Another ruined City.--Relics.--Ruins of San Francisco.--Proved to
be those of the Aboriginal City of the name Ticul.--A beautiful
Vase.--Search for a Sepulchre.--Discovery of a Skeleton and Vase.--An
Indian Needle.--These Cities not built by Descendants of
Egyptians.--Their Antiquity not very great.--Examination of the
Skeleton by Doctor Morton, and his Opinion.--Mummies from Peru.--These
Cities built by the Ancestors of the present Race of Indians.--The
Seybo Tree.--The Campo Santo.--A quiet Village.
It was fortunate for the particular objects of our expedition that, go
where we would in this country, the monuments of its ancient
inhabitants were before our eyes. Near the village of Ticul, almost in
the suburbs, are the ruins of another ancient and unknown city. From
the time of our arrival the memorials of it had been staring us in the
face. The cura had some sculptured stones of new and exceedingly pretty
design; and heads, vases, and other relics, found in excavating the
ruins, were fixed in the fronts of houses as ornaments. My first stroll
with the cura was to these ruins.
At the end of a long street leading out beyond the campo santo we
turned to the right by a narrow path, overgrown with bushes covered
with wild flowers, and on which birds of beautiful plumage were
sitting, but so infested with garrapatas that we had to keep brushing
them off continually with the bough of a tree.
This path led us to the hacienda of San Francisco, the property of a
gentleman of the village, who had reared the walls of a large building,
but had never finished it. There were fine shade trees, and the
appearance of the place was rural and picturesque, but it was
unhealthy. The deep green foliage was impregnated with the seeds of
death. The proprietor never visited it except in the daytime, and the
Indians who worked on the milpas returned to the village at night.
A short distance in the rear of the hacienda were the ruins of another
city, desolate and overgrown, having no name except that of the
hacienda on which they stand. At this time a great part of the city was
completely hidden by the thick foliage of the trees. Near by, however,
several mounds were in full sight, dilapidated, and having fragments of
walls on the top. We ascended the highest, which commanded a
magnificent view of the great wooded plain, and at a distance the
towers of the church of Ticul rising darkly above. The cura told me
that in the dry season, when the trees were bare of foliage, he had
counted from this point thirty-six mounds, every one of which had once
held aloft a building or temple, and not one now remained entire. In
the great waste of ruins it was impossible to form any idea of what the
place had been, except from its vastness and the specimens of
sculptured stone seen in the village, but beyond doubt it was of the
same character as Uxmal, and erected by the same people. Its vicinity
to the village had made its destruction more complete. For generations
it had served as a mere quarry to furnish the inhabitants with
building-stone. The present proprietor was then excavating and selling,
and he lamented to me that the piedra labrada, or worked stone, was
nearly exhausted, and his profit from this source cut off.
A few words toward identifying these ruins. The plan for reducing
Yucatan was to send a small number of Spaniards, who were called
_vecinos_ (the name still used to designate the white population), into
the Indian towns and villages where it was thought advisable to make
settlements. We have clear and authentic accounts of the existence of a
large Indian town called Ticul, certainly in the same neighbourhood
where the Spanish village of that name now stands. It must have been
either on the site now occupied by the latter, or on that occupied by
the ruins of San Francisco. Supposing the first supposition to be
correct, not a single vestige of the Indian city remains. Now it is
incontestible that the Spaniards found in the Indian towns of Yucatan,
mounds, temples, and other large buildings of stone. If those on the
hacienda of San Francisco are of older date, and the work of races who
have passed away, as vast remains of them still exist, though subject
to the same destroying causes, why has every trace of the stone
buildings in the Indian city disappeared?
