fascinated the world nearly half a century ago in the kindly recital
of Prescott;[973] but it was observed that he quoted too often the
somewhat illusory and exaggerated statements of Ixtlilxochitl, and
was not a little attracted by the gorgeous pictures of Waldeck and
Dupaix. With such a charming depicter, the barbaric gorgeousness of
this ancient empire, as it became the fashion to call it, gathered
a new interest, which has never waned, and Morgan[974] is probably
correct in affirming that it “has called into existence a larger number
of works than were ever before written upon any people of the same
number and of the same importance.”[975] Even those who, like Tylor,
had gone to Mexico sceptics, had been forced to the conclusion that
Prescott’s pictures were substantially correct, and setting aside what
he felt to be the monstrous exaggerations of Solis, Gomara, and the
rest, he could not find the history much less trustworthy than European
history of the same period.[976] It has been told in another place[977]
how the derogatory view, as opposed to the views of Prescott, were
expressed by R. A. Wilson in his _New Conquest of Mexico_, in assuming
that all the conquerors said was baseless fabrication, the European
Montezuma becoming a petty Indian chief, and the great city of Mexico
a collection of hovels in an everglade,—the ruins of the country being
accounted for by supposing them the relics of an ancient Phœnician
civilization, which had been stamped out by the inroads of barbarians,
whose equally barbarious descendants the Spaniards were in turn to
overcome. It cannot be said that such iconoclastic opinions obtained
any marked acceptance; but it was apparent that the notion of the
exaggeration of the Spanish accounts was becoming sensibly fixed in the
world’s opinion. We see this reaction in a far less excessive way in
Daniel Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_ (i. 325, etc.), and he was struck,
among other things, with the utter obliteration of the architectural
traces of the conquered race in the city of Mexico itself.[978] When,
in 1875, Hubert H. Bancroft published the second volume of his _Native
Races_, he confessed “that much concerning the Aztec civilization had
been greatly exaggerated by the old Spanish writers, and for obvious
reasons;” but he contended that the stories of their magnificence
must in the main be accepted, because of the unanimity of witnesses,
notwithstanding their copying from one another, and because of the
evidence of the ruins.[979] He strikes his key-note in his chapter
on the “Government of the Nahua Nations,” in speaking of it as
“monarchical and nearly absolute;”[980] but it was perhaps in his
chapter on the “Palaces and Households of the Nahua Kings,” where he
fortifies his statement by numerous references, that he carried his
descriptions to the extent that allied his opinions to those who most
unhesitatingly accepted the old stories.[981]
The most serious arraignment of these long-accepted views was by Lewis
H. Morgan, who speaks of them as having “caught the imagination and
overcome the critical judgment of Prescott, ravaged the sprightly brain
of Brasseur de Bourbourg, and carried up in a whirlwind our author at
the Golden Gate.”[982]
Morgan’s studies had been primarily among the Iroquois, and by
analogy he had applied his reasoning to the aboriginal conditions
of Mexico and Central America, thus degrading their so-called
civilization to the level of the Indian tribal organization, as it was
understood in the North.[983] Morgan’s confidence in its deductions
was perfect, and he was not very gracious in alluding to the views
of his opponents. He looked upon “the fabric of Aztec romance as the
most deadly encumbrance upon American ethnology.”[984] The Spanish
chroniclers, as he contended, “inaugurated American aboriginal history
upon a misconception of Indian life, which has remained substantially
unquestioned till recently.”[985] He charges upon ignorance of the
structure and principles of Indian society, the perversion of all
the writers,[986] from Cortes to Bancroft, who, as he says, unable
to comprehend its peculiarities, invoked the imagination to supply
whatever was necessary to fill out the picture.[987] The actual
condition to which the Indians of Spanish America had reached was,
according to his schedule, the upper status of barbarism, between
which and the beginning of civilization he reckoned an entire ethnical
period. “In the art of government they had not been able to rise above
gentile institutions and establish political society. This fact,”
Morgan continues, “demonstrates the impossibility of privileged classes
and of potentates, under their institutions, with power to enforce the
labor of the people for the erection of palaces for their use, and
explains the absence of such structures.”[988]
This is the essence of the variance of the two schools of
interpretation of the Aztec and Maya life. The reader of Bancroft will
find, on the other hand, due recognition of an imperial system, with
its monarch and nobles and classes of slaves, and innumerable palaces,
of which we see to-day the ruins. The studies of Bandelier are appealed
to by Morgan as substantiating his view.[989] Mrs. Zelia Nuttall
(_Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. Sci._, Aug., 1886) claims to be able to show
that the true interpretation of the Borgian and other codices points in
part at least to details of a communal life.
The special issues which for a test Morgan takes with Bancroft are in
regard to the character of the house in which Montezuma lived, and
of the dinner which is represented by Bernal Diaz and the rest as
the daily banquet of an imperial potentate. Morgan’s criticism is in
his _Houses and House Life of the American Aborigines_ (Washington,
1881).[990] The basis of this book had been intended for a fifth Part
of his _Ancient Society_, but was not used in that publication. He
printed the material, however, in papers on “Montezuma’s Dinner” (_No.
Am. Rev._, Ap. 1876), “Houses of the Moundbuilders” (_Ibid._, July,
1876), and “Study of the Houses and House Life of the Indian Tribes”
(_Archæol. Inst. of Amer. Publ._). These papers amalgamated now make
the work called _Houses and House Life_.[991]
Morgan argues that a communal mode of living accords with the usages
of aboriginal hospitality, as well as with their tenure of lands,[992]
and with the large buildings, which others call palaces, and he calls
joint tenement houses. He instances, as evidence of the size of such
houses, that at Cholula four hundred Spaniards and one thousand allied
Indians found lodging in such a house; and he points to Stephens’s
description of similar communal establishments which he found in our
day near Uxmal.[993] He holds that the inference of communal living
from such data as these is sufficient to warrant a belief in it,
although none of the early Spanish writers mention such communism as
existing; while they actually describe a communal feast in what is
known as Montezuma’s dinner;[994] and while the plans of the large
buildings now seen in ruins are exactly in accord with the demands of
separate families united in joint occupancy. In such groups, he holds,
there is usually one building devoted to the purpose of a Tecpan, or
official house of the tribe.[995] Under the pressure to labor, which
the Spaniards inflicted on their occupants, these communal dwellers
were driven, to escape such servitude, into the forest, and thus their
houses fell into decay. Morgan’s views attracted the adhesion of not
a few archæologists, like Bandelier and Dawson; but in Bancroft, as
contravening the spirit of his _Native Races_, they begat feelings
that substituted disdain for convincing arguments.[996] The less
passionate controversialists point out, with more effect, how hazardous
it is, in coming to conclusions on the quality of the Nahua, Maya,
or Quiché conditions of life, to ignore such evidences as those of
the hieroglyphics, the calendars, the architecture and carvings, the
literature and the industries, as evincing quite another kind, rather
than degree, of progress, from that of the northern Indians.[997]
II. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES UPON THE RUINS AND ARCHÆOLOGICAL REMAINS OF
MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA.
Elsewhere in this work some account is given of the comprehensive
treatment of American antiquities. It is the purpose of this note to
characterize such other descriptions as have been specially confined
to the antiquities of Mexico, Central America, and adjacent parts;
together with noting occasionally those more comprehensive works which
have sections on these regions. The earliest and most distinguished of
all such treatises are the writings of Alexander von Humboldt,[998] to
whom may be ascribed the paternity of what the French define as the
Science of Americanism, which, however, took more definite shape and
invited discipleship when the Société Américaine de France was formed,
and Aubin in his _Mémoire sur la peinture didactique et l’écriture
figurative des Anciens Méxicains_ furnished a standard of scholarship.
How new this science was may be deduced from the fact that Robertson,
the most distinguished authority on early American history, who wrote
in English, in the last part of the preceding century, had ventured to
say that in all New Spain there was not “a single monument or vestige
of any building more ancient than the Conquest.” After Humboldt,
the most famous of what may be called the pioneers of this art were
Kingsborough, Dupaix, and Waldeck, whose publications are sufficiently
described elsewhere. The most startling developments came from the
expeditions of Stephens and Catherwood, the former mingling both in his
_Central America_ and _Yucatan_ the charms of a personal narrative with
his archæological studies, while the draughtsman, beside furnishing
the sketches for Stephens’s book, embodied his drawings on a larger
scale in the publication which passes under his own name.[999] The
explorations of Charnay are those which have excited the most interest
of late years, though equally significant results have been produced by
such special explorers as Squier in Nicaragua, Le Plongeon in Yucatan,
and Bandelier in Mexico.
