[790] Sometimes it is said they came from the Antilles, or beyond,
easterly, and that an off-shoot of the same people appeared to the
early French, explorers as the Natchez Indians. We have, of course,
offered to us a choice of theories in the belief that the Maya
civilization came from the westward by the island route from Asia. This
misty history is nothing without alternatives, and there are a plenty
of writers who dogmatize about them.
[791] _Constituciones diocesanas del obispado de Chiappas_ (Rome, 1702).
[792] _Nat. Races_, v. 160.
[793] _Hist. Nations Civilisées_, i. 37, 150, etc. _Popul Vuh_,
introd., sec. v. Bancroft relates the Votan myth, with references, in
_Nat. Races_, iii. 450. Brasseur identifies the Votanites with the
Colhuas, as the builders of Palenqué, the founders of Xibalba, and
thinks a branch of them wandered south to Peru. There are some stories
of even pre-Votan days, under Igh and Imox. Cf. H. De Charency’s “Myth
d’Imos,” in the _Annales de philosophie Chrétienne_, 1872-73, and
references in Bancroft, v. 164, 231.
[794] _Native Races_, ii. 121, etc.
[795] Bancroft (v. 236) points to Bradford, Squier, Tylor,
Viollet-le-Duc, Bartlett, and Müller, with Brasseur in a qualified way,
as in the main agreeing in this early disjointing of the Nashua stock,
by which the Maya was formed through separation from the older race.
[796] Enforced, for instance, by one of the best of the later Mexican
writers, Orozco y Berra, in his _Geografía de las lenguas y Carta
Ethnografica de México_ (Mexico, 1865).
[797] Tylor, _Anahuac_, 189, and his _Early Hist. Mankind_, 184. Orozco
y Berra, _Geog._, 124. Bancroft, v. 169, note. The word Maya was first
heard by Columbus in his fourth voyage, 1503-4. We sometimes find it
written Mayab. It is usual to class the people of Yucatan, and even
the Quiché-Cakchiquels of Guatemala and those of Nicaragua, under the
comprehensive term of Maya, as distinct from the Nahua people farther
north.
[798] _Nat. Races_, v. 186.
[799] Brinton, with his view of myths, speaks of the attempt of the
Abbé Brasseur to make Xibalba an ancient kingdom, with Palenqué as its
capital, as utterly unsupported and wildly hypothetical (_Myths_, 251).
[800] Perhaps by Gucumatz (who is identified by some with
Quetzalcoatl), leading the Tzequiles, who are said to have appeared
from somewhere during one of Votan’s absences, and to have grown into
power among the Chanes, or Votan’s people, till they made Tulan, where
they lived, too powerful for the Votanites. Bancroft (v. 187) holds
this view against Brasseur.
[801] Perhaps Ococingo, or Copan, as Bancroft conjectures (v. 187).
[802] As Sahagún calls it, meaning, as Bancroft suggests, Tabasco.
[803] Short (p. 248) points out that the linguistic researches of
Orozco y Berra (_Geografía de las Lenguas de México_, 1-76) seem to
confirm this.
[804] See p. 158.
[805] Kirk says (Prescott’s _Mexico_): “Confusion arises from the name
of Chichimec, originally that of a single tribe, and subsequently of
its many offshoots, being also used to designate successive hordes of
whatever race.” Some have seen in the Waiknas of the Mosquito Coast,
and in the Caribs generally, descendants of these Chichimecs who have
kept to their old social level. The Caribs, on other authority, came
originally from the stock of the Tupis and Guaranis, who occupied
the region south of the Amazon, and in Columbus’s time they were
scattered in Darien and Honduras, along the northern regions of South
America, and in some of the Antilles (Von Martius, _Beiträge sur
Ethnographie and Sprachenkunde Amerika’s zumal Brasilìens_, Leipzig,
1867). Bancroft (ii. 126) gives the etymology of Chichimec and of other
tribal designations. Cf. Buschmann’s _Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen_
(Berlin, 1853). Bandelier (_Archæol. Tour_, 200; _Peabody Mus. Repts._,
ii. 393) says he fails to discover in the word anything more than a
general term, signifying a savage, a hunter, or a warrior, Chichimecos,
applied to roving tribes. Brasseur says that Mexican tradition applies
the term Chichimecs generically to the first occupants of the New World.
[806] These names wander and exchange consonants provokingly, and it
may be enough to give alphabetically a list comprised of those in
Prichard (_Nat. Hist. Man_) and Orozco y Berra (_Geografía_), with
some help from Gallatin in the _American Ethno. Soc. Trans._, i.,
and other groupers of the ethnological traces: Chinantecs, Chatinos,
Cohuixcas, Chontales, Colhuas, Coras, Cuitatecs, Chichimecs, Cuextecas
(Guaxtecas, Huastecs), Mazetecs, Mazahuas, Michinacas, Miztecs,
Nonohualcas, Olmecs, Otomís, Papabucos, Quinames, Soltecos, Totonacs,
Triquis, Tepanecs, Tarascos, Xicalancas, Zapotecs. It is not unlikely
the same people may be here mentioned under different names. The
diversity of opinions respecting the future of these vapory existences
is seen in Bancroft’s collation (v. 202). Torquemada tells us about all
that we know of the Totonacs, who claim to have been the builders of
Teotihuacan. Bancroft gives references (v. 204) for the Totonacs, (p.
206) for the Otomís, (p. 207) for the Mistecs and Zapotecs, and (p.
208) for the Huastecs.
[807] Bancroft, ii. 97. Brasseur, _Nat. Civ._, i. ch. 4, and his
_Palenqué_ ch. 3.
[808] Called Huehue-Tlapallan, as Brasseur would have it.
[809] Following Motolinía and other early writers.
[810] _Native Races_, v. 219, 616.
[811] Bandelier, _Archæol. Tour_, 253.
[812] Kingsborough, ix. 206, 460; Veytia, i. 155, 163. Of the
Quetzalcoatl myth there are references elsewhere. P. J. J. Valentini
has made a study of the early Mexican ethnology and history in his
“Olmecas and Tultecas,” translated by S. Salisbury, Jr., and printed
in the _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, Oct. 21, 1882. On Quetzalcoatl in
Cholula, see Torquemada, translated in Bancroft, iii. 258.
[813] This wide difference covers intervening centuries, each of which
has its advocates. Short carries their coming back to the fourth
century (p. 245), but Clavigero’s date of A.D. 544 is more commonly
followed. Veytia makes it the seventh century. Bancroft (v. 211, 214)
notes the diversity of views.
[814] Bancroft (v. 322) in a long note collates the different
statements of the routes and sojourns in this migration. Cf. Short, p.
259.
[815] Cf. Kirk in Prescott, i. 10. It must be confessed that it is
rather in the domain of myth than of history that we must place all
that has been written about the scattering of the Toltec people at
Babel (Bancroft, v. 19), and their finally reaching Huehue-Tlapallan,
wherever that may have been. The view long prevalent about this
American starting-point of the Nahuas, Toltecs, or whatever designation
may be given to the beginners of this myth and history, placed it in
California, but some later writers think it worth while to give it a
geographical existence in the Mississippi Valley, and to associate
it in some vague way with the moundbuilders and their works (Short,
_No. Amer. of Antiq._, 251, 253). There is some confusion between
Huehue-Tlapallan of this story and the Tlapallan noticed in the Spanish
conquest time, which was somewhere in the Usumacinta region, and if we
accept Tollan, Tullan, or Tula as a form of the name, the confusion
is much increased (Short, pp. 217-220). Bancroft (v. 214) says there
is no sufficient data to determine the position of Huehue-Tlapallan,
but he thinks “the evidence, while not conclusive, favors the south
rather than the north” (p. 216). The truth is, about these conflicting
views of a northern or southern origin, pretty much as Kirk puts it
(Prescott, i. 18): “All that can be said with confidence is, that
neither of the opposing theories rests on a secure and sufficient
basis.” The situation of Huehue-Tlapallan and Aztlan is very likely one
and the same question, as looking to what was the starting-point of all
the Nahua migrations, extending over a thousand years.