And it appears in every page of the history of the Spanish conquest,
that the Spaniards never attempted to occupy the houses and villages of
the Indians as they stood. Their habits of life were inconsistent with
such occupation, and, besides, their policy was to desolate and destroy
them, and build up others after their own style and manner. It is not
likely that at the early epoch at which they are known to have gone to
Ticul, with their small numbers, they would have undertaken to demolish
the whole Indian town, and build their own upon its ruins. The
probability is, that they planted their own village on the border, and
erected their church as an antagonist and rival to the heathen temples;
the monks, with all the imposing ceremonies of the Catholic Church,
battled with the Indian priests; and, gradually overthrowing the power
of the caciques, or putting them to death, they depopulated the old
town, and drew the Indians to their own village. It is my belief that
the ruins on the hacienda of San Francisco are those of the aboriginal
city of Ticul.
[Engraving 17: Ticul vase]
From the great destruction of the buildings, I thought it unprofitable
to attempt any exploration of these ruins, especially considering the
insalubrity of the place and our own crippled state. In the excavations
constantly going on, objects of interest were from time to time
discovered, one of which, a vase, was fortunately only loaned to us to
make a drawing of, or it would have shared the fate of the others, and
been burned up by _that_ fire. The engraving below represents two sides
of the vase; on one side is a border of hieroglyphics, with sunken
lines running to the bottom, and on the other the reader will observe
that the face portrayed bears a strong resemblance to those of the
sculptured and stuccoed figures at Palenque: the headdress, too, is a
plume of feathers, and the hand is held out in the same stiff position.
The vase is four and a half inches high, and five inches in diameter.
It is of admirable workmanship, and realizes the account given by
Herrera of the markets at the Mexican city of Tlascala. "There were
goldsmiths, feather-men, barbers, baths, and _as good earthenware as in
Spain._"
It was not yet considered safe for me to return to Uxmal, and the sight
of these vases induced me to devote a few days to excavating among the
ruins. The cura took upon himself the whole burden of making
arrangements, and early in the morning we were on the ground with
Indians. Amid the great waste of ruins it was difficult to know what to
do or where to begin. In Egypt, the labours of discoverers have given
some light to subsequent explorers, but here all was dark. My great
desire was to discover an ancient sepulchre, which we had sought in
vain among the ruins of Uxmal. These were not to be looked for in the
large mounds, or, at all events, it was a work of too much labour to
attempt opening one of them. At length, after a careful examination,
the cura selected one, upon which we began.
It was a square stone structure, with sides four feet high, and the top
was rounded over with earth and stones bedded in it. It stood in a
small milpa, or corn-field, midway between two high mounds, which had
evidently been important structures, and from its position seemed to
have some direct connexion with them. Unlike most of the ruined
structures around, it was entire, with every stone in its place, and
probably had not been disturbed since the earth and stones had been
packed down on the top.
The Indians commenced picking out the stones and clearing away the
earth with their hands. Fortunately, they had a crowbar, an instrument
unknown in Central America, but indispensable here on account of the
stony nature of the soil, and for the first and only time in the
country I had no trouble in superintending the work. The cura gave them
directions in their own language, and under his eye they worked
actively. Nevertheless, the process was unavoidably slow. In digging
down, they found the inner side of the outer wall, and the whole
interior was loose earth and stones, with some layers of large flat
stones, the whole very rough. In the mean time the sun was beating upon
us with prodigious force, and some of the people of the village, among
others the proprietor of the hacienda, came down to look on and have an
inward smile at our folly. The cura had read a Spanish translation of
the Antiquary, and said that we were surrounded by Edie Ochiltrees,
though he himself, with his tall, thin figure and long gown, presented
a lively image of that renowned mendicant. We continued the work six
hours, and the whole appearance of things was so rude that we began to
despair of success, when, on prying up a large flat stone, we saw
underneath a skull. The reader may imagine our satisfaction. We made
the Indians throw away crowbar and machete, and work with their hands.
