WHAT FORBIDDEN CITIES MAY TELL
Itzamna, Ahpuch, and Kukulcan,
Where are you now, that were loved of man!
The gentle son of an Eastern Jew
Has made but forgotten names of you.
On ruined palace and crumbling wall
The fat and sleepy iguanas crawl;
No temple bell for sacrifice rings
But only the lonely moan bird wings.
Under the jungle of Yucatan
Lies the mystery of Mayapan;
Did these who worshipped the sun and rain
Choose rather death than the Cross of Spain?
This question has stirred historians and philosophers since the first
report that there were great white cities in the jungles of Central
America filtered out to the scientific world. What was the fate of that
high early American civilization?
There is no longer much reason to doubt that the present so-called
Maya Indians are of the same race as the people the Spaniards found
occupying the cities conspicuous for their “tall towers” and “very
large houses well built of stone and plaster.” Therefore, if those
natives who were occupying some of the limestone cities in 1517 were
of the same race as the builders, we may say with assurance that the
Indians of present Yucatan are descended from the great architects.
“Why has there ever been any reason to doubt this?” you may ask, with a
rather natural impatience.
The doubt arose and the doubt has continued to live in many minds,
first, because of the great discrepancy between the high culture
evidenced by the ruins and the low intelligence of contemporary
natives, and second, because from 1517 to the present time the Indians
of Yucatan have appeared to possess no traditions of a high past, no
ability to explain the origin of vestiges of high attainment in art and
science which lie about their country on every hand.
For instance, an account of the ruined city of Uxmal, given in 1586 by
a companion of Alonzo Ponce, a Franciscan delegate, says:
“The Indians do not know surely who built these buildings nor when
they were built, though some of them did their best in trying to
explain the matter, but in doing so showed foolish fancies and
dreams, and nothing fitted into the facts or was satisfactory.”
In short there was much material at hand for the construction of the
theory that the Indians met by Cordoba and Grijalva were members
of collateral tribes which had occupied the stone cities after the
builders had disappeared.
But gradually this tenet has lost weight, and an alternative has gained
increasing credibility. This is the postulate that the Yucatan Indians
of the early sixteenth century were direct descendants of the city
builders, but degenerate descendants. In short, that the culture of the
Mayas had already received its death blow and that only the dregs still
lived when the Spaniards came.
The acceptance of this alternate theory is made easier by a constantly
increasing body of proof that even if the modern Indians have no
articulate traditions of the men who built the temples they have an
inherited reverence for these shrines and they still use forms of
ritual identical with or very similar to ceremonies of the First
Americans.
Of course, examples of ritualistic survivals may be attributable to
instinctive imitation which need not imply any understanding of the
ancient theology or any knowledge of the men who founded it. But
the existence of such old rites today does strongly suggest that the
Indians of the modern bush are of the stock of the old astronomers.
Examples of such continuance of ancient rites have been found in
recent years by such leaders among the men who are solving the riddle
of the Mayas as Professor A. M. Tozzer of Harvard, Professor Marshall
H. Saville of the Heye Foundation and Dr. Sylvanus G. Morley of the
Carnegie Institution.
Mr. Edward Herbert Thompson, who owns the land around the ruins of
Chichen Itza, tells me he recently saw Maya Indians in that region
performing rites to the God of Rain. The British explorer, Dr. Thomas
Gann, says that in 1924 or ’25 he bought from an Indian boy in British
Honduras an entire outfit of masks, costumes and musical instruments
for the Maya “devil dance,” all this weird paraphernalia “made locally
from ancient models handed down from father to son for generations.”
I have already told how on the southern border of Mexico Dr. Spinden
found figurines placed on an old Maya altar by modern natives who had
made the figurines themselves. And how in northern Yucatan he found
Indians putting out bowls of _posole_ as offerings to the Wind God with
little wooden crosses similar to those we found in crumbling temples
throughout the wide area covered by our expedition.
In spite of the mixture of Catholic ritual these Indians have not
really accepted Christianity. On the contrary many of them hate its
very name. In the heart of the thick bush of Quintana Roo Spinden and I
found magnificent Spanish cathedrals tenanted only by bats and buzzards
while within a few miles copal was burning in Maya temples, albeit the
hands that brought the offerings had lost the skill that built these
structures centuries ago.
