a native tribe or lineage bearing the name of a bird:
“Chel: name of a kind of bird; ancient name of a great sacerdotal
family reigning at Tecoh (near Izamal, Yucatan). Thence the title
‘Chelekat,’ which meant holy, exalted, great, and was applied to the
head of this family.”
68 On a large tablet at Ixkun, the cast of which is now in Mr.
Maudslay’s collection at the South Kensington Museum, similarly
placed figures support on their bent backs and shoulders standing
personages, facing each other, and surrounded by glyphs. In this
case, however, the men who serve as footstools, are bound and
distinctly show a difference of type and costume, so that there can
be no doubt that the tablet commemorated the conquest of an alien
tribe.
69 Estudio arqueologico y jeroglifico del Calendario o gran libro
astronomico.... Mexico. 1889.