I was exceedingly anxious to get the skeleton out entire, but it was
impossible to do so. It had no covering or envelope of any kind; the
earth was thrown upon it as in a common grave, and as this was removed
it all fell to pieces. It was in a sitting posture, with its face
toward the setting sun. The knees were bent against the stomach, the
arms doubled from the elbow, and the hands clasping the neck or
supporting the head. The skull was unfortunately broken, but the facial
bone was entire, with the jaws and teeth, and the enamel on the latter
still bright, but when the skull was handed up many of them fell out
The Indians picked up every bone and tooth, and handed them to me. It
was strangely interesting, with the ruined structures towering around
us, after a lapse of unknown ages, to bring to light these buried
bones. Whose were they! The Indians were excited, and conversed in low
tones. The cura interpreted what they said; and the burden of it was,
"They are the bones of our kinsman," and "What will our kinsman say at
our dragging forth his bones?" But for the cura they would have covered
them up and left the sepulchre.
In collecting the bones, one of the Indians picked up a small white
object, which would have escaped any but an Indian's eye. It was made
of deer's horn, about two inches long, sharp at the point, with an eye
at the other end. They all called it a needle, and the reason of their
immediate and unhesitating opinion was the fact that the Indians of the
present day use needles of the same material, two of which the cura
procured for me on our return to the convent. One of the Indians, who
had acquired some confidence by gossiping with the cura, jocosely said
that the skeleton was either that of a woman or a tailor.
The position of this skeleton was not in the centre of the sepulchre,
but on one side, and on the other side of it was a very large rough
stone or rock firmly imbedded in the earth, which it would have taken a
long time to excavate with our instruments. In digging round it and on
the other side, at some little distance from the skeleton we found a
large vase of rude pottery, resembling very much the cantaro used by
the Indians now as water-jar. It had a rough flat stone lying over the
mouth, so as to exclude the earth, on removing which we found, to our
great disappointment, that it was entirely empty, except some little
hard black flakes, which were thrown out and buried before the vase was
taken up. It had a small hole worn in one side of the bottom, through
which liquid or pulverized substances could have escaped. It may have
contained water or the heart of the skeleton. This vase was got out
entire, and is now ashes.
One idea presented itself to my mind with more force than it had ever
possessed before, and that was the utter impossibility of ascribing
these ruins to Egyptian builders. The magnificent tombs of the kings at
Thebes rose up before me. It was on their tombs that the Egyptians
lavished their skill, industry, and wealth, and no people, brought up
in Egyptian schools, descended from Egyptians, or deriving their
lessons from them, would ever have constructed in so conspicuous a
place so rude a sepulchre. Besides this, the fact of finding these
bones in so good a state of preservation, at a distance of only three
or four feet from the surface of the earth, completely destroys all
idea of the extreme antiquity of these buildings; and again there was
the universal and unhesitating exclamation of the Indians, "They are
the bones of our kinsman."
But whosesoever they were, little did the pious friends who placed them
there ever imagine the fate to which they were destined. I had them
carried to the convent, thence to Uxmal, and thence I bore them away
forever from the bones of their kindred. In their rough journeys on the
backs of mules and Indians they were so crumbled and broken that in a
court of law their ancient proprietor would not be able to identify
them, and they left me one night in a pocket-handkerchief to be carried
to Doctor S. G. Morton of Philadelphia.
Known by the research he has bestowed upon the physical features of the
aboriginal American races, and particularly by his late work entitled
"Crania Americana," which is acknowledged, in the annual address of the
president of the Royal Geographical Society of London, as "a welcome
offering to the lovers of comparative physiology," this gentleman, in a
communication on that subject, for which I here acknowledge my
obligations, says that this skeleton, dilapidated as it is, has
afforded him some valuable facts, and has been a subject of some
interesting reflections.
The purport of his opinion is as follows: In the first place, the
needle did not deceive the Indian who picked it up in the grave. The
bones are those of a female. Her height did not exceed five feet three
or four inches. The teeth are perfect, and not appreciably worn, while
the _epiphyses_ those infallible indications of the growing state, have
just become consolidated, and mark the completion of adult age.
The bones of the hands and feet are remarkably small and delicately
proportioned, which observation applies also to the entire skeleton.