Of course, the mere hostility to outsiders, which the independent
Indians of Quintana Roo have shown for many years, does not necessarily
prove the continuation of ancient customs and a jealousy for old holy
places. Much of this animosity was due to commercial motives. For
years the Indians were struggling against Mexican taxation and trade
exploitation and fired at all unidentified outsiders without waiting
to learn their motives. But there can be no doubt, in view of our
recent experiences, that they are also extremely suspicious of foreign
interest in their altars.
[Illustration: Small wooden crosses put by modern Indians on altars of
ancient temples--combining a little Christianity with old rites]
Our discovery that there are in the heart of the Quintana Roo bush
two forbidden cities, that the Indians “still use,” holds important
and exciting possibilities. Since the first European and American
explorers began to penetrate the Maya country there have been rumors of
cities in which a remnant of the old civilization lives on, undisturbed
by outside change. As recently as 1842 (and that is very recent from an
archæologist’s point of view), John L. Stephens, the explorer, was told
by a Spanish padre of such a thing in the wild district of Vera Paz,
Guatemala.
“The thing that roused us,” said Stephens, “was the padre’s assertion
that four days on the road to Mexico, on the other side of the great
sierra, was a living city, large and populous, occupied by Indians,
precisely in the same state as before the discovery of America. He
had heard of it many years before at the village of Chajul, and was
told by the villagers that from the topmost ridge of the sierra this
city was distinctly visible.
“He was then young, and with much labor climbed to the naked summit
of the sierra, from which, at a height of ten or twelve thousand
feet, he looked over an immense plain extending to Yucatan and the
Gulf of Mexico, and saw at a great distance a large city spread over
a great space, and with turrets white and glittering in the sun.
The traditionary account of the Indians of Chajul is that no white
man has ever reached this city; that the inhabitants speak the Maya
language, are aware that a race of strangers has conquered the whole
country around, and murder any white man who attempts to enter their
territory.”
Even if there was such an occupied Maya city in Stephens’ time, it may
well be deserted now, although that part of mountainous Guatemala is
still far from railroads and other agents of modern civilization. But
the fact that this great American archæologist believed possible the
survival of a sort of “island” of ancient Maya civilization stimulates
the imagination when we wonder what is to be found in Huntichmul and
Ichmul.
The Maya Lieutenant’s remark that these cities are “still being used”
may mean simply that the natives are making offerings in temples there,
as we found them doing at other places all over the eastern part of the
Yucatan Peninsula. But the fact that we were permitted to visit the
other spots and forbidden to go to Huntichmul and Ichmul suggests that
these latter places have some special importance in native eyes. What
it is science would give a good deal to know.
Granting that the present Indians are descended from the old architects
I have never been able to accept the argument that Spanish oppression
alone could have killed all tribal memory of the past--if it is true
that there are no surviving traditions among the modern natives.
Without a doubt the efforts of the Europeans to stamp out the native
patriotism and religion were extremely rigorous, stopping not even at
torture and massacre. But one has only to look at the cases of other
conquered peoples like the Poles, Finns, and Armenians to realize
the weakness of the argument that early Spanish oppression was alone
responsible for native ignorance of the great past. For these other
examples show that the more you oppress a people the more they cling
to memories of the proud days before their conquerors had come. And
a knowledge of writing is not necessary to keep such brave national
traditions alive.
In previous chapters I have referred to some of the causes which have
been suggested as causing the demoralization of Maya civilization
which almost certainly occurred before the first Spanish caravel came.
We have seen that one of these causes was the civil wars which broke
out among the Mayas of northern Yucatan about the year 1200 A.D., and
which were fostered and utilized selfishly by invading Toltecs from the
highlands of Mexico. Probably another very potent cause of the collapse
was a pestilence which came in the wake of the civil strife and which
was very likely what we call yellow fever. Diego de Landa, Sanchez de
Aguilar, Cogolludo and other early Spanish commentators mention native
traditions of great epidemics before the arrival of the white men.
Moreover, as Spinden has shown,[2] several documents written in Spanish
characters but in the Maya tongue, and doubtless based upon earlier
records in hieroglyphs, mention a terrible pestilence which broke out
sometime during the twenty-year period called Katun 4 Ahau in the Maya
calendar. This period extended from 1477 to 1497 by our count. In the
Chronicle of Tizimin for this period and for Katun 2 Ahau (1497 to
1517) are these entries:
[2] “Yellow Fever--First and Last,” by Herbert Joseph Spinden: _World’s
Work_, December, 1921.