The labors of the French archæologist, which began in 1858, resulted
in the work _Cités et ruines Américaines: Mitla, Palenqué, Izamal,
Chichen-Itza, Uxmal, recueillies et photographiées par Désiré
Charnay, avec un Texte par M. Viollet le Duc_. (Paris, 1863.) Charnay
contributed to this joint publication, beside the photographs, a paper
called “Le Méxique, 1858-61,—souvenirs et impressions de Voyage.” The
Architect Viollet le Duc gives us in the same book an essay by an
active, well-equipped, and ingenious mind, but his speculations about
the origin of this Southern civilization and its remains are rather
curious than convincing.[1000]
[Illustration: THE PYRAMID OF CHOLULA.
After a drawing in Cumplido’s Spanish translation of Prescott’s
_Mexico_, vol. iii. (Mexico, 1846.)]
The public began to learn better what Charnay’s full and hearty
confidence in his own sweeping assertions was, when he again entered
the field in a series of papers on the ruins of Central America
which he contributed (1879-81) to the _North American Review_ (vols.
cxxxi.-cxxxiii.), and which for the most part reached the public
newly dressed in some of the papers contributed by L. P. Gratacap to
the American Antiquarian,[1001] and in a paper by F. A. Ober on “The
Ancient Cities of America,” in the _Amer. Geog. Soc. Bulletin_, Mar.,
1888. Charnay took moulds of various sculptures found among the ruins,
which were placed in the Trocadero Museum in Paris.[1002] What Charnay
communicated in English to the _No. Amer. Review_ appeared in better
shape in French in the _Tour du Monde_ (1886-87), and in a still
riper condition in his latest work, _Les anciens villes du Nouveau
Monde: voyages d’explorations au Méxique et dans l’Amérique Centrale_.
1857-1882. _Ouvrage contenant 214 gravures et 19 cartes ou plans._
(Paris, 1885.)[1003]
[Illustration: GREAT MOUND OF CHOLULA.
After a sketch in Bandelier’s _Archæological Tour_, p. 233, who also
gives a plan of the mound. The modern Church of Nuestra Señora de los
Remedios is on the summit, where there are no traces of aboriginal
works. A paved road leads to the top. A suburban road skirts its base,
and fields of maguey surround it. The circuit of the base is 3859 feet,
and the mound covers nearly twenty acres. Estimates of its height are
variously given from 165 to 208 feet, according as one or another base
line is chosen. It is built of adobe brick laid in clay, and it has
suffered from erosion, slides, and other effects of time. There are
some traces of steps up the side. Bandelier (pl. xv.) also gives a
fac-simile of an old map of Cholula. The earliest picture which we have
of the mound, evidently thought by the first Spaniards to be a natural
one, is in the arms of Cholula (1540). There are other modern cuts in
Carbajal-Espinosa’s _Mexico_ (i. 195); _Archæologia Americana_ (i. 12);
Brocklehurst’s _Mexico to-day_, 182. The degree of restoration which
draughtsmen allow to themselves, accounts in large measure for the
great diversity of appearance which the mound makes in the different
drawings of it. There is a professed restoration by Mothes in Armin’s
_Heutige Mexico_, 63, 68, 72. The engraving in Humboldt is really a
restoration (_Vues_, etc., pl. vii., or pl. viii. of the folio ed.).
Bandelier gives a slight sketch of a restoration (p. 246, pl. viii.).]
We proceed now to note geographically some of the principal ruins. In
the vicinity of Vera Cruz the pyramid of Papantla is the conspicuous
monument,[1004] but there is little else thereabouts needing particular
mention. Among the ruins of the central plateau of Mexico, the famous
pyramid of Cholula is best known. The time of its construction is a
matter about which archæologists are not agreed, though it is perhaps
to be connected with the earliest period of the Nahua power. Duran,
on the other hand, has told a story of its erection by the giants,
overcome by the Nahuas.[1005] Its purpose is equally debatable, whether
intended for a memorial, a refuge, a defence, or a spot of worship—very
likely the truth may be divided among them all.[1006] It is a similar
problem for divided opinion whether it was built by a great display of
human energy, in accordance with the tradition that the bricks which
composed its surface were passed from hand to hand by a line of men,
extending to the spot where they were made leagues away, or constructed
by a slower process of accretion, spread over successive generations,
which might not have required any marvellous array of workmen.[1007]
The fierce conflict which—as some hold—Cortés had with the natives
around the mound and on its slopes settled its fate; and the demolition
begun thereupon, and continued by the furious desolaters of the Church,
has been aided by the erosions of time and the hand of progress,
till the great monument has become a ragged and corroded hill, which
might to the casual observer stand for the natural base, given by
the Creator, to the modern chapel that now crowns its summit; but if
Bandelier’s view (p. 249) is correct, that none of the conquerors
mention it, then the conflict which is recorded took place, not here,
but on the vanished mound of Quetzalcoatl, which in Bandelier’s opinion
was a different structure from this more famous mound, while other
writers pronounce it the shrine itself of Quetzalcoatl.[1008]
[Illustration: MEXICAN CALENDAR STONE.
After a cut in _Harper’s Magazine_. An enlarged engraving of the
central head is given on the title-page of the present volume. A
photographic reproduction, as the “Stone of the Sun,” is given in
Bandelier’s _Archæological Tour_, p. 54, where he summarizes the
history of it, with references, including a paper by Alfredo Chavero,
in the _Anales del Museo nacional de México_, and another, with a cut,
by P. J. J. Valentini, in _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1878, and
in _The Nation_, Aug. 8 and Sept. 19, 1878. Chavero’s explanation is
translated in Brocklehurst’s _Mexico to-day_, p. 186. The stone is
dated in a year corresponding to A.D. 1479, and it was early described
in Duran’s _Historia de las Indias_, and in Tezozomoc’s _Crónica
mexicana_. Tylor (_Anahuac_, 238) says that of the drawings made before
the days of photography, that in Carlos Nebel’s _Viaje pintoresco y
Arqueológico sobre la República Mejicana_, 1829-1834 (Paris, 1839),
is the best, while the engravings given by Humboldt (pl. xxiii.)
and others are more or less erroneous. Cf. other cuts in Carbajal’s
_México_, i. 528; Bustamante’s _Mañanas de la Alameda_ (Mexico,
1835-36); Short’s _No. Amer. of Antiq._, 408, 451, with references;
Bancroft’s _Native Races_, ii. 520; iv. 506; Stevens’s _Flint Chips_,
309.
Various calendar disks are figured in Clavigero (Casena, 1780); a
colored calendar on agave paper is reproduced in the _Archives de la
Commission Scientifique du Méxique_, iii. 120. (Quaritch held the
original document in Aug., 1888, at £25, which had belonged to M.
Boban.)
For elucidations of the Mexican astronomical and calendar system see
Acosta, vi. cap. 2; Granados y Galvez’s _Tardes Americanas_ (1778);
Humboldt’s essay in connection with pl. xxiii. of his _Atlas_;
Prescott’s _Mexico_, i. 117; Bollaert in _Memoirs read before
the Anthropol. Soc. of London_, i. 210; E. G. Squier’s _Some new
discoveries respecting the dates on the great calendar stone of the
ancient Mexicans, with observations on the Mexican cycle of fifty-two
years_, in the _American Journal of Science and Arts_, 2d ser., March,
1849, pp. 153-157; Abbé J. Pipart’s _Astronomie, Chronologie et rites
des Méxicaines_ in the _Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France_ (n. ser.
i.); Brasseur’s _Nat. Civ._, iii. livre ii.; Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_,
ii. ch. 16; Short, ch. 9, with ref., p. 445; Cyrus Thomas in Powell’s
_Rept. Ethn. Bureau_, iii. 7. Cf. Brinton’s _Abor. Amer. Authors_, p.
38; Brasseur’s “Chronologie historique des Méxicaines” in the _Actes de
la Soc. d’Ethnographie_ (1872), vol. vi.; Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_,
i. 355, for the Toltecs as the source of astronomical ideas, with which
compare Bancroft, v. 192; the _Bulletin de la Soc. royale Belge de
Géog._, Sept., Oct., 1886; and Bandelier in the _Peabody Mus. Repts._,
ii. 572, for a comparison of calendars.
Wilson in his _Prehistoric Man_ (i. 246) says: “By the unaided results
of native science, the dwellers on the Mexican plateau had effected
an adjustment of civil to solar time so nearly correct that when the
Spaniards landed on their coast, their own reckoning, according to the
unreformed Julian calendar, was really eleven days in error, compared
with that of the barbarian nation whose civilization they so speedily
effaced.”
See what Wilson (_Prehistoric Man_, i. 333) says of the native
veneration for this calendar stone, when it was exhumed. Mrs. Nuttall
(_Proc. Am. Asso. Adv. Sci._, Aug., 1886) claims to be able to show
that this monolith is really a stone which stood in the Mexican
market-place, and was used in regulating the stated market-days.]
We have reference to a Cholula mound in some of the earliest writers.