The skull was crushed into many pieces, but, by a cautious
manipulation, Doctor Morton succeeded in reconstructing the posterior
and lateral portions. The occiput is remarkably flat and vertical,
while the lateral or parietal diameter measures no less than five
inches and eight tenths.
A chemical examination of some fragments of the bones proves them to be
almost destitute of animal matter, which, in the perfect osseous
structure, constitutes about thirty-three parts in the hundred.
On the upper part of the left tibia there is a swelling of the bone,
called, in surgical language, a _node_, an inch and a half in length,
and more than half an inch above the natural surface. This morbid
condition may have resulted from a variety of causes, but possesses
greater interest on account of its extreme infrequency among the
primitive Indian population of the country.
On a late visit to Boston I had the satisfaction of examining a small
and extremely interesting collection of mummied bodies in the
possession of Mr. John H. Blake, of that city, dug up by himself from
an ancient cemetery in Peru. This cemetery lies on the shore of the Bay
of Chacota, near Arica, in latitude 18 deg. 20' south. It covers a large
tract of ground. The graves are all of a circular form, from two to
four feet in diameter, and from four to five feet deep. In one of them
Mr. Blake found the mummies of a man, a woman, a child twelve or
fourteen years old, and an infant. They were all closely wrapped in
woollen garments of various colours and degrees of fineness, secured by
needles of thorn thrust through the cloth; The skeletons are saturated
with some bituminous substance, and are all in a remarkable state of
preservation. The woollen cloths, too, are well preserved, which no
doubt is accounted for, in a great degree, by the extreme dryness of
the soil and atmosphere of that part of Peru.
Mr. Blake visited many other cemeteries between the Andes and the
Pacific Ocean as far south as Chili, all of which possess the same
general features with those found in the elevated valleys of the
Peruvian Andes. No record or tradition exists in regard to these
cemeteries, but woollen cloths similar to those found by Mr. Blake are
woven at this day, and probably in the same manner, by the Indians of
Peru; and in the eastern part of Bolivia, to the southward of the place
where these mummies were discovered, he found, on the most barren
portion of the Desert of Atacama, a few Indians, who, probably from the
difficulty of access to their place of abode, have been less influenced
by the Spaniards, and for this reason retain more of their primitive
customs, and their dress at this day resembles closely that which
envelops the bodies in his possession, both in the texture and the
form.
Doctor Morton says that these mummies from Peru have the same
peculiarities in the form of the skull, the same delicacy of the bones,
and the same remarkable smallness of the hands and feet, with that
found in the sepulchre at San Francisco. He says, too, from an
examination of nearly four hundred skulls of individuals belonging to
older nations of Mexico and Peru, and of skulls dug from the mounds of
our western country, that he finds them all formed on the same model,
and conforming in a remarkable manner to that brought from San
Francisco; and that this cranium has the same _type_ of physical
conformation which has been bestowed with amazing uniformity upon all
the tribes on our continent, from Canada to Patagonia, and from the
Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. He adds, that it affords additional
support to the opinion which he has always entertained, that,
notwithstanding some slight variation in physical conformation, and
others of a much more remarkable character in intellectual attainments,
all the aboriginal Americans of all known epochs belong to the same
great and distinctive race.
If this opinion is correct, and I believe it--if this skeleton does
present the same _type_ of physical conformation with all the tribes of
our continent--then, indeed, do these crumbling bones declare, as with
a voice from the grave, that we cannot go back to any ancient nation of
the Old World for the builders of these cities; they are not the works
of people who have passed away, and whose history is lost, but of the
same great _race_ which, changed, miserable, and degraded, still clings
around their ruins.
To return to the ruins of San Francisco. We devoted two days more to
excavating, but did not make any farther discoveries.
Among the ruins were circular holes in the ground like those at Uxmal.