[816] Bancroft, v. 217.
[817] Torquemada, Boturini, Humboldt, Brasseur, Charnay, Short, etc.
[818] _Nat. Races_ (v. 222).
[819] In support of the California location, Buschmann, in his
_Ueber die Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im nördlichen Mexico und
höheren Amerikanischen Norden_ (Berlin, 1854), finds traces of the
Mexican tongue in those of the recent California Indians. Linguistic
resemblances to the Aztec, even so far north as Nootka, have been
traced, but later philologists deny the inferences of relationship
drawn from such similarity (Bancroft, iii. p. 612). The linguistic
confusion in aboriginal California is so great that there is a wide
field for tracing likenesses (_Ibid._ iii. 635). In the _California
State Mining Bureau, Bulletin no. 1_ (Sacramento, 1888), Winslow
Anderson gives a description of some desiccated human remains found
in a sealed cave, which are supposed to be Aztec. There are slight
resemblances to the Aztec in the Shoshone group of languages (Bancroft,
iii. 660), and the same author arranges all that has been said to
connect the Mexican tongue with those of New Mexico and neighboring
regions (iii. 664). Buschmann, who has given particular attention
to tracing the Aztec connections at the north, finds nothing to
warrant anything more than casual admixtures with other stocks (_Die
Lautveränderung Aztekischer Wörter_, Berlin, 1855, and _Die Spuren der
Aztekischen Sprachen_, Berlin, 1859). See Short (p. 487) for a summary.
[820] Bancroft (v. 305) cites the diverse views; so does Short to some
extent (pp. 246, 258, etc.). Cf. Brinton’s _Address_ on “Where was
Aztlan?” p. 6; Short, 486, 490; Nadaillac, 284; Wilson’s _Prehistoric
Man_, i. 327.
Brinton (_Myths of the New World_, etc., 89; _Amer. Hero. Myths_, 92)
holds that Aztlan is a name wholly of mythical purport, which it would
be vain to seek on the terrestrial globe. This cradle region of the
Nahuas sometimes appears as the Seven Caves (Chicomoztoc), and Duran
places them “in Teoculuacan, otherwise called Aztlan, a country toward
the north and connected with Florida.” The Seven Caves were explained
by Sahagún as a valley, by Clavigero as a city, by Schoolcraft and
others as simply seven boats in which the first comers came from Asia;
Brasseur makes them and Aztlan the same; others find them to be the
seven cities of Cibola,—so enumerates Brinton (_Myths_, 227), who
thinks that the seven divisions of the Nahuas sprung from the belief in
the Seven Caves, and had in reality no existence.
Gallatin has followed out the series of migrations in the _Amer.
Ethnol. Soc. Trans._, i. 162. Dawson, _Fossil Men_ (ch. 3), gives his
comprehensive views of the main directions of these early migrations.
Brasseur follows the Nahuas (_Popul Vuh_, introd., sect. ix.). Winchell
(_Pre-Adamites_) thinks the general tendency was from north to south.
Morgan finds the origin of the Mexican tribes in New Mexico and in the
San Juan Valley (_Peabody Mus. Rept._, xii. 553. Cf. his article in
the _North Am. Rev._, Oct., 1869). Humboldt (_Views of Nature_, 207)
touches the Aztec wanderings.
There are two well-known Aztec migration maps, first published in F.
G. Carreri’s _Giro del Mondo_; in English as “Voyage round the world,”
in Churchill’s _Voyages_, vol. iv., concerning which see Bancroft,
ii. 543; iii. 68, 69; Short, 262, 431, 433; Prescott, iii. 364, 382.
Orozco y Berra (_Hist. Antiq. de Mexico_, iii. 61) says that these
maps follow one another, and are not different records of the same
progress. Humboldt (_Vues_, etc., ii. 176) gives an interpretation of
them in accordance with Sigüenza’s views, which is the one usually
followed, and Bancroft (v. 324) epitomizes it. Ramirez says that the
copies reproduced in Humboldt, Clavigero, and Kingsborough are not so
correct as the engraving given in Garcia y Cubas’s _Atlas geogrâfico,
estadistico e histórico de la Republica Mejicana_ (April, 1858).
Bancroft (ii. 544) gives it as reproduced by Ramirez. It is also in
the Mexican edition of Prescott, and in Schoolcraft’s _Indian Tribes_.
Cf. Delafield’s _Inquiry_ (N. Y., 1839) and Léon de Rosny’s _Les doc.
écrits de l’antiq. Amér._ (Paris, 1882). The original is preserved in
the Museo Nacional of Mexico. A palm-tree on the map, near Aztlan,
has pointed some of the arguments in favor of a southern position for
that place, but Ramirez says it is but a part of a hieroglyphic name,
and has no reference to the climate of Aztlan (Short, p. 266). F.
Von Hellwald printed a paper on “American migrations,” with notes by
Professor Henry, in the _Smithsonian Report_, 1866, pp. 328-345. Short
defines as “altogether the most enlightened treatment of the subject”
the paper of John H. Becker, “Migrations des Nahuas,” in the _Compte
rendu, Congrès des Américanistes_ (Luxembourg, 1877), i. 325. This
paper finds an identification of the Tulan Zuiva of the Quichés, the
Huehue-Tlapallan of the Toltecs, the Amaquemecan of the Chichimecs,
and the Oztotlan (Aztlan) of the Aztecs in The valleys of the Rio
Grande del Norte and Rio Colorado, as was Morgan’s view. Short (p. 249)
summarizes his paper. Bancroft (v. 289) shows the diversity of views
respecting Amaquemecan.
[821] _Native Races_, v. 167, recapitulates the proofs against the
northern theory. J. R. Bartlett, _Personal Narrative_, ii. 283,
finds no evidence for it. The successive sites of their sojourns as
they passed on their journeys are given as Tlapallan, Tlacutzin,
Tlapallanco, Jalisco, Atenco, Iztachnexuca, Tollatzinco, Tollan or
Tula,—the last, says Bancroft, apparently in Chiapas. If there was not
such confusion respecting the old geography, these names might decide
the question.
[822] Writers usually place the beginnings of credible history at about
this period. Brasseur and the class of writers who are easily lifted
on their imagination talk about traces of a settled government being
discernible at periods which they place a thousand years before Christ.
[823] References in Bancroft, v. 247, with Brasseur for the main
dependence, in his use of the _Codex Chimalpòpoca_ and the _Memorial de
Colhuacan_.
[824] Charnay (Eng. trans., ch. 8 and 9) calls it a rival city of Tula
or Tollan, rebuilt by the Chichimecs on the ruins of a Toltec city.
[825] If one wants the details of all this, he can read it in Veytia,
Brasseur (_Nat. Civilisées_ and _Palenqué_, ch. viii.), and Bancroft,
the latter giving references (v. 285).