Bernal Diaz counted the steps on its side.[1009] Motolinía saw it
within ten years of the Conquest, when it was overgrown and much
ruined. Sahagún says it was built for defensive purposes. Rojas, in
his _Relacion de Cholula_, 1581, calls it a fortress, and says the
Spaniards levelled its convex top to plant there a cross, where later,
in 1594, they built a chapel. Torquemada, following Motolinía and the
later Mendieta, says it was never finished, and was decayed in his
time, though he traced the different levels. Its interest as a relic
thus dates almost from the beginnings of the modern history of the
region. Boturini mentions its four terraces. Clavigero, in 1744, rode
up its sides on horseback, impelled by curiosity, and found it hard
work even then to look upon it as other than a natural hill.[1010] The
earliest of the critical accounts of it, however, is Humboldt’s, made
from examinations in 1803, when much more than now of its original
construction was observable, and his account is the one from which most
travellers have drawn,—the result of close scrutiny in his text and of
considerable license in his plate, in which he aimed at something like
a restoration.[1011] The latest critical examination is in Bandelier’s
“Studies about Cholula and its vicinity,” making part iii. of his
_Archæological Tour in Mexico in 1881_.[1012]
What are called the finest ruins in Mexico are those of Xochicalco,
seventy-five miles southwest of the capital, consisting of a mound of
five terraces supported by masonry, with a walled area on the summit.
Of late years a cornfield surrounds what is left of the pyramidal
structure, which was its crowning edifice, and which up to the middle
of the last century had five receding stories, though only one now
appears. It owes its destruction to the needs which the proprietors
of the neighboring sugar-works have had for its stones. The earliest
account of the ruins appeared in the “Descripcion (1791) de los
antiqüedades de Xochicalco” of José Antonio Alzate y Ramirez, in the
_Gacetas de Literatura_ (Mexico, 1790-94, in 3 vols.; reprinted Puebla,
1831, in 4 vols.), accompanied by plates, which were again used in
Pietro Marquez’s _Due Antichi Monumenti de Architettura Messicana_
(Roma, 1804),[1013] with an Italian version of Alzate, from which the
French translation in Dupaix was made. Alzate furnished the basis of
the account in Humboldt’s _Vues_ (i. 129; pl. ix. of folio ed.), and
Waldeck (_Voyage pitt._, 69) regrets that Humboldt adopted so inexact
a description as that of Alzate. From Nebel (_Viage pintoresco_) we
get our best graphic representations, for Tylor (_Anahuac_) says that
Casteñeda’s drawings, accompanying Dupaix, are very incorrect. Bancroft
says that one, at least, of these drawings in Kingsborough bears not
the slightest resemblance to the one given in Dupaix. In 1835 there
were explorations made under orders of the Mexican government, which
were published in the _Revista Mexicana_ (i. 539,—reprinted in the
_Diccionario Universal_, x. 938). Other accounts, more or less helpful,
are given by Latrobe, Mayer,[1014] and in Isador Löwenstern’s _Le
Méxique_ (Paris, 1843).[1015]
[Illustration: COURT IN THE MEXICO MUSEUM.
NOTE.—The opposite view of the court of the Museum is from Charnay, p.
57. He says: “The Museum cannot be called rich, in so far that there
is nothing remarkable in what the visitor is allowed to see.” The
vases, which had so much deceived Charnay, earlier, as to cause him to
make casts of them for the Paris Museum, he at a later day pronounced
forgeries; and he says that they, with many others which are seen in
public and private museums, were manufactured at Tlatiloco, a Mexican
suburb, between 1820 and 1828. See Holmes on the trade in Mexican
spurious relics in _Science_, 1886.
The reclining statue in the foreground is balanced by one similar to
it at an opposite part of the court-yard. One is the Chac-mool, as Le
Plongeon called it, unearthed by him at Chichen-Itza, and appropriated
by the Mexican government; the other was discovered at Tlaxcala.
The round stone in the centre is the sacrificial stone dug up in the
great square in Mexico, of which an enlarged view is given on another
page.
The museum is described in Bancroft, iv. 554; in Mayer’s _Mexico as it
was_, etc., and his _Mexico, Aztec, etc._; Fossey’s _Mexique_.
On Le Plongeon’s discovery of the Chac-mool see _Amer. Antiq. Soc.
Proc._, Apr., 1877; Oct., 1878, and new series, i. 280; Nadaillac, Eng.
tr., 346; Short, 400; Le Plongeon’s _Sacred Mysteries_, 88, and his
paper in the _Amer. Geog. Soc. Journal_, ix. 142 (1877). Hamy calls
it the Toltec god Tlaloc, the rain-god; and Charnay agrees with him,
giving (pp. 366-7) cuts of his and of the one found at Tlaxcala.]
The ancient Anahuac corresponds mainly to the valley of Mexico
city.[1016] Bancroft (iv. 497) shows in a summary way the extent of
our knowledge of the scant archæological remains within this central
area.[1017]
In the city of Mexico not a single relic of the architecture of the
earlier peoples remains,[1018] though a few movable sculptured objects
are preserved.[1019]
* * * * *
[Illustration: OLD MEXICAN BRIDGE NEAR TEZCUCO.
After a sketch in Tylor’s _Anahuac_, who thinks it the original _Puente
de las Bergantinas_, where Cortes had his brigantines launched. The
span is about 20 feet, and this Tylor thinks “an immense span for such
a construction.” Cf. H. H. Bancroft, _Native Races_, iv. 479, 528.
Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Reports_, ii. 696) doubts its antiquity.]
Tezcuco, on the other side of the lake from Mexico, affords some
traces of the ante-Conquest architecture, but has revealed no
such interesting movable relics as have been found in the capital
city.[1020] Twenty-five miles north of Mexico are the ruins of
Teotihuacan, which have been abundantly described by early writers and
modern explorers. Bancroft (iv. 530) makes up his summary mainly from
a Mexican official account, Ramon Almaraz’s _Memoria de los trabajos
ejecutados por la comision cientifica de Pachuca_ (Mexico, 1865),
adding what was needed to fill out details from Clavigero, Humboldt,
and the later writers.[1021]
Bancroft (iv. ch. 10), in describing what is known of the remains in
the northern parts of Mexico, gives a summary of what has been written
regarding the most famous of these ruins, Quemada in Zacatecas.[1022]
[Illustration: THE INDIO TRISTE.
After a photograph in Bandelier’s _Archæological Tour_, p. 68. He
thinks it was intended to be a bearer of a torch, and has no symbolical
meaning.]
Bancroft (iv. ch. 7) has given a separate chapter to the antiquities
of Oajaca (Oaxaca) and Guerrero, as the most southern of what he
terms the Nahua people, including and lying westerly of the Isthmus
of Tehuantepec, and he speaks of it as a region but little known
to travellers, except as they pass through a part of it lying on
the commercial route from Acapulco to the capital city of Mexico.
Bancroft’s summary, with his references, must suffice for the inquirer
for all except the principal group of ruins in this region, that of
Mitla (or Lyó-Baa), of which a full recapitulation of authorities
may be made, most of which are also to be referred to for the lesser
ruins, though, as Bancroft points out, the information respecting Monte
Alban and Zachila is far from satisfactory. Of Monte Alban, Dupaix and
Charnay are the most important witnesses, and the latter says that
he considers Monte Alban “one of the most precious remains, and very
surely the most ancient of the American civilizations.”[1023] On Dupaix
alone we must depend for what we know of Zachila.
It is, however, of Mitla (sometime Miquitlan, Mictlan) that more
considerable mention must be made, and its ruins, about thirty miles
southerly from Mexico, have been oftenest visited, as they deserve to
be; and we have to regret that Stephens never took them within the
range of his observations. Their demolition had begun during a century
or two previous to the Spanish Conquest, and was not complete even
then. Nature is gloomy, and even repulsive in its desolation about the
ruins;[1024] but a small village still exists among them. The place is
mentioned by Duran[1025] as inhabited about 1450; Motolinía describes
it as still lived in,[1026] and in 1565-74 it had a gobernador of its
own. Burgoa speaks of it in 1644.[1027]
[Illustration: GENERAL PLAN OF MITLA. After Bandelier’s sketch
(_Archæological Tour_, p. 276). KEY:
A, the ruins on the highest ground, with a church and curacy built
into the walls.
B, C, E, are ruins outside the village.
D is within the modern village.
F is beyond the river.]
The earliest of the modern explorers were Luis Martin, a Mexican
architect, and Colonel de la Laguna, who examined the ruins in
1802; and it was from Martin and his drawings that Humboldt drew
the information with which, in 1810, he first engaged the attention
of the general public upon Mitla, in his _Vues des Cordillères_.