The mouth of one was broken and enlarged, and I descended by a ladder
into a dome-shaped chamber, precisely the same as at Uxmal, but a
little larger. At Uxmal the character of these was mere matter of
conjecture; but at this short distance, the Indians had specific
notions in regard to their objects and uses, and called them chultones,
or wells. In all directions, too, were seen the oblong stones hollowed
out like troughs, which at Uxmal were called pilas, or fountains, but
here the Indians called them holcas or piedras de molir, stones for
grinding, which they said were used by the ancients to mash corn upon;
and the proprietor showed us a round stone like a bread roller, which
they called kabtum, brazo de piedra, or arm of stone, used, as they
said for mashing the corn. The different names they assigned in
different places to the same thing, and the different uses ascribed to
it, show, with many other facts, the utter absence of all traditionary
knowledge among the Indians; and this is perhaps the greatest
difficulty we have to encounter in ascribing to their ancestors the
building of these cities.
The last day we returned from the ruins earlier than usual, and stopped
at the campo santo. In front stood a noble seybo tree. I had been
anxious to learn something of the growth of this tree, but had never
had an opportunity of doing it before. The cura told me that it was
then twenty-three years old. There could be no doubt or mistake on this
point. Its age was as well known as his own, or that of any other
person in the village. The following woodcut represents this tree. The
trunk at the distance of five feet from the ground measured 17 1-2 feet
in circumference, and its great branches afforded on all sides a
magnificent shade. We had found trees like it growing on the tops of
the ruined structures at Copan and Palenque, and many had for that
reason ascribed to the buildings a very great antiquity. This tree
completely removed all doubts which I might have entertained, and
confirmed me in the opinion I had before expressed, that no correct
judgment could be formed of the antiquity of these buildings from the
size of the trees growing upon them. Remarkable as I considered this
tree at that time, I afterward saw larger ones, in more favourable
situations not so old.
[Engraving 18: Seybo Tree]
The campo santo was enclosed by a high stone wall. The interior had
some degree of plan and arrangement, and in some places were tombs,
built above ground, belonging to families in the village, hung with
withered wreaths and votive offerings. The population tributary to it
was about five thousand; it had been opened but five years, and already
it presented a ghastly spectacle. There were many new-made graves, and
on several of the vaults were a skull and small collection of bones in
a box or tied up in a napkin, being the remains of one buried within
and taken out to make room for another corpse. On one of them were the
skull and bones of a lady of the village, in a basket; an old
acquaintance of the cura, who had died within two years. Among the
bones was a pair of white satin shoes, which she had perhaps worn in
the dance, and with which on her feet she had been buried.
At one corner of the cemetery was a walled enclosure, about twenty feet
high and thirty square, within which was the charnel-house of the
cemetery. A flight of stone steps led to the top of the wall, and on
the platform of the steps and along the wall were skulls and bones,
some in boxes and baskets, and some tied up in cotton cloths, soon to
be thrown upon the common pile, but as yet having labels with the names
written on them, to make known yet a little while longer the
individuals to whom they had once belonged. Within the enclosure the
earth was covered several feet deep with the promiscuous and
undistinguishable bones of rich and poor, high and low, men, women, and
children, Spaniards, Mestizoes, and Indians, all mingled together as
they happened to fall. Among them were fragments of bright-coloured
dresses, and the long hair of women still clinging to the skull. Of all
the sad mementoes declaring the end to which all that is bright and
beautiful in the world is doomed, none ever touched me so affectingly
as this--the ornament and crowning charm of woman, the peculiar subject
of her taste and daily care, loose, dishevelled, and twining among dry
and mouldering bones.
We left the campo santo, and walked up the long street of the village,
the quiet, contented character of the people impressing itself more
strongly than ever upon my mind. The Indians were sitting in the yards,
shrouded by cocoanut and orange trees weaving hammocks and platting
palm leaves for hats; the children were playing naked in the road, and
the Mestiza women were sitting in the doorways sewing. The news of our
digging up the bones had created a sensation. All wanted to know what
the day's work had produced, and all rose up as the cura passed; the
Indians came to kiss his hand, and, as he remarked, except when the
crop of maize was short, all were happy. In a place of such bustle and
confusion as our own city, it is impossible to imagine the quiet of
this village.