[826] It is frequently stated that there was a segregated migration to
Central America. Bancroft (v. 168, 285), who collates the authorities,
finds nothing of the kind implied. He thinks the mass remained in
Anáhuac. The old view as expressed by Prescott (i. 14) was that “much
the greater number probably spread over the region of Central America
and the neighboring isles, and the traveller now speculates on the
majestic ruins of Mitla and Palenqué as possibly the work of this
extraordinary people.” Kirk, as Prescott’s editor, refers to the labors
of Orozco y Berra (_Geografía de las Lenguas de México_, 122), followed
by Tylor, (_Anahuac_, 189) as establishing the more recent view that
this southern architecture, “though of a far higher grade, was long
anterior to the Toltec dominion.”
[827] _Amer. Ethno. Soc. Trans._, i.
[828] Bancroft (v. 287) says: “It is probable that the name Toltec, a
title of distinction rather than a national name, was never applied at
all to the common people.”
[829] Brinton’s main statement is in his _Were the Toltecs an historic
nationality? Read before the American Philosophical Society, Sept. 2,
1887_ (Phila., 1887); published also in their _Proceedings_, 1887,
p. 229. Cf. also Brinton’s _Amer. Hero. Myths_ (Phil., 1882), p. 86,
where he throws discredit on the existence of the alleged Toltec king
Quetzalcoatl (whom Sahagún keeps distinct from the mythical demi-god);
and earlier, in his _Myths of the New World_ (p. 29), he had suggested
that the name Toltec might have “a merely mythical signification.”
Charnay, who makes the Toltecs a Nahuan tribe, had defended their
historical status in a paper on “La Civilisation Tolteque,” in the
_Revue d’Ethnographie_ (iv., 1885); and again, two years later, in
the same periodical, he reviewed adversely Brinton’s arguments. (Cf.
_Saturday Review_, lxiii. 843.) Otto Stoll, in his _Guatemala, Reisen
und Schilderungen_ (Leipzig, 1886), is another who rejects the old
theory.
[830] _Archæol. Tour_, 253.
[831] _Archæol. Tour_, 7. Sahagún identifies the Toltecs with the
“giants,” and if these were the degraded descendants of the followers
of Votan, Sahagún thus earlier established the same identity.
[832] _Archæol. Tour_, 191. The fact that the names which we associate
with the Toltecs are Nahua, only means that Nahua writers have
transmitted them, as Bandelier thinks. Cf. also Bandelier’s citation
in the _Peabody Mus. Reports_, vol. ii. 388, where he speaks of
our information regarding the Toltecs as “limited and obscure.” He
thinks it beyond question that they were Nahuas; and the fact that
their division of time corresponds with the system found in Yucatan,
Guatemala, etc., with other evidences of myths and legends, leads him
to believe that the aborigines of more southern regions were, if not
descendants, at least of the same stock with the Toltecs, and that we
are justified in studying them to learn what the Toltecs were. He finds
that Veytia, in his account of the Toltecs, beside depending on Sahagún
and Torquemada, finds a chief source in Ixtlilxochitl, and locates
Huehue-Tlapallan in the north; and Veytia’s statements reappear in
Clavigero.
The best narratives of the Toltec history are those in Veytia,
_Historia Antigua de Méjico_ (Mexico, 1806); Brasseur’s _Hist. Nations
Civilisées_ (vol. i.), and his introduction to his _Popul Vuh_;
and Bancroft (v. ch. 3 and 4): but we must look to Ixtlilxochitl,
Torquemada, Sahagún, and the others, if we wish to study the sources.
In such a study we shall encounter vexatious problems enough. It is
practically impossible to arrange chronologically what Ixtlilxochitl
says that he got from the picture-writings which he interpreted.
Bancroft (v. 209) does the best he can to give it a forced perspicuity.
Wilson (_Prehisoric Man_, i. 245) not inaptly says: “The history of the
Toltecs and their ruined edifices stands on the border line of romance
and fable, like that of the ruined builders of Carnac and Avebury.”
[833] Short (page 255) points out that Bancroft unadvisedly looks upon
these Chichimecs as of Nahua stock, according to the common belief.
Short thinks that Pimentel (_Lenguas indigenas de México_, published
in 1862) has conclusively shown that the Chichimecs did not originally
speak the Nahua tongue, but subsequently adopted it. Short (page
256) thinks, after collating the evidence, that it is impossible to
determine whence or how they came to Anáhuac.
[834] Bancroft, v. 292, gives the different views. Cf. Kirk in
Prescott, i. 16.
[835] These events are usually one thing or another, according to the
original source which you accept, as Bancroft shows (v. 303). The story
of the text is as good as any, and is in the main borne out by the
other narratives.
[836] Bancroft, v. 308. Cf., on the arrival of the Mexicans in the
valley, Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Reports_, ii. 398) and his references.
[837] Prescott, i., introduction ch. 6, tells the story of their golden
age.
[838] Cf. the map in Lucien Biart’s _Les Aztèques_ (Paris, 1885).
Prescott says the maps in Clavigero, Lopez, and Robertson defy “equally
topography and history.” Cf. note on plans of the city and valley
in Vol. II. pp. 364, 369, 374, to which may be added, as showing
diversified views, those in Stevens’s _Herrera_ (London, 1740), vol.
ii.; Bordone’s _Libro_ (1528); Icazbalceta’s _Coll. de docs._, i. 390;
and the Eng. translation of Cortes’ despatches, 333.
[839] This is placed A.D. 1325. Cf. references in Bancroft (v. 346).
[840] On the conquest of the Tecpanecas by the Mexicans, see the
references in Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Reports_, ii. 412).
[841] For details of the period of the Chichimec ascendency, see
Bancroft (v. ch. 5-7), Brasseur (_Nat. Civil._ ii.), and the
authorities plentifully cited in Bancroft.
[842] On the nature of the Mexican confederacy see Bandelier (_Peabody
Mus. Reports_, ii. 416). He enumerates the authorities upon the
point that no one of the allied tribes exercised any powers over the
others beyond the exclusive military direction of the Mexicans proper
(_Peabody Mus. Reports_, ii. 559). Orozco y Berra (_Geografía_, etc.)
claims that there was a tendency to assimilate the conquered people
to the Mexican conditions. Bandelier claims that “no attempt, either
direct or implied, was made to assimilate or incorporate them.” He
urges that nowhere on the march to Mexico did Cortés fall in with
Mexican rulers of subjected tribes. It does not seem to be clear in all
cases whether it was before or after the confederation was formed, or
whether it was by the Mexicans or Tezcucans that Tecpaneca, Xochimilca,
Cuitlahuac, Chalco, Acolhuacan, and Quauhnahuac, were conquered. Cf.
Bandelier in _Peabody Mus. Reports_, ii. 691. As to the tributaries,
see _Ibid._ 695.
[843] Cf. Brasseur’s _Nations Civ._ ii. 457, on Tezcuco in its palmy
days.
[844] Sometimes written Mochtheuzema, Moktezema. The Aztec Montezuma
must not, as is contended, be confounded with the hero-god of the
New Mexicans. Cf. Bancroft, iii. 77, 171; Brinton’s _Myths_, 190;
Schoolcraft’s _Ind. Tribes_, iv. 73; Tylor’s _Prim. Culture_, ii. 384;
Short, 333.
[845] This has induced some historians to call these wars “holy wars.”