Dupaix’s visit was in 1806. The architect Eduard L. Mühlenpfordt,
in his _Versuch einer getreuen Schilderung der Republik Mejico_
(Hannover, 1844, in 2 vols.), says that he made plans and drawings in
1830,[1028] which, passing into the hands of Juan B. Carriedo, were
used by him to illustrate a paper, “Los palacios antiguos de Mitla,”
in the _Ilustracion Mexicana_ (vol. ii.), in which he set forth the
condition of the ruins in 1852. Meanwhile, in 1837, some drawings had
been made, which were twenty years later reproduced in the ninth volume
of the _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, as Brantz Mayer’s
_Observations on Mexican history and archæology, with a special notice
of Zapotec, remains as delineated in Mr. J. G. Sawkins’s drawings of
Mitla, etc._ (Washington, 1857). Bancroft points out (iv. 406) that
the inaccuracies and impossibilities of Sawkins’ drawings are such
as to lead to the conclusion that he pretended to explorations which
he never made, and probably drafted his views from some indefinite
information; and that Mayer was deceived, having no more precise
statements than Humboldt’s by which to test the drawings. Matthieu
Fossey visited the ruins in 1838; but his account in his _Le Méxique_
(Paris, 1857) is found by Bancroft to be mainly a borrowed one. G. F.
von Tempsky’s _Mitla, a narrative of incidents and personal adventure
on a journey in Mexico, Guatemala and Salvador, 1853-1855, edited by
J. S. Bell_ (London, 1858), deceives us by the title into supposing
that considerable attention is given in the book to Mitla, but we
find him spending but a part of a day there in February, 1854 (p.
250). The book is not prized; Bandelier calls it of small scientific
value, and Bancroft says his plates must have been made up from other
sources than his own observations.[1029] Charnay, here, as well as
elsewhere, made for us some important photographs in 1859.[1030] This
kind of illustration received new accessions of value when Emilio
Herbrüger issued a series of thirty-four fine plates as _Album de
Vistas fotográficas de las Antiguas Ruinas de los palacios de Mitla_
(Oaxaca, 1874). In 1864, J. W. von Müller, in his _Reisen in den
Vereinigten Staaten, Canada und Mexico_ (Leipzig, in 3 vols.), included
an account of a visit.[1031] The most careful examination made since
Bancroft summarized existing knowledge is that of Bandelier in his
_Archæological Tour in Mexico in 1881_ (Boston, 1885), published as
no. ii. of the American series of the _Papers of the Archæological
Institute of America_, which is illustrated with heliotypes and sketch
plans of the ruins and architectural details in all their geometrical
symmetry. Bancroft (iv. 392, etc.) could only give a plan of the ruins
based on the sketches of Mühlenpfordt as published by Carriedo, but the
student will find a more careful one[1032] in Bandelier, who also gives
detailed ones of the several buildings (pl. xvii., xviii.)
* * * * *
[Illustration: SACRIFICIAL STONE.
After a photograph in Bandelier’s _Archæological Tour_, p. 67. See on
another page, cut of the court-yard of the Museum, where this stone is
preserved. Cf. Humboldt, pl. xxi.; Bandelier in _Amer. Antiq_., 1878;
Bancroft, iv. 509; Stevens’s _Flint Chips_, 311. There is a discussion
of the stone in Orozco y Berra’s _El Cuauhxicalli de Tizoc_, in the
_Anales del Museo Nacional_, i. no. 1; ii. no. 1. On the sacrificial
stone of San Juan Teotihuacan, see paper by Amos W. Butler in the
_Amer. Antiq_., vii. 148. A cut in Clavigero (ii.) shows how the stone
was used in sacrifices; the engraving has been often copied. In Mrs.
Nuttall’s view this stone simply records the periodical tribute days
(_Am. Ass. Adv. Sci. Proc._, Aug. 1886).]
There is no part of Spanish America richer in architectural remains
than the northern section of Yucatan, and Bancroft (iv. ch. 5) has
occasion to enumerate and to describe with more or less fullness
between fifty and sixty independent groups of ruins.[1033] Stephens
explored forty-four of these abandoned towns, and such was the native
ignorance that of only a few of them could anything be learned
in Merida. And yet that this country was the land of a peculiar
architecture was known to the earliest explorers. Francisco Hernandez
de Cordova in 1517, Juan de Grijalva in 1518, Cortés himself in 1519,
and Francisco de Montejo in 1527 observed the ruins in Cozumel, an
island off the northwest coast of the peninsula, and at other points of
the shore.[1034] It is only, however, within the present century that
we have had any critical notices. Rio heard reports of them merely.
Lorenzo de Zavala saw only Uxmal, as his account given in Dupaix shows.
The earliest detailed descriptions were those of Waldeck in his _Voyage
pittoresque et achéologique dans la province d’Yucatan_ (Paris, 1838,
folio, with steel plates and lithographs), but he also saw little more
than the ruins of Uxmal, in the expedition in which he had received
pecuniary support from Lord Kingsborough.[1035] It is to John L.
Stephens and his accompanying draughtsman, Frederic Catherwood, that
we owe by far the most essential part of our knowledge of the Yucatan
remains. He had begun a survey of Uxmal in 1840, but had made little
progress when the illness of his artist broke up his plans. Accordingly
he gave the world but partial results in his _Incidents of Travel in
Central America_. Not satisfied with his imperfect examination, he
returned to Yucatan in 1841, and in 1843 published at New York the
book which has become the main source of information for all compilers
ever since, his _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_ (N. Y., 1842; London,
1843; again, N. Y., 1856, 1858). It was in the early days of the
Daguerrean process, and Catherwood took with him a camera, from which
his excellent drawings derive some of their fidelity. They appeared in
his own _Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America_ (N. Y., 1844),
on a larger scale than in Stephens’s smaller pages.
[Illustration: WALDECK.
After an etching published in the _Annuaire de la Soc. Amer. de
France_. Cf. _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, October, 1875.]
Stephens’s earlier book had had an almost immediate success. The
reviewers were unanimous in commendation, as they might well be.[1036]
It has been asserted that it was in order to avail of this new
interest that a resident of New Orleans, Mr. B. M. Norman, hastened
to Yucatan, while Stephens was there a second time, and during the
winter of 1841-42 made the trip among the ruins, which is recorded in
his _Rambles in Yucatan, or Notes of Travel through the peninsula,
including a Visit to the Remarkable Ruins of Chi-chen, Kabah Zayi, and
Uxmal_ (New York, 1843).[1037]
The Daguerrean camera was also used by the Baron von Friederichsthal
in his studies at Uxmal and Chichen-Itza, and his exploration seems
to have taken place between the two visits of Stephens, as Bancroft
determines from a letter (April 21, 1841) written after the baron had
started on his return voyage to Europe.[1038] In Paris, in October,
1841, under the introduction of Humboldt, Friederichsthal addressed
the Academy, and his paper was printed in the _Nouvelles Annales
des Voyages_ (xcii. 297) as “Les Monuments de l’Yucatan.”[1039] The
camera was not, however, brought to the aid of the student with the
most satisfactory results till Charnay, in 1858, visited Izamal,
Chichen-Itza, and Uxmal. He gave a foretaste of his results in the
_Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog_. (1861, vol. ii. 364), and in 1863
gave not very extended descriptions, relying mostly on his _Atlas_
of photographs in his _Cités et Ruines Américaines_, a part of which
volume consists of the architectural speculations of Viollet le Duc.
Beside the farther studies of Charnay in his _Anciens Villes du Nouveau
Monde_ (Paris, 1885), there have been recent explorations in Yucatan
by Dr. Augustus Le Plongeon and his wife, mainly at Chichen-Itza,
in which for a while he had the aid and countenance of Mr. Stephen
Salisbury, Jr.,[1040] of Worcester, Mass. Le Plongeon’s results are
decidedly novel and helpful, but they were expressed with more license
of explication than satisfied the committee of that society, when his
papers were referred to them for publication, and than has proved
acceptable to other examiners.[1041] Nearly all other descriptions of
the Yucatan ruins have been derived substantially from these chief
authorities.[1042]
[Illustration: DÉSIRÉ CHARNAY.
Reproduced from an engraving in the
London edition, 1887, of the English translation of his _Ancient Cities
of the New World_.]
The principal ruins of Yucatan are those of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza,
and references to the literature of each will suffice. Those at
Uxmal are in some respects distinct in character from the remains of
Honduras and of Chiapas. There are no idols as at Copan. There are no
extensive stucco-work and no tablets as at Palenqué. The general type
is Cyclopean masonry, faced with dressed stones. The Casa de Monjas,
or nunnery (so called), is often considered the most remarkable ruin
in Central America; and no architectural feature of any of them has
been the subject of more inquiry than the protuberant ornaments in the
cornices, which are usually called elephants’ trunks.[1043] It has been
contended that the place was inhabited in the days of Cortes.[1044]
[Illustration: FROM CHARNAY.