_Can Ahau-uchi mayacimlal ocnalcuchil ich paa.
Cabil Ahau-uchci nohkakil._
The translation of these is:
“Four Ahau, the pestilence, the general death, took
place in the fortress.
“Two Ahau, the small-pox took place.”
Now here is a distinction between the small-pox and what is called “the
general death.” Dr. Spinden has shown that the latter was yellow fever.
There is not space here for the evidence on which he bases this highly
important conclusion. Suffice it to mention the existence of other old
native documents referring to a pestilence of which one symptom was _xe
kik_, blood vomit, and the existence of early Indian drawings showing
men vomiting blood. The vomiting of blood is one of the characteristic
marks of yellow fever.
Now does not the invisible ink in which the mystery was written begin
to become legible? Among the Mayas a knowledge of the arts and sciences
was never held by any but a privileged, educated minority. If civil
war, Toltec invasion, yellow fever and, finally, Spanish tyranny wiped
out the flower of Maya population the descendants of the slaves who
piled the limestone blocks of palace walls might well have no more
articulate tradition of the great past than is possessed today by
General May’s tattered hunters and _chicleros_.
The first period in Maya research is ending. There is still much
surface exploration to be done, but it must be accompanied by more
intensive study if we are to solve the riddle of the Mayas before all
the evidence has been destroyed by time and nature, which work fast
in the tropics. The more hieroglyphs we have on record or the more
repetitions of the same glyphs the more hope is there of learning the
meaning of most or all of them.
Therefore, one of the most pressing needs is more excavation. At
present the work of the Carnegie Institution at Chichen Itza is the
only piece of excavation which foreign archæologists are permitted to
do in Mexican territory--and, with all respect to the Mexicans, 99
per cent. of the piecing together of the Maya puzzle has been done by
foreigners.
A visit to Chichen Itza is a revelation of the possibilities of the
spade. What was a mere mound of stone and earth covered with bushes and
trees when I was there four years ago stands out now in the beauty of
the carved white limestone pillars and walls of the magnificent Temple
of the Warriors. Thanks to the intelligent labors of Dr. Morley, Mr.
Morris, and the other members of the Carnegie Institution Chichen Itza
Project, most of this splendid metropolis at least will be saved for
the world.
There is no doubt that under many of the Maya buildings are tombs
such as that discovered by Edward Herbert Thompson under a temple at
Chichen. It is here that one may hope to find more _codices_, more
ancient books of record. A fragment of a _codex_ was found in the
ruins of a building in another city of northern Yucatan by Professor
Saville, but it had been too much exposed to weather by the decay of
the building to be legible. There are still plenty of _codices_ to be
found, although they are doubtless in an advanced state of decay,
which will necessitate extreme care in handling them. If an enlightened
international public opinion could bring the Mexican Government to
lift its unfortunate ban on excavation immediately a huge step would
have been taken toward the recovery of the complete story of the first
families of America. Twenty years from now, even ten years from now, it
may be too late.
While work on the stone inscriptions and the discovered _codices_
continues the last fragment of the nearly pure Maya race must
be studied in retreats like Huntichmul and Ichmul before it is
extinguished--as it surely will be soon. All races have their day,
and the Maya fire is nearly out. Although most of the glyphs are
ideographic some are phonetic. There is an opportunity to recover these
phonetic glyphs by an intensive study of Maya as spoken today.
The future belongs to the ethnologist as much as to the archæologist.
Perhaps the greatest opportunity in the field of Maya research is that
which is open to the young scientist willing to cast in his lot with
these people virtually for life--willing to settle among these Indians
and share their primitive standards until their confidence has been so
won that he will be admitted to the very thoughts which they have when
they worship in the temples of such cities as the two in Quintana Roo
that our expedition was forbidden even to look upon from a distance.
[Illustration]
Transcriber’s Notes
- Italics represented with surrounding _underscores_.
- Small caps converted to All Caps.
- Obvious typographic errors silently corrected.
- Variations in hyphenation and spelling kept as in the original.
- Illustrations relocated to nearest full paragraph break.
- Footnotes renumbered consecutively and relocated below the relevant
paragraph.