Bandelier discredits wholly the common view, that wars were undertaken
to secure victims for the sacrificial stone (_Archæol. Tour_, 24). But
in another place (_Peabody Mus. Reports_, ii. 128) he says: “War was
required for the purpose of obtaining human victims, their religion
demanding human sacrifices at least eighteen times every year.”
[846] As to these carvings, which have not yet wholly disappeared, see
_Peabody Mus. Reports_, ii. 677, 678. There is a series of alleged
portraits of the Mexican kings in Carbajal-Espinosa’s _Hist. de Mexico_
(Mexico, 1862). See pictures of Montezuma II. in Vol. II. 361, 363, and
that in Ranking, p. 313.
[847] Bancroft (v. 466) enumerates the great variety of such proofs of
disaster, and gives references (p. 469). Cf. Prescott, i. p. 309.
[848] Tezozomoc (cap. 106) gives the description of the first bringing
of the news to Montezuma of the arrival of the Spaniards on the coast.
[849] Brinton’s _Amer. Hero Myths_, 139, etc. See, on the prevalence
of the idea of the return at some time of the hero-god, Brinton’s
_Myths of the New World_, p. 160. “We must remember,” he says, “that
a fiction built on an idea is infinitely more tenacious of life than
a story founded on fact.” Brinton (_Myths_, 188) gathers from Gomara,
Cogolludo, Villagutierre, and others, instances to show how prevalent
in America was the presentiment of the arrival and domination of a
white race,—a belief still prevailing among their descendants of
the middle regions of America who watch for the coming of Montezuma
(_Ibid._ p. 190). Brinton does not seem to recognize the view held by
many that the Montezuma of the Aztecs was quite a different being from
the demi-god of the Pueblas of New Mexico.
[850] It is not easy to reconcile the conflicting statements of the
native historians respecting the course of events during the Aztec
supremacy, such is the mutual jealousy of the Mexican and Tezcucan
writers. Brasseur has satisfied himself of the authenticity of a
certain sequence and character of events (_Nations Civilisées_), and
Bancroft simply follows him (v. 401). Veytia is occupied more with
the Tezcucans than with the Aztecs. The condensed sketch here given
follows the main lines of the collated records. We find good pictures
of the later history of Mexico and Tlascala, before the Spaniards came,
in Prescott (i. book 2d, ch. vi., and book 3d, ch. ii.). Bancroft
(v. ch. 10) with his narrative and references helps us out with the
somewhat monotonous details of all the districts of Mexico which were
outside the dominance of the Mexican valley, as of Cholula, Tlascala,
Michoacan, and Oajaca, with the Miztecs and Zapotecs, inhabiting this
last province.
[851] Bancroft (v. 543-553).
[852] It is so held by Stephens, Waldeck, Mayer, Prichard,
Ternaux-Compans, not to name others.
[853] Vol. v. 617.
[854] The Maya calendar and astronomical system, as the basis of the
Maya chronology, is explained in the version which Perez gave into
Spanish of a Maya manuscript (translated into English by Stephens
in his _Yucatan_), and which Valentini has used in his “Katunes of
Maya History,” in the _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, Oct. 1879. On the
difficulties of the subject see Brasseur’s _Nations Civilisées_ (ii.
ch. 1). Cf. also his _Landa_, section xxxix., and page 366, from the
“Cronologia antigua de Yucatan.” Cf. further, Cyrus Thomas’s _MS.
Troano_, ch. 2, and Powell’s _Third Report Bur. of Ethn._, pp. xxx
and 3; Ancona’s _Yucatan_, ch. xi.; Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, ii.
ch. 24, with references; Short, ch. 9; Brinton’s _Maya Chronicles_,
introduction, p. 50.
[855] Bancroft (v. 624) epitomizes the Perez manuscript given by
Stephens, the sole source of this Totul Xiu legendary.
[856] Brasseur’s _Nations Civilisées_ (i., ii.), with the Perez
manuscript, and Landa’s _Relacion_, are the sufficient source of the
Yucatan history. Bancroft’s last chapter of his fifth volume summarizes
it.
[857] See Vol. II. p. 402.
[858] See Vol. II. p. 397.
[859] _Central America_, ii. 452.
[860] See Vol. II. p. 414.
[861] See Vol. II. p. 343.
[862] See Vol. II. p. 412.
[863] See Vol. II. p. 417. Cf. Prescott’s _Mexico_, i. 50; Bancroft
(_Nat. Races_, ii. ch. 14) epitomizes the information on the laws
and courts of the Nahua; Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Repts._, ii. 446),
referring to Zurita’s Report, which he characterizes as marked for
perspicacity, deep knowledge, and honest judgment, speaks of it as
embodying the experience of nearly twenty years,—eleven of which were
passed in Mexico,—and in which the author gave answers to inquiries put
by the king. “If we could obtain,” says Bandelier, “all the answers
given to these questions from all parts of Spanish America, and all as
elaborate and truthful as those of Zurita, Palacio, and Ondegardo, our
knowledge of the aboriginal history and ethnology of Spanish America
would be much advanced.” Zurita’s Report in a French translation is
in Ternaux-Compans’ _Collection_; the original is in Pacheco’s _Docs.
inéditos_, but in a mutilated text.
[864] See Vol. II. p. 346.
[865] It is much we owe to the twelve Franciscan friars who on
May 13, 1524, landed in Mexico to convert and defend the natives.
It is from their writings that we must draw a large part of our
knowledge respecting the Indian character, condition, and history.
These Christian apostles were Martin de Valencia, Francisco de Soto,
Martin de Coruña, Juan Xuares, Antonio de Ciudad Rodrigo, Toribio de
Benavente, Garcia de Cisneros, Luis de Fuensalida, Juan de Ribas,
Francisco Ximenez, Andrés de Cordoba, Juan de Palos.
From the _Historia_ of Las Casas, particularly from that part of it
called _Apologética historia_, we can also derive some help. (Cf. Vol.
II. p. 340.)
[866] Brasseur, _Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 147; Leclerc, p. 168.
[867] Herrera is furthermore the source of much that we read in later
works concerning the native religion and habits of life. See Vol. II.
p. 67.
[868] Cf. Vol. II. p. 418.
[869] _Anales del Museo Nacional_, iii. 4, 120; Brinton’s _Am. Hero
Myths_, 78. Bandelier, in _N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc._, November, 1879,
used a portion of the MS. as printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps (_Amer.
Antiq. Soc. Proc._, i. 115) under the title of _Historia de los Yndios
Mexicanos, por Juan de Tovar; Cura et impensis Dni Thomæ Phillipps,
Bart._ (privately printed at Middle Hill, 1860. See _Squier Catalogue_,
no. 1417). The document is translated by Henry Phillipps, Jr., in the
_Proc. Amer. Philosophical Soc._ (Philad.), xxi. 616.
[870] Vol. II. p. 419. Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _Bibl. Mex.-Guat._, p.
59. He used a MS. copy in the Force collection.
[871] This is true of Acosta and Davila Padilla. The bibliography of
Acosta has been given elsewhere (Vol. II. p. 420). His books v., vi.,
and vii. cover the ancient history of the country. He used the MSS. of
Duran (Brasseur, _Bibl. Mex.-Guat._, p. 2), and his correspondence with
Tobar, preserved in the Lenox library, has been edited by Icazbalceta
in his _Don Fray Zumárraga_ (Mexico, 1881). Of the _Provincia de
Santiago_ and the _Varia historia_ of Davila Padilla, the bibliography
has been told in another place. (Cf. Vol. II. pp. 399-400[; Sabin, v.