Also in the _Bull. Soc. de Géog. de Paris_, 1882 (p. 542). The best
large (36 × 28 in.) topographical and historical map of Yucatan,
showing the site of ruins, is that of Huebbe and Azuar, 1878. The
_Plano de Yucatan_, of Santiago Nigra de San Martin, also showing the
ruins, 1848, is reduced in Stephen Salisbury’s _Mayas_ (Worcester,
1877), or in the _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1876, and April,
1877. V. A. Malte-Brun’s map, likewise marking the ruins, is in
Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _Palenqué_ (1866). There are maps in C. G.
Fancourt’s _Hist. Yucatan_ (London, 1854); Dupaix’s _Antiquités
Méxicaines_; Waldeck’s _Voyage dans la Yucatan_ (his MS. map was used
by Malte-Brun). Cf. the map of Yucatan and Chiapas, in Brasseur and
Waldeck’s _Monuments Anciens du Méxique_ (1866). Perhaps the most
convenient map to use in the study of Maya antiquities is that in
Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, iv. Cf. Crescentio Carrillo’s “Geografía Maya”
in the _Anales del Museo nacional de México_, ii. 435.
The map in Stephens’s _Yucatan_, vol. i., shows his route among the
ruins, but does not pretend to be accurate for regions off his course.
The _Journal of the Royal Geog. Soc._, vol. xi., has a map showing the
ruins in Central America.
The best map to show at a glance the location of the ruins in the
larger field of Spanish America is in Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, iv.]
The earliest printed account of Uxmal is in Cogolludo’s _Yucathan_
(Madrid, 1688), pp. 176, 193, 197; but it was well into this century
before others were written. Lorenzo de Zavala gave but an outline
account in his _Notice_, printed in Dupaix in 1834. Waldeck (_Voyage
Pitt._ 67, 93) spent eight days there in May, 1835, and Stephens gives
him the credit of being the earliest describer to attract attention.
Stephens’s first visit in 1840 was hasty (_Cent. Amer._, ii. 413), but
on his second visit (1842) he took with him Waldeck’s _Voyage_, and his
description and the drawings of Catherwood were made with the advantage
of having these earlier drawings to compare. Stephens (_Yucatan_,
i. 297) says that their plans and drawings differ materially from
Waldeck’s; but Bancroft, who compares the two, says that Stephens
exaggerated the differences, which are not material, except in a few
plates (Stephens’s _Yucatan_, i. 163; ii. 264—ch. 24, 25). About the
same time Norman and Friederichsthal made their visits. Bancroft
(iv. 150) refers to the lesser narratives of Carillo (1845), and
another, recorded in the _Registro Yucateco_ (i. 273, 361), with Carl
Bartholomæus Heller (April, 1847) in his _Reisen in Mexico_ (Leipzig,
1853). Charnay’s _Ruines_ (p. 362), and his _Anciens Villes_ (ch. 19,
20), record visits in 1858 and later. Brasseur reported upon Uxmal in
1865 in the _Archives de la Com. Scientifique du Méxique_ (ii. 234,
254), and he had already made mention of them in his _Hist. Nations
Civ._, ii. ch. 1.[1045]
[Illustration: RUINED TEMPLE AT UXMAL.
After a cut in Ruge’s _Gesch. des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen_, p. 357.]
The ruins of Chichen-Itza make part of the eastern group of the Yucatan
remains. As was not the case with some of the other principal ruins,
the city in its prime has a record in Maya tradition; it was known in
the days of the Conquest, and has not been lost sight of since,[1046]
though its ruins were not visited by explorers till well within the
present century, the first of whom, according to Stephens, was John
Burke, in 1838. Stephens had heard of them and mentioned them to
Friederichsthal, who was there in 1840 (_Nouv. Annales des Voyages_,
xcii. 300-306). Norman was there in February, 1842 (_Rambles_, 104),
and did not seem aware that any one had been there before him; and
Stephens himself, during the next month (_Yucatan_, ii. 282), made
the best record which we have. Charnay made his observations in 1858
(_Ruines_, 339,—cf. _Anciens Villes_, ch. 18), and gives us nine good
photographs. The latest discoverer is Le Plongeon, whose investigations
were signalized by the finding (1876) of the statue of Chackmool, and
by other notable researches (_Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1877;
October, 1878).[1047]
[Illustration: FROM CHICHEN-ITZA.
After a cut in Squier’s _Serpent Symbol_. There are two of these rings
in the walls of one of the buildings twenty or thirty feet from the
ground. They are four feet in diameter. Cf. Stephens’s _Yucatan_, ii.
304; Bancroft, iv. 230.]
[Illustration: FROM CHICHEN-ITZA.
A bas-relief, one of the best preserved at Chichen-Itza, after a sketch
in Charnay and Viollet-le-Duc’s _Cités et Ruines Américaines_ (Paris,
1863), p. 53, of which Viollet-le-Duc says: “Le profil du guerrier se
rapproche sensiblement les types du Nord de l’Europe.”]
It seems hardly to admit of doubt that the cities—if that be their
proper designation—of Yucatan were the work of the Maya people,
whose descendants were found by the Spaniards in possession of the
peninsula, and that in some cases, like those of Uxmal and Toloom,
their sacred edifices did not cease to be used till some time after
the Spaniards had possessed the country. Such were the conclusions of
Stephens,[1048] the sanest mind that has spent its action upon these
remains; and he tells us that a deed of the region where Uxmal is
situated, which passed in 1673, mentions the daily religious rites
which the natives were then celebrating there, and speaks of the
swinging doors and cisterns then in use. The abandonment of one of the
buildings, at least, is brought down to within about two centuries,
and comparisons of Catherwood’s drawings with the descriptions of
more recent explorers, by showing a very marked deterioration within
a comparatively few years, enable us easily to understand how the
piercing roots of a rapidly growing vegetation can make a greater havoc
in a century than will occur in temperate climates. The preservation
of paint on the walls, and of wooden lintels in some places, also
induce a belief that no great time, such as would imply an extinct
race of builders, is necessary to account for the present condition
of the ruins, and we must always remember how the Spaniards used them
as quarries for building their neighboring towns. How long these
habitations and shrines stood in their perfection is a question
about which archæologists have had many and diverse estimates,
ranging from hundreds to thousands of years. There is nothing in the
ruins themselves to settle the question, beyond a study of their
construction. So far as the traditionary history of the Mayas can
determine, some of them may have been built between the third and the
tenth century.[1049]
* * * * *
We come now to Chiapas. The age of the ruins of Palenqué[1050] can
only be conjectured, and very indefinitely, though perhaps there
is not much risk in saying that they represent some of the oldest
architectural structures known in the New World, and were very likely
abandoned three or four centuries before the coming of the Spaniards.
Still, any confident statement is unwise. Perhaps there may be some
fitness in Brasseur’s belief that the stucco additions and roofs were
the work of a later people than those who laid the foundations.[1051]
Bancroft (iv. 289) has given the fullest account of the literature
describing these ruins. They seem to have been first found in 1750,
or a few years before. The report reaching Ramon de Ordoñez, then a
boy, was not forgotten by him, and prompted him to send his brother in
1773 to explore them. Among the manuscripts in the Brasseur Collection
(_Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 113; Pinart, no. 695) are a _Memoria relativa à
las ruinas... de Palenqué_, and _Notas de Chiapas y Palenqué_, which
are supposed to be the record of this exploration written by Ramon,
as copied from the original in the Museo Nacional, and which, in part
at least, constituted the report which Ramon made in 1784 to the
president of the Audiencia Real. Ramon’s view was that he had hit upon
the land of Ophir, and the country visited by the Phœnicians. This
same president now directed José Antonio Calderon to visit the ruins,
and we have his “Informe” translated in Brasseur’s _Palenqué_ (introd.
p. 5). From February to June of 1785, Antonio Benasconi, the royal
architect of Guatemala, inspected the ruins under similar orders. His
report, as well as the preceding one, with the accompanying drawings,
were dispatched to Spain, where J. B. Muñoz made a summary of them for
the king. I do not find any of them have been printed. The result of
the royal interest in the matter was, that Antonio del Rio was next
commissioned to make a more thorough survey, which he accomplished
(May-June, 1787) with the aid of a band of natives to fell the trees
and fire the rubbish. He broke through the walls in a reckless way,
that added greatly to the devastation of years. Rio’s report, dated
at Palenqué June 24, 1787, was published first in 1855, in the
_Diccionario Univ. de Geog._, viii. 528.[1052] Meanwhile, beside the
copy of the manuscript sent to Spain, other manuscripts were kept in
Guatemala and Mexico; and one of these falling into the hands of a Dr.
M’Quy, was taken to England and translated under the title _Description
of the Ruins of an Ancient City discovered near Palenque in Guatemala,
Spanish America, translated from the Original MS. Report of Capt.
Don A. Del Rio; followed by Teatro Critico Americano, or a Critical
Investigation and Research into the History of the Americans, by Doctor
Felix Cabrera_ (London, 1822).[1053]
[Illustration: A RESTORATION BY VIOLLET-LE-DUC.
From _Histoire de l’Habitation Humaine, par Viollet-le-Duc_ (Paris,
1875). There is a restoration of the Palenqué palace—so called—in
Armin’s _Das heutige Mexico_ (copied in Short, 342, and Bancroft, iv.
323).]
The results of the explorations of Dupaix, made early in the present
century by order of Carlos IV. of Spain, long remained unpublished. His
report and the drawings of Castañeda lay uncared for in the Mexican
archives during the period of the Revolution. Latour Allard, of Paris,
obtained copies of some of the drawings, and from these Kingsborough
got copies, which he engraved for his _Mexican Antiquities_, in which
Dupaix’s report was also printed in Spanish and English (vols. iv.,
v., vi.). It is not quite certain whether the originals or copies
were delivered (1828) by the Mexican authorities to Baradère, who
a few years later secured their publication with additional matter
as _Antiquités méxicaines_. _Relation des trois expéditions du
capitaine Dupaix, ordonnées en 1805, 1806 et 1807, pour la recherche
des antiquités du pays, notamment celles de Mitla et de Palenque;
accompagnée des dessins de Castañeda, et d’une carte du pays exploré;
suivie d’un parallèle de ces monuments avec ceux de l’Égypte, de
l’Indostan, et du reste de l’ancien monde par Alexandre Lenoir; d’une
dissertation sur l’origine de l’ancienne population des deux Amériques
par [D. B.] Warden; avec un discours préliminaire par. M. Charles
Farcy, et des notes explicatives, et autres documents par MM. Baradère,
de St. Priest [etc.]._ (Paris 1834, texte et atlas.)[1054] The plates
of this edition are superior to those in Kingsborough and in Rio; and
are indeed improved in the engraving over Castañeda’s drawings. The
book as a whole is one of the most important on Palenqué which we have.
The investigations were made on his third expedition (1807-8). A tablet
taken from the ruins by him is in the Museo Nacional, and a cast of it
is figured in the _Numis. and Antiq. Soc. of Philad. Proc._, Dec. 4,
1884.
During the twenty-five years next following Dupaix, we find two
correspondents of the French and English Geographical Societies
supplying their publications with occasional accounts of their
observations among the ruins. One of them, Dr. F. Corroy,[1055] was
then living at Tabasco; the other, Col. Juan Gallindo,[1056] was
resident in the country as an administrative officer.
[Illustration: SCULPTURES, TEMPLE OF THE CROSS, PALENQUÉ.
These slabs, six feet high, were taken from Palenqué, and when Stephens
saw them they were in private hands at San Domingo, near by, but later
they were placed in the church front in the same town, and here Charnay
took impressions of them, from which they were engraved in _The Ancient
Cities_, etc., p. 217, and copied thence in the above cuts. This same
type of head is considered by Rosny the Aztec head of Palenqué (_Doc.
écrits de la Antiq. Amer._, 73), and as belonging to the superior
classes. In order to secure the convex curve of the nose and forehead
an ornament was sometimes added, as shown in a head of the second
tablet at Palenqué, and in the photograph of a bas-relief, preserved
in the Museo Archeologico at Madrid, given by Rosny (vol. 3), and
hypothetically called by him a statue of Cuculkan. This ornament is not
infrequently seen in other images of this region.
Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Repts._, ii. 126), speaking of the tablet of
the Cross of Palenqué, says: “These tablets and figures show in dress
such a striking analogy of what we know of the military accoutrements
of the Mexicans, that it is a strong approach to identity.”]
Fréderic de Waldeck, the artist who some years before had familiarized
himself with the character of the ruins in the preparation of the
engravings for Rio’s work, was employed in 1832-34. He was now
considerably over sixty years of age, and under the pay of a committee,
which had raised a subscription, in which the Mexican government
shared. He made the most thorough examination of Palenqué which has
yet been made. Waldeck was a skilful artist, and his drawings are
exquisite; but he was not free from a tendency to improve or restore,
where the conditions gave a hint, and so as we have them in the final
publication they have not been accepted as wholly trustworthy. He made
more than 200 drawings, and either the originals or copies—Stephens
says “copies,” the originals being confiscated—were taken to Europe.
Waldeck announced his book in Paris, and the public had already had a
taste of his not very sober views in some communications which he had
sent in Aug. and Nov., 1832, to the Société de Géographie de Paris.
Long years of delay followed, and Waldeck had lived to be over ninety,
when the French government bought his collection[1057] (in 1860), and
made preparations for its publication. Out of the 188 drawings thus
secured, 56 were selected and were admirably engraved, and only that
portion of Waldeck’s text was preserved which was purely descriptive,
and not all of that. Selection was made of Brasseur de Bourbourg,
who at that time had never visited the ruins,[1058] to furnish
some introductory matter. This he prepared in an _Avant-propos_,
recapitulating the progress of such studies; and this was followed
by an _Introduction aux Ruines de Palenqué_, narrating the course of
explorations up to that time; a section also published separately
as _Recherches sur les Ruines de Palenqué et sur les origines de
la civilisation du Méxique_ (Paris, 1886), and finally Waldeck’s
own _Description des Ruines_, followed by the plates, most of which
relate to Palenqué. Thus composed, a large volume was published under
the general title of _Monuments anciens du Méxique_. _Palenqué et
autres ruines de l’ancienne civilisation du Méxique. Collection de
vues [etc.], cartes et plans dessinés d’après nature et relevés par
M. de Waldeck. Texte rédigé par M. Brasseur de Bourbourg._ (Paris,
1864-1866.)[1059] While Waldeck’s results were still unpublished the
ruins of Palenqué were brought most effectively to the attention of the
English reader in the _Travels in Central America_ (vol. ii. ch. 17) of
Stephens, which was illustrated by the drawings of Catherwood,[1060]
since famous. These better cover the field, and are more exact than
those of Dupaix.
[Illustration: PLAN OF COPAN (RUINS AND VILLAGE).
From _The Stone Sculptures of Copán and Quiriguá_ (N. Y., 1883) of Meye
and Schmidt.]
Bancroft refers to an anonymous account in the _Registro Yucateco_ (i.
318). One of the most intelligent of the later travellers is Arthur
Morelet, who privately printed his _Voyage dans l’Amérique Central,
Cuba et le Yucatan_, which includes an account of a fortnight’s stay
at Palenqué. His results would be difficult of access except that
Mrs. M. F. Squier, with an introduction by E. G. Squier, published a
translation of that part of it relating to the main land as _Travels
in Central America, including accounts of regions unexplored since the
Conquest_ (N. Y., 1871).[1061]
Désiré Charnay was the first to bring photography to the aid of the
student when he visited Palenqué in 1858, and his plates forming the
folio atlas accompanying his _Cités et Ruines Américaines_ (1863), pp.
72, 411, are, as Bancroft (iv. 293) points out, of interest to enable
us to test the drawings of preceding delineators, and to show how time
had acted on the ruins since the visit of Stephens. His later results
are recorded in his _Les anciennes villes du Nouveau Monde_ (Paris,
1885).[1062]
[Illustration: YUCATAN TYPES.
Given by Rosny, _Doc. Écrits de la Antiq. Amér._, p. 73, as types
of the short-headed race which preceded the Aztec occupation. They
are from sculptures at Copan. Cf. Stephens’s _Cent. America_, i. 139;
Bancroft, iv. 101.]
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE RUINS OF QUIRIGUA.
From Meye and Schmidt’s _Stone Sculptures of Copán and Quiriguá_ (N.
Y., 1883).]
There have been only two statues found at Palenqué, in connection
with the T emple of the Cross,[1063] but the considerable number of
carved figures discovered at Copan,[1064] as well as the general
impression that these latter ruins are the oldest on the American
continent,[1065] have made in some respects these most celebrated of
the Honduras remains more interesting than those of Chiapas. It is now
generally agreed that the ruins of Copan[1066] do not represent the
town called Copan, assaulted and captured by Hernando de Choves in
1530, though the identity of names has induced some writers to claim
that these ruins were inhabited when the Spaniards came.[1067] The
earliest account of them which we have is that in Palacio’s letter
to Felipe II., written (1576) hardly more than a generation after
the Conquest, and showing that the ruins then were much in the same
condition as later described.[1068] The next account is that of Fuentes
y Guzman’s _Historia de Guatemala_ (1689), now accessible in the Madrid
edition of 1882; but for a long time only known in the citation in
Juarros’ _Guatemala_ (p. 56), and through those who had copied from
Juarros.[1069] His account is brief, speaks of Castilian costumes,
and is otherwise so enigmatical that Brasseur calls it mendacious.