18780-1; Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _Bibl. Mex.-Guat._, p. 53; _Del Monte
Library_, no. 126.) Ternaux was not wrong in ascribing great value to
the books.]
[872] Peter of Ghent. Cf. Vol. II. p. 417.
[873] _Chronica Compendiosissima ab exordio mundi per Amandum
Zierixcensem, adjectæ sunt epistolæ ex nova maris Oceani Hispania ad
nos transmissæ_ (Antwerp, 1534). The subjoined letters here mentioned
are, beside that referred to, two others written in Mexico (1531), by
Martin of Valencia and Bishop Zumárraga (Sabin, i. no. 994; Quaritch,
362, no. 28583, £7 10). Icazbalceta (_Bib. Mex. del Siglo xvi._, i. p.
33) gives a long account of Gante. There is a French version of the
letter in Ternaux’s _Collection_.
[874] See Vol. II. p. 397. Cf. Prescott, ii. 95. The first part of the
_Historia_ is on the religious rites of the natives; the second on
their conversion to Christianity; the third on their chronology, etc.
[875] Cf. Icazbalceta’s _Bibl. Mexicana_, p. 220, with references;
Pilling’s _Proof-sheets_, no. 2600, etc.
[876] Pilling, no. 2817, etc.
[877] Properly, Bernardino Ribeira; named from his birthplace, Sahagún,
in Spain. Chavero’s _Sahagún_ (Mexico, 1877).
[878] A few data can be added to the account of Sahagún given in
Vol. II. p. 415. J. F. Ramirez completes the bibliography of Sahagún
in the _Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia de Madrid_, vi.
85 (1885). Icazbalceta, having told the story of Sahagún’s life in
his edition of Mendieta’s _Hist. Eclesiastica Indiana_ (México,
1870), has given an extended critical and bibliographical account in
his _Bibliografía Mexicana_ (México, 1886), vol. i. 247-308. Other
bibliographical detail can be gleaned from Pilling’s _Proof-sheets_,
p. 677, etc.; Icazbalceta’s _Apuntes_; Beristain’s _Biblioteca_;
the _Bibliotheca Mexicana_ of Ramirez. The list in Adolfo Llanos’s
_Sahagún y su historia de México_ (_Museo Nac. de Méx. Anales_, iii.,
pt. 3, p. 71) is based chiefly on Alfredo Chavero’s _Sahagún_ (México,
1877). Brasseur de Bourbourg, in his _Palenqué_ (ch. 5), has explained
the importance of what Brevoort calls Sahagún’s “great encyclopædia
of the Mexican Empire.” Rosny (_Les documents écrits de l’Antiquité
Américaine_, p. 69) speaks of seeing a copy of the _Historia_ in
Madrid, accompanied by remarkable Aztec pictures. Bancroft, referring
to the defective texts of Sahagún in Kingsborough and Bustamante, says:
“Fortunately what is missing in one I have always found in the other.”
He further speaks of the work of Sahagún as “the most complete and
comprehensive, so far as aboriginal history is concerned, furnishing
an immense mass of material, drawn from native sources, very badly
arranged and written.” Eleven books of Sahagún are given to the social
institutions of the natives, and but one to the conquest. Jourdanet’s
edition is mentioned elsewhere (Vol. II.).
[879] See Vol. II. p. 421.
[880] Those who used him most, like Clavigero and Brasseur de
Bourbourg, complain of this. Torquemada, says Bandelier (_Peabody Mus.
Repts._ ii. 119), “notwithstanding his unquestionable credulity, is
extremely important on all questions of Mexican antiquities.”
[881] _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. 105.
[882] Cf. Vol. II. 417; Prescott, i. 13, 163, 193, 196; Bancroft,
_Nat. Races_, v. 147; Wilson’s _Prehistoric Man_, i. 325. It must be
confessed that with no more authority than the old Mexican paintings,
interpreted through the understanding of old men and their traditions,
Ixtlilxochitl has not the firmest ground to walk on. Aubin thinks that
Ixtlilxochitl’s confusion and contradictions arise from his want of
patience in studying his documents; and some part of it may doubtless
have arisen from his habit, as Brasseur says (_Annales de Philosophie
Chrétienne_, May, 1855, p. 329), of altering his authorities to
magnify the glories of his genealogic line. Max Müller (_Chips from
a German Workshop_, i. 322) says of his works: “Though we must not
expect to find in them what we are accustomed to call history, they
are nevertheless of great historical interest, as supplying the vague
outlines of a distant past, filled with migrations, wars, dynasties
and revolutions, such as were cherished in the memory of the Greeks in
the time of Solon.” In addition to his _Historia Chichimeca_ and his
_Relaciones_, (both of which are given by Kingsborough, while Ternaux
has translated portions,)—the MS. of the _Relaciones_ being in the
Mexican archives,—Ixtlilxochitl left a large mass of his manuscript
studies of the antiquities, often repetitionary in substance. Some are
found in the compilation made in Mexico by Figueroa in 1792, by order
of the Spanish government (Prescott, i. 193). Some were in the Ramirez
collection. Quaritch (_MS. Collections_, Jan., 1888, no. 136) held
one from that collection, dated about 1680, at £16, called _Sumaria
Relacion_, which concerned the ancient Chichimecs. Those which are best
known are a _Historia de la Nueva España_, or _Historia del Reyno de
Tezcuco_, and a _Historia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe_, if this last
is by him.
[883] _Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne_, May, 1855, p. 326.
[884] In his _Quatre Lettres_, p. 24, he calls it the sacred book of
the Toltecs. “C’est le Livre divin lui-même, c’est le Teoamoxtli.”
[885] Brasseur’s _Lettres à M. le due de Valmy, Lettre seconde_.
[886] _Catálogo_, pp. 17, 18.
[887] Brasseur, _Bibl. Mex. Guat._, p. 47; _Pinart-Brasseur Catal._,
no. 237.
[888] It has been announced that Bandelier is engaged in a new
translation of _The Annals of Quauhtitlan_ for Brinton’s _Aboriginal
Literature series_. Cf. Bancroft, iii. 57, 63, and in vol. v., where he
endeavors to patch together Brasseur’s fragments of it. Short, p. 241.
[889] Humboldt says that Sigüenza inherited Ixtlilxochitl’s collection;
and that it was preserved in the College of San Pedro till 1759.
[890] _Giro del mondo_, 1699, vol. vi. Cf. Kingsborough, vol. iv.
Robertson attacked Carreri’s character for honesty, and claimed it
was a received opinion that he had never been out of Italy. Clavigero
defended Carreri. Humboldt thinks Carreri’s local coloring shows he
must have been in Mexico.
[891] Cf. the bibliog., in Vol. II., p. 425, of his _Storia Antica del
Messico_.
[892] We owe to him descriptions at this time of the collections of
Mendoza, of that in the Vatican, and of that at Vienna. Robertson made
an enumeration of such manuscripts; but his knowledge was defective,
and he did not know even of those at Oxford.