Colonel Galindo, in visiting the ruins in 1836, confounded them with
the Copan of the Conquest.[1070] The ruins also came Under the scrutiny
of Stephens in 1839, and they were described by him, and drawn by
Catherwood, for the first time with any fullness and care, in their
respective works.[1071]
* * * * *
Always associated with Copan, and perhaps even older, if the lower
relief of the carvings can bear that interpretation, are the ruins
near the village of Quiriguá, in Guatemala, and known by that name.
Catherwood first brought them into notice;[1072] but the visit of
Karl Scherzer in 1854 produced the most extensive account of them
which we have, in his _Ein Besuch bei den Ruinen von Quiriguá_ (Wien,
1855).[1073]
* * * * *
The principal explorers of Nicaragua have been Ephraim George Squier,
in his _Nicaragua_,[1074] and Frederick Boyle, in his _Ride across
a Continent_ (Lond. 1868),[1075] and their results, as well as the
scattered data of others,[1076] are best epitomized in Bancroft
(iv. ch. 2), who gives other references to second-hand descriptions
(p. 29). Since Bancroft’s survey there have been a few important
contributions.[1077]
III. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE PICTURE-WRITING OF THE NAHUAS AND
MAYAS.
IN considering the methods of record and communication used by these
peoples, we must keep in mind the two distinct systems of the Aztecs
and the Mayas;[1078] and further, particularly as regards the former,
we must not forget that some of these writings were made after the
Conquest, and were influenced in some degree by Spanish associations.
Of this last class were land titles and catechisms, for the native
system obtained for some time as a useful method with the conquerors
for recording the transmission of lands and helping the instruction by
the priests.[1079]
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF A PART OF LANDA’S MS.
After a fac-simile in the _Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France, nouv.
ser._, ii. 34. (Cf. pl. xix. of Rosny’s _Essai sur le déchiffrement_,
etc.) It is a copy, not the original, of Landa’s text, but a nearly
contemporary one (made thirty years after Landa’s death), and the only
one known.]
It is usual in tracing the development of a hieroglyphic system to
advance from a purely figurative one—in which pictures of objects are
used—through a symbolic phase; in which such pictures are interpreted
conventionally instead of realistically. It was to this last stage
that the Aztecs had advanced; but they mingled the two methods, and
apparently varied in the order of reading, whether by lines or columns,
forwards, upwards, or backwards. The difficulty of understanding them
is further increased by the same object holding different meanings
in different connections, and still more by the personal element, or
writer’s style, as we should call it, which was impressed on his choice
of objects and emblems.[1080] This rendered interpretation by no means
easy to the aborigines themselves, and we have statements that when
native documents were referred to them it required sometimes long
consultations to reach a common understanding.[1081] The additional
step by which objects stand for sounds, the Aztecs seem not to have
taken, except in the names of persons and places, in which they
understood the modern child’s art of the rebus, where such symbol
more or less clearly stands for a syllable, and the representation
was usually of conventionalized forms, somewhat like the art of the
European herald. Thus the Aztec system was what Daniel Wilson[1082]
calls “the pictorial suggestion of associated ideas.”[1083] The
phonetic scale, if not comprehended in the Aztec system, made an
essential part of the Maya hieroglyphics, and this was the great
distinctive feature of the latter, as we learn from the early
descriptions,[1084] and from the alphabet which Landa has preserved
for us. It is not only in the codices or books of the Mayas that their
writing is preserved to us, but in the inscriptions of their carved
architectural remains.[1085]
[Illustration
NOTE—This representation of Yucatan hieroglyphics is a reduction of
pl. i. in Léon de Rosny’s _Essai sur le déchiffrement de l’écriture
hiératique de l’Amérique Centrale_, Paris, 1876. Cf. Bancroft, iv. 92;
Short, 405.]
When the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg found, in 1863, in the library
of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, the MS. of Landa’s
_Relacion_, and discovered in it what purported to be a key to the
Maya alphabet, there were hopes that the interpretation of the
Maya books and inscriptions was not far off. Twenty-five years,
however, has not seen the progress that was wished for; and if we
may believe Valentini, the alphabet of Landa is a pure fabrication
of the bishop himself;[1086] and even some of those who account it
genuine, like Le Plongeon, hold that it is inadequate in dealing
with the older Maya inscriptions.[1087] Cyrus Thomas speaks of this
alphabet as simply an attempt of the bishop to pick out of compound
characters their simple elements on the supposition that something
like phonetic representations would be the result.[1088] Landa’s own
description[1089] of the alphabet accompanying his graphic key[1090] is
very unsatisfactory, not to say incomprehensible. Brasseur has tried
to render it in French, and Bancroft in English; but it remains a
difficult problem to interpret it intelligibly.
Brasseur very soon set himself the task of interpreting the Troano
manuscript by the aid of this key, and he soon had the opportunity
of giving his interpretation to the public when the Emperor Napoleon
III. ordered that codex to be printed in the sumptuous manner of the
imperial press.[1091] The efforts of Brasseur met with hardly a sign of
approval. Léon de Rosny criticised him,[1092] and Dr. Brinton found in
his results nothing to commend.[1093]
No one has approached the question of interpreting these Maya writings
with more careful scrutiny than Léon de Rosny, who first attracted
attention with his comparative study, _Les écritures figuratives et
hiéroglyphiques des différens peuples anciens et moderns_ (Paris,
1860; again, 1870, augmentée). From 1869 to 1871 he published at
Paris four parts of _Archives paléographiques de l’Orient et de
l’Amérique, publiées avec des notices historiques et philologiques_,
in which he included several studies of the native writings, and gave
a bibliography (pp. 101-115) of American paleography up to that time.
His _L’interprétation des anciens textes Mayas_ made part of the first
volume of the _Archives de la Soc. Américaine de France_ (new series).
His chief work, making the second volume of the same, is his _Essai
sur le déchiffrement de l’écriture hiératique de l’Amérique Central_
(Paris, 1876), and it is the most thorough examination of the problem
yet made.[1094] The last part (4th) was published in 1878, and a
Spanish translation appeared in 1881.
[Illustration: PALENQUÉ HIEROGLYPHICS.
After a cut in Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, ii. p. 63. It is also given
in Bancroft (iv. 355), and others. It is from the Tablet of the Cross.]
Wm. Bollaert, who had paid some attention to the paleography of
America,[1095] was one of the earliest in England to examine Brasseur’s
work on Landa, which he did in a memoir read before the Anthropological
Society,[1096] and later in an “Examination of the Central American
hieroglyphs by the recently discovered Maya alphabet.”[1097]
Brinton[1098] calls his conclusions fanciful, and Le Plongeon claims
that the inscription in Stephens, which Bollaert worked upon, is
inaccurately given, and that Bollaert’s results were nonsense.[1099]
Hyacinthe de Charency’s efforts have hardly been more successful,
though he attempted the use of Landa’s alphabet with something like
scientific care. He examined a small part of the inscription of the
Palenqué tablet of the Cross in his _Essai de déchiffrement d’un
fragment d’inscription palenquéene_.[1100]
Dr. Brinton translated Charency’s results, and, adding Landa’s
alphabet, published his _Ancient phonetic alphabet of Yucatan_ (N. Y.,
1870), a small tract.[1101] His continued studies were manifest in the
introduction on “The graphic system and the ancient records of the
Mayas” to Cyrus Thomas’s _Manuscript Troano_.[1102] In this paper Dr.
Brinton traces the history of the attempts which have thus far been
made in solving this perplexing problem.[1103] The latest application
of the scientific spirit is that of the astronomer E. S. Holden, who
sought to eliminate the probabilities of recurrent signs by the usual
mathematical methods of resolving systems of modern cipher.[1104]
* * * * *
There are few examples of the aboriginal ideographic writings left
to us. Their fewness is usually charged to the destruction which was
publicly made of them under the domination of the Church in the years
following the Conquest.[1105] The alleged agents in this demolition
were Bishop Landa, in 1562, at Mani, in Yucatan,[1106] and Bishop
Zumárraga at Tlatelalco, or, as some say, at Tezcuco, in Mexico.[1107]
Peter Martyr[1108] has told us something of the records as he saw
them, and we know also from him, and from their subsequent discovery
in European collections, that some examples of them were early taken
to the Old World. We have further knowledge of them from Las Casas
and from Landa himself.[1109] There have been efforts made of late
years by Icazbalceta and Canon Carrillo to mitigate the severity of
judgment, particularly as respects Zumárraga.[1110] The first, and
indeed the only attempt that has been made to bring together for mutual
illustration all that was known of these manuscripts which escaped
the fire,[1111] was in the great work of the Viscount Kingsborough
(b. 1795, d. 1837). It was while, as Edward King, he was a student
at Oxford that this nobleman’s passion for Mexican antiquities was
first roused by seeing an original Aztec pictograph, described by
Purchas (_Pilgrimes_, vol. iii.), and preserved in the Bodleian. In the
studies to which this led he was assisted by some special scholars,
including Obadiah Rich, who searched for him in Spain in 1830 and
1832, and who after Kingsborough’s death obtained a large part of the
manuscript collections which that nobleman had amassed (_Catalogue of
the Sale_, Dublin, 1842). Many of the Kingsborough manuscripts passed
into the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps (_Catalogue_, no. 404),
but the correspondence pertaining to Kingsborough’s life-work seems
to have disappeared. Phillipps had been one of the main encouragers
of Kingsborough in his undertaking.[1112] Kingsborough, who had spent
£30,000 on his undertaking, had a business dispute with the merchants
who furnished the printing-paper, and he was by them thrown into jail
as a debtor, and died in confinement.[1113]
[Illustration: LÉON DE ROSNY.