[893] Robertson was inclined to disparage Clavigero’s work, asserting
that he could find little in him beyond what he took from Acosta and
Herrera “except the improbable narratives and fanciful conjectures
of Torquemada and Boturini.” Clavigero criticised Robertson, and the
English historian in his later editions replied. Prescott points
out (i. 70) that Clavigero only knew Sahagún through the medium
of Torquemada and later writers. Bancroft (_Nat. Races_, v. 149;
_Mexico_, i. 700) thinks that Clavigero “owes his reputation much more
to his systematic arrangement and clear narration of traditions that
had before been greatly confused, and to the omission of the most
perplexing and contradictory points, than to deep research or new
discoveries.”
[894] See Vol. II. p. 418. Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _Hist. des Nations
Civilisées_, p. xxxii. Clavigero had described it.
[895] He had collected nearly 500 Mexican paintings in all. Aubin
(_Notices_, etc., p. 21) says that Boturini nearly exhausted the field
in his searches, and with the collection of Sigüenza he secured all
those cited by Ixtlilxochitl and the most of those concealed by the
Indians,—of which mention is made by Torquemada, Sahagún, Valadés,
Zurita, and others; and that the researches of Bustamante, Cubas,
Gondra, and others, up to 1851, had not been able to add much of
importance to what Boturini possessed.
[896] This portion of his collection has not been traced. The fact is
indeed denied.
[897] _Idea de una nueva historia general de la America septentrional_
(Madrid, 1746); Carter-Brown, iii. 817; Brasseur’s _Bibl. Mex.-Guat._,
p. 26; Field, _Ind. Bibliog._, no. 159; Pinart, _Catalogue_, no. 134;
Prescott, i. 160.
[898] Brasseur, _Bibl. Mex.-Guat._, p. 152.
[899] Prescott, i. 24. Harrisse, _Bib. Am. Vet._, calls Veytia’s the
best history of the ancient period yet (1866) written.
[900] A second ed. (Mexico, 1832) was augmented with notes and a life
of the author, by Carlos Maria de Bustamante; Field, _Ind. Bibliog._,
no. 909; Brasseur’s _Bibl. Mex.-Guat._, p. 68.
[901] Prescott, i. 133. Gama and others collected another class
of hieroglyphics, of less importance, but still interesting as
illustrating legal and administrative processes used in later times,
in the relations of the Spaniards with the natives; and still others
embracing Christian prayers, catechisms, etc., employed by the
missionaries in the religious instruction (Aubin, _Notice_, etc., 21).
Humboldt (vol. xiii., pl. p. 141) gives “a lawsuit in hieroglyphics.”
There was published (100 copies) at Madrid, in 1878, _Pintura del
Gobernador, Alcaldes y Regidores de México, Codice en geroglíficos
Méxicanos y en lengua Castellana y Azteca, Existente en la Biblioteca
del Excmo Señor Duque de Osuna_,—a legal record of the later Spanish
courts affecting the natives.
[902] Humboldt describes these collections which he knew at the
beginning of the century, speaking of José Antonio Pichardo’s as the
finest.
[903] _Notice sur une collection d’antiquités Mexicaines, being an
extract from a Mémoire sur la peinture didactique et l’Écriture
figurative des Anciens Mexicains_ (Paris, 1851; again, 1859-1861). Cf.
papers in _Revue Américaine et Orientale_, 1st ser., iii., iv., and v.
Aubin says that Humboldt found that part of the Boturini collection
which had been given over to the Mexican archivists diminished by seven
eighths. He also shows how Ternaux-Compans (_Crauatés Horribles_,
p. 275-289), Rafael Isidro Gondra (in Veytia, _Hist. Ant. de Mex._,
1836, i. 49), and Bustamante have related the long contentions over
the disposition of these relics, and how the Academy of History at
Madrid had even secured the suppression of a similar academy among
the antiquaries in Mexico, which had been formed to develop the study
of their antiquities. It was as a sort of peace-offering that the
Spanish king now caused Veytia to be empowered to proceed with the
work which Boturini had begun. This allayed the irritation for a
while, but on Veytia’s death (1769) it broke out again, when Gama was
given possession of the collection, which he further increased. It was
at Gama’s death sold at auction, when Humboldt bought the specimens
which are now in Berlin, and Waldeck secured others which he took to
Europe. It was from Waldeck that Aubin acquired the Boturini part of
his collection. The rest of the collection remained in Mexico, and in
the main makes a part at present of the Museo Nacional. But Aubin is a
doubtful witness.
Aubin says that he now proposed to refashion the Boturini collection
by copies where he could not procure the originals; to add others,
embracing whatever he could still find in the hands of the native
population, and what had been collected by Veytia, Gama, and Pichardo.
In 1851, when he wrote, Aubin had given twenty years to this task, and
with what results the list of his MSS., which he appends to the account
we have quoted, will show.
These include in the native tongue:—
_a._ History of Mexico from A.D. 1064 to 1521, in fragments, from
Tezozomoc and from Alonso Franco, annotated by Domingo Chimalpain (a
copy).
_b._ Annals of Mexico, written apparently in 1528 by one who had taken
part in the defence of Mexico (an original).
_c._ Several historical narratives on European paper, by Domingo
Chimalpain, coming down to A.D. 1591, which have in great part been
translated by Aubin, who considers them the most important documents
which we possess.
_d._ A history of Colhuacan and Mexico, lacking the first leaf. This is
described as being in the handwriting of Ixtlilxochitl, and Aubin gives
the dates of its composition as 1563 and 1570. It is what has later
been known as the _Codex Chimalpopoca_.
_e._ Zapata’s history of Tlaxcalla.
_f._ A copy by Loaysa of an original, from which Torquemada has copied
several chapters.
[904] The chief of the Boturini acquisition he enumerates as follows:—
_a._ Toltec annals on fifty leaves of European paper, cited by Gama in
his _Descripcion histórica_. Cf. Brasseur, _Nations Civilisées_, p.
lxxvi.
_b._ Chichimec annals, on Indian paper, six leaves, of which ten pages
consist of pictures, the original so-called _Codex Chimalpopoca_,
of which Gama made a copy, also in the Aubin collection, as well as
Ixtlilxochitl’s explanation of it. Aubin says that he has used this
account of Ixtlilxochitl to rectify that historian’s blunders.
_c._ Codex on Indian paper, having a picture of the Emperor Xolotl.
_d._ A painting on prepared skin, giving the genealogy of the
Chichimecan chiefs, accompanied by the copies made by Pichardo and
Boturini. Cf. _Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France_, 2d ser., i. 283.
_e._ A synchronical history of Tepechpan and of Mexico, on Indian
paper, accompanied by a copy made by Pichardo and an outline sketch of
that in the Museo Nacional.
Without specifying others which Aubin enumerates, he gives as other
acquisitions the following in particular:—
_a._ Pichardo’s copy of a Codex Mexicanus, giving the history of the
Mexicans from their leaving Aztlan to 1590.
_b._ An original Mexican history from the departure from Aztlan to 1569.
_c._ Fragments which had belonged to Sigüenza.
[905] _Notice sur une Collection, etc._, p. 12.
[906] _Hist. des Nations Civilisées_ (i. pp. xxxi, lxxvi, etc.; cf.
Müller’s _Chips_, i. 317, 320, 323). Brasseur in the same place
describes his own collection; and it may be further followed in his
_Bibl. Mex.-Guat._, and in the _Pinart Catalogue_. Dr. Brinton says
that we owe much for the preservation during late years of Maya MSS. to
Don Juan Pio Perez, and that the best existing collection of them is
that of Canon Crescencio Carrillo y Ancona. José F. Ramirez (see Vol.
II. p. 398) is another recent Mexican collector, and his MSS. have been
in one place and another in the market of late years. Quaritch’s recent
catalogues reveal a number of them, including his own MS. _Catálogo de
Colecciones_ (Jan., 1888, no. 171), and some of his unpublished notes
on Prescott, not included in those “notas y ecclarecimientos” appended
to Navarro’s translation of the _Conquest of Mexico_ (_Catal._, 1885,
no. 28,502). The several publications of Léon de Rosny point us to
scattered specimens. In his _Doc. écrits de l’Antiquité Amér._ he gives
the fac-simile of a colored Aztec map. A MS. in the collection of the
Corps Legislatif, in Paris, and that of the Codex Indiæ Meridionalis
are figured in his _Essai sur le déchiffrement, etc._ (pl. ix, x). In
the _Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France, n. s._, vol. i., etc., we
find plates of the Mappe Tlotzin, and a paper of Madier de Montjau,
“sur quelques manuscrits figuratifs de l’Ancien Méxique.” Cf. also
_Anales del Museo_, viii.
Cf. for further mention of collections the _Revue Orientale et
Américaine_; Cyrus Thomas in the _Am. Antiquarian_, May, 1884 (vol.
vi.); and the more comprehensive enumeration in the introduction
to Domenech’s _Manuscrit pictographique_. Orozco y Berra, in the
introduction to his _Geografia de las Lenguas y Carta Etnográfica_
(Mexico, 1864), speaks of the assistance he obtained from the
collections of Ramirez and of Icazbalceta.
[907] See Vol. II. p. 418.
[908] See Vol. II. p. 418. Bandelier calls this French version “utterly
unreliable.”
[909] This is Beristain’s title. Torquemada, Vetancurt, and Sigüenza
cite it as _Memorias históricas_; Brasseur, _Bib. Mexico-Guat._, p. 122.
[910] Cf. “Les Annales Méxicaines,” by Rémi Siméon in the _Archives de
la Soc. Amér. de France_, n. s., vol. ii.
[911] It is cited by Chavero as _Codex Zumárraga_.
[912] _Hist. Nat. Civ._, ii. 577.
[913] _Aboriginal Amer. Authors_, p. 29. Cf. Bandelier’s _Bibliography
of Yucatan_ in _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., vol. i. p. 82. Cf. the
references in Brasseur, _Hist. Nat. Civ._, and in Bancroft, _Nat.
Races_, v.
[914] Cf. _Mem. of Berendt_, by Brinton (Worcester, 1884).
[915] Cf. Brinton on the MSS. in the languages of Cent. America, in
_Amer. Jour. of Science_, xcvii. 222; and his _Books of Chilan Balam,
the prophetic and historical records of the Mayas of Yucatan_ (Philad.,
1882), reprinted from the _Penn Monthly_, March, 1882. Cf. also the
_Transactions of the Philad. Numismatic and Antiquarian Soc._
[916] This is in the alphabet adopted by the early missionaries. The
volume contains the “Books of Chilan Balam,” written “not later than
1595,” and also the “Chac Xulub Chen,” written by a Maya chief, Nakuk
Pech, in 1562, to recount the story of the Spanish conquest of Yucatan.
[917] This was in 1843, when Stephens made his English translation from
Pio Perez’s Spanish version, _Antigua Chronologia Yucateca_; and from
Stephens’s text, Brasseur gave it a French rendering in his edition
of Landa. (Cf. also his _Nat. Civilisées_, ii. p. 2.) Perez, who in
Stephens’s opinion (_Yucatan_, ii. 117) was the best Maya scholar in
that country, made notes, which Valentini published in his “Katunes
of Maya History,” in the _Pro. of the Amer. Antiq. Soc._, Oct., 1879
(Worcester, 1880), but they had earlier been printed in Carrillo’s
_Hist. y Geog. de Yucatan_ (Merida, 1881). Bancroft (_Nat. Races_, v.
624) reprints Stephens’s text with notes from Brasseur.
The books of Chilan Balam were used both by Cogolludo and Lizana; and
Brasseur printed some of them in the _Mission Scientifique au Méxique_.
They are described in Carrillo’s _Disertacion sobre la historia de
lengua Maya ó Yucateca_ (Merida, 1870).
[918] Brasseur, _Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 30. See Vol. II. p. 429. The
Spanish title is _Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan_.
[919] From the _Proc. of the Amer. Philos. Soc._, xxiv.
[920] Cf. Bandelier in _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., vol. i. p. 88.
[921] The second edition was called _Los tres Siglos de la Dominacion
Española en Yucatan_ (Campeche and Merida, 2 vols., 1842, 1845). It was
edited unsatisfactorily by Justo Sierra. Cf. Vol. II. p. 429; Brasseur,
_Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 47.
This, like Juan de Villagutierre Soto-Mayor’s _Historia de la
Conquista de la Provincia de el Itza, reduccion, y progressos de la
de el Lacandon, y otras naciones de Indios Barbaros, de la mediacion
de el Reyno de Gautimala, a las Provincias de Yucatan, en la America
Septentrional_ (Madrid, 1701), (which, says Bandelier, is of importance
for that part of Yucatan which has remained unexplored), has mostly
to do with the Indians under the Spanish rule, but the books are not
devoid of usefulness in the study of the early tribes.
Of the modern comments on the Yucatan ancient history, those of
Brasseur in his _Nations Civilisées_ are more to be trusted than his
introduction to his edition of Landa, which needs to be taken with
due recognition of his later vagaries; and Brinton has studied their
history at some length in the introduction to his _Maya Chronicles_.
The first volume of Eligio Ancona’s _Hist. de Yucatan_ covers the
early period. See Vol. II. p. 429. Brinton calls it “disappointingly
superficial.” There is much that is popularly retrospective in the
various and not always stable contributions of Dr. Le Plongeon and
his wife. The last of Mrs. Le Plongeon’s papers is one on “The Mayas,
their customs, laws, religion,” in the _Mag. Amer. Hist._, Aug., 1887.
Bancroft’s second volume groups the necessary references to every phase
of Maya history. Cf. Charnay, English translation, ch. 15; and Geronimo
Castillo’s _Diccionario Histórico, biográfico y monumental de Yucatan_
(Mérida, 1866). Of Crescencio Carrillo and his _Historia Antigua de
Yucatan_ (Mérida, 1881), Brinton says: “I know of no other Yucatecan
who has equal enthusiasm or so just an estimate of the antiquarian
riches of his native land” (_Amer. Hero Myths_, 147). Bastian
summarizes the history of Yucatan and Guatemala in the second volume of
his _Culturländer des alten Amerika_.
[922] _Yucatan_, ii. 79.
[923] See C. H. Berendt on the hist. docs. of Guatemala in _Smithsonian
Report_, 1876. There is a partial bibliography of Guatemala in W.
T. Brigham’s _Guatemala the land of the Quetzal_ (N. Y., 1887), and
another by Bandelier in the _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., vol. i. p.
101. The references in Brasseur’s _Hist. Nations Civilisées_, and in
Bancroft’s _Native Races_, vol. v., will be a ready means for collating
the early sources.
[924] Scherzer and Brasseur are somewhat at variance here.
[925] “There are some coincidences between the Old Testament and the
Quiché MS. which are certainly startling.” Müller’s _Chips_, i. 328.
[926] _Wanderungen durch die mittel-Amerikanischen Freistaaten_
(Braunschweig, 1857—an English translation, London, 1857).
[927] Leclerc, no. 1305.
[928] H. H. Bancroft, _Nat. Races_, ii. 115; iii., ch. 2, and v. 170,
547, gives a convenient condensation of the book, and says that Müller
misconceives in some parts of his summary, and that Baldwin in his
_Ancient America_, p. 191, follows Müller. Helps, _Spanish Conquest_,
iv. App., gives a brief synopsis,—the first one done in English.
[929] Max Müller dissents from this. _Chips_, i. 326. Müller reminds
us, if we are suspicious of the disjointed manner of what has come
down to us as the _Popul Vuh_, that “consecutive history is altogether
a modern idea, of which few only of the ancient nations had any
conception. If we had the exact words of the _Popul Vuh_, we should
probably find no more history there than we find in the Quiché MS. as
it now stands.”
[930] Cf. _Aborig. Amer. Authors_, p. 33.
[931] _The names of the gods in the Kiché Myths of Central America_
(Philad., 1881), from the _Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc._ He gives his
reasons (p. 4) for the spelling _Kiché_.
[932] Cf. _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., vol. i. 109; and his paper,
“On the Sources of the Aboriginal Hist. of Spanish America,” in the
_Am. Asso. Adv. Sci. Proc._, xxvii. 328 (Aug., 1878). In the _Peabody
Mus. Eleventh Report_, p. 391, he says of it that “it appears to be for
the first chapters an evident fabrication, or at least accommodation
of Indian mythology to Christian notions,—a pious fraud; but the bulk
is an equally evident collection of original traditions of the Indians
of Guatemala, and as such the most valuable work for the aboriginal
history and ethnology of Central America.”
[933] _Hist. Nat. Civ._, i. 47. _S’il existe des sources de l’histoire
primitive du Méxique dans les monuments égyptiens et de l’histoire
primitive de l’ancien monde dans les monuments Américains?_ (1864),
which is an extract from his _Landa’s Relation_. Cf. Bollaert, in the
_Royal Soc. of Lit. Trans._, 1863. Brasseur (_Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 45;
Pinart, no. 231) also speaks of another Quiché document, of which his
MS. copy is entitled _Titulo de los Señores de Totonicapan, escrito
en lengua Quiché, el año de 1554, y traducido al Castellano el año de
1834, por el Padre Dionisio José Chonay, indígena_, which tells the
story of the Quiché race somewhat differently from the _Popul Vuh_.
[934] See Vol. II. p. 419.
[935] It stands in Brasseur’s _Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 13, as _Memorial
de Tecpan-Atitlan_ (_Solola_), _histoire des deux familles royales
du royaume des Cakchiquels d’Iximché ou Guatémala, rédigé en langue
Cakchiquèle par le prince Don Francisco Ernantez Arana-Xahila, des rois
Ahpozotziles_, where Brasseur speaks of it as analogous to the _Popul
Vuh_, but with numerous and remarkable variations. The MS. remained in
the keeping of Xahila till 1562, when Francisco Gebuta Queh received it
and continued it (_Pinart Catalogue_, no. 35).
[936] See Vol. II. 419; Bancroft, _Nat. Races_, v. 564; Bandelier in
_Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, i. 105. Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Repts._, ii.
391) says that it is now acknowledged that the _Recordacion florida_ of
Fuentes y Guzman is “full of exaggerations and misstatements.” Brasseur
(_Bib. Mex.-Guat._, pp. 65, 87), in speaking of Fuentes’ _Noticia
histórica de los indios de Guatemala_ (of which manuscript he had a
copy), says that he had access to a great number of native documents,
but profited little by them, either because he could not read them, or
his translators deceived him. Brasseur adds that Fuentes’ account of
the Quiché rulers is “un mauvais roman qui n’a pas le sens commun.”
This last is a manuscript used by Domingo Juarros in his _Compendio de
la historia de la ciudad de Guatemala_ (Guatemala, 1808-1818, in two
vols.—become rare), but reprinted in the _Museo Guatemalteco_, 1857.
The English translation, by John Baily, a merchant living in Guatemala,
was published as a _Statistical and Commercial History of Guatemala_
(Lond., 1823). Cf. Vol. II. p. 419. Francisco Vazquez depended largely
on native writers in his _Crónica de la Provincia de Guatemala_
(Guatemala, 1714-16). (See Vol. II. p. 419.)
[937] See note in Bancroft, iii. 451.
[938] Vol. II. 419. Helps (iii. 300), speaking of Remesal, says: “He
had access to the archives of Guatemala early in the seventeenth
century, and he is one of those excellent writers so dear to the
students of history, who is not prone to declamation, or rhetoric,
or picturesque writing, but indulges us largely by the introduction
everywhere of most important historical documents, copied boldly into
the text.”
[939] Vol. II. 419.
[940] Vol. II. 417.
[941] E. G. Squier printed in 1860 (see Vol. II. p. vii.) Diego Garcia
de Palacio’s _Carta dirigida al Rey de España, año 1576_, under the
English title of _Description of the ancient Provinces of Guazacupan,
Izalco, Cuscatlan, and Chiquimula in Guatemala_, which is also included
in Pacheco’s _Coleccion_, vol. vi. Bandelier refers to Estevan Aviles’
_Historia de Guatemala desde los tiempos de los Indios_ (Guatemala,
1663). A good reputation belongs to a modern work, Francisco de Paula
Garcia Pelaez’s _Memorias para la Historia del antiguo reyno de
Guatemala_ (Guatemala, 1851-53, in three vols.).
[942] For details follow the references in Brasseur’s _Nat. Civil._;
Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_; Stephens’s _Nicaragua_, ii. 305, etc. See the
introd. of Brinton’s _Güegüence_ (Philad., 1883), for the Nahuas and
Mangues of Nicaragua.
[943] Leclerc, no. 1070. Bancroft summarized the history of these
ancient peoples in his vol. ii. ch. 2, and goes into detail in his vol.
v.
[944] He condenses the early Mexican history in his _Mexico_, i. ch.
7. There are recent condensed narratives, in which avail has been had
of the latest developments, in Baldwin’s _Ancient America_, ch. 4, and
Short’s _North Americans of Antiquity_.
[945] Mrs. Alice D. Le Plongeon has printed various summarized popular
papers, like the “Conquest of the Mayas,” in the _Mag. Amer. Hist._,
April and June, 1888.
[946] A list of Squier’s published writings was appended to the
_Catalogue of Squier’s Library_, prepared by Joseph Sabin (N. Y.,
1876), as sold at that time. By this it appears that his earliest study
of these subjects was a review of Buxton’s _Migrations of the Ancient
Mexicans_, read before the London Ethnolog. Soc., and printed in 1848
in the _Edinb. New Philosoph. Mag._, vol. xlvi. His first considerable
contribution was his _Travels in Cent. America, particularly in
Nicaragua, with a description of its aboriginal monuments_ (London
and N. Y., 1852-53). He supplemented this by some popular papers in
_Harper’s Mag._, 1854, 1855. (Cf. _Hist. Mag._, iv. 65; _Putnam’s
Mag._, xii. 549.) A year or two later he communicated papers on “Les
Indiens Guatusos du Nicaragua,” and “Les indiens Xicaques du Honduras,”
to the _Nouvelles Annales des Voyages_ (1856, 1858), and “A Visit to
the Guajiquero Indians” to _Harper’s Mag._, 1859. In 1860