After a photogravure in _Les Documents écrits de l’antiquité
Américaine_ (Paris, 1882). Cf. cut in _Mém. de la Soc. d’Ethnographie_
(1887), xiii. p. 71.]
Kingsborough’s great work, the most sumptuous yet bestowed upon
Mexican archæology, was published between 1830 and 1848, there being
an interval of seventeen years between the seventh and eighth volumes.
The original intention seems to have embraced ten volumes, for the
final section of the ninth volume is signatured as for a tenth.[1114]
The work is called: _Antiquities of Mexico; comprising facsimiles of
Ancient Mexican Paintings and Hieroglyphics, preserved in the Royal
Libraries of Paris, Berlin, and Dresden; in the Imperial Library of
Vienna; in the Vatican Library; in the Borgian Museum at Rome; in
the Library of the Institute of Bologna; and in the Bodleian Library
at Oxford; together with the Monuments of New Spain, by M. Dupaix;
illustrated by many valuable inedited MSS_. With the theory maintained
by Kingsborough throughout the work, that the Jews were the first
colonizers of the country, we have nothing to do here; but as the
earliest and as yet the largest repository of hieroglyphic material,
the book needs to be examined. The compiler states where he found his
MSS., but he gives nothing of their history, though something more
is now known of their descent. Peter Martyr speaks of the number of
Mexican MSS. which had in his day been taken to Spain, and Prescott
remarks it as strange that not a single one given by Kingsborough
was found in that country. There are, however, some to be seen there
now.[1115] Comparisons which have been made of Kingsborough’s plates
show that they are not inexact; but they almost necessarily lack the
validity that the modern photographic processes give to facsimiles.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF PLATE XXV OF THE DRESDEN CODEX.
From Cyrus Thomas’s _Manuscript Troano_.]
Kingsborough’s first volume opens with a fac-simile of what is
usually called the _Codex Mendoza_, preserved in the Bodleian. It is,
however, a contemporary copy on European paper of an original now lost,
which was sent by the Viceroy Mendoza to Charles V. Another copy made
part of the Boturini collection, and from this Lorenzana[1116] engraved
that portion of it which consists of tribute-rolls. The story told
of the fate of the original is, that on its passage to Europe it was
captured by a French cruiser and taken to Paris, where it was bought
by the chaplain of the English embassy, the antiquary Purchas, who
has engraved it.[1117] It was then lost sight of, and if Prescott’s
inference is correct it was not the original, but the Bodleian copy,
which came into Purchas’ hands.[1118]
Beside the tribute-rolls,[1119] which make one part of it, the MS.
covers the civil history of the Mexicans, with a third part on the
discipline and economy of the people, which renders it of so much
importance in an archæological sense.[1120] The second reproduction
in Kingsborough’s first volume is what he calls the _Codex
Telleriano-Remensis_, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris,
and formerly owned by M. Le Tellier.[1121] The rest of this initial
volume is made up of facsimiles of Mexican hieroglyphics and paintings,
from the Boturini and Selden collections, which last is in the Bodleian.
The second Kingsborough volume opens with a reproduction of the _Codex
Vaticanus_ (the explanation[1122] is in volume vi.), which is in the
library of the Vatican, and it is known to have been copied in Mexico
by Pedro de los Rios in 1566. It is partly historical and partly
mythological.[1123] The rest of this volume is made up of facsimiles of
other manuscripts,—one given to the Bodleian by Archbishop Laud, others
at Bologna,[1124] Vienna,[1125] and Berlin.
The third volume reproduces one belonging to the Borgian Museum at
Rome, written on skin, and thought to be a ritual and astrological
almanac. This is accompanied by a commentary by Frabega.[1126]
Kingsborough gives but a single Maya MS., and this is in his third
volume, and stands with him as an Aztec production. This is the
_Dresden Codex_, not very exactly rendered, which is preserved in the
royal library in that city, for which it was bought by Götz,[1127] at
Vienna, in 1739. Prescott (i. 107) seemed to recognize its difference
from the Aztec MSS., without knowing precisely how to class it.[1128]
Brasseur de Bourbourg calls it a religious and astrological ritual. It
is in two sections, and it is not certain that they belong together.
In 1880 it was reproduced at Dresden by polychromatic photography
(Chromo-Lichtdruck), as the process is called, under the editing of
Dr. E. Förstemann, who in an introduction describes it as composed of
thirty-nine oblong sheets folded together like a fan. They are made of
the bark of a tree, and covered with varnish. Thirty-five have drawings
and hieroglyphics on both sides; the other four on one side only. It is
now preserved between glass to prevent handling, and both sides can be
examined. Some progress has been made, it is professed, in deciphering
its meaning, and it is supposed to contain “records of a mythic,
historic, and ritualistic character.”[1129]
Another script in Kingsborough, perhaps a Tezcucan MS., though having
some Maya affinities, is the _Fejérvary Codex_, then preserved in
Hungary, and lately owned by Mayer, of Liverpool.[1130]
Three other Maya manuscripts have been brought to light since
Kingsborough’s day, to say nothing of three others said to be in
private hands, and not described.[1131] Of these, the _Codex Troano_
has been the subject of much study. It is the property of a Madrid
gentleman, Don Juan Tro y Ortolano, and the title given to the
manuscript has been somewhat fantastically formed from his name by the
Abbé Etienne Charles Brasseur de Bourbourg, who was instrumental in its
recognition about 1865 or 1866, and who edited a sumptuous two-volume
folio edition with chromo-lithographic plates.[1132]
[Illustration: CODEX CORTESIANUS.
From a fac-simile in the _Archives de la Société Américaine de France,
nouv. ser._, ii. 30.]
[Illustration: CODEX PEREZIANUS.
One of the leaves of a MS. No. 2, in the Bibliothèque Nationale,
Paris, following the fac-simile (pl. 124) in Léon de Rosny’s _Archives
paléographiques_ (Paris, 1869).]
While Léon de Rosny was preparing his _Essai sur le déchiffrement
de l’Ecriture hiératique_ (1876), a Maya manuscript was offered to
the Bibliothèque Impériale in Paris and declined, because the price
demanded was too high. Photographic copies of two of its leaves had
been submitted, and one of these is given by Rosny in the _Essai_ (pl.
xi.). The Spanish government finally bought the MS., which, because
it was supposed to have once belonged to Cortes, is now known as the
_Codex Cortesianus_. Rosny afterwards saw it and studied it in the
Museo Archeológico at Madrid, as he makes known in his _Doc. Ecrits
de la Antiq. Amér._, p. 79, where he points out the complementary
character of one of its leaves with another of the MS. Troano, showing
them to belong together, and gives photographs of the two (pl. v. vi.),
as well as of other leaves (pl. 8 and 9). The part of this codex of a
calendar character (Tableau des Bacab) is reproduced from Rosny’s plate
by Cyrus Thomas[1133] in an essay in the _Third Report of the Bureau of
Ethnology_, together with an attempted restoration of the plate, which
is obscure in parts. Finally a small edition (85 copies) of the entire
MS. was published at Paris in 1883.[1134]
The last of the Maya MSS. recently brought to light is sometimes cited
as the _Codex Perezianus_, because the paper in which it was wrapped,
when recognized in 1859 by Rosny,[1135] bore the name “Perez”; and
sometimes designated as Codex Mexicanus, or Manuscrit Yucatèque No. 2,
of the National Library at Paris. It was a few years later published
as _Manuscrit dit Méxicain No. 2 de la Bibliothèque Impériale,
photographié par ordre de S. E. M. Duruy, ministre de l’instruction
publique_ (Paris, 1864, in folio, 50 copies). The original is a
fragment of eleven leaves, and Brasseur[1136] speaks of it as the most
beautiful of all the MSS. in execution, but the one which has suffered
the most from time and usage.[1137]
[Illustration
NOTE.—This Yucatan bas-relief follows a photograph by Rosny (1880),
reproduced in the _Mém. de la Soc. d’Ethnographie_, no. 3 (Paris,
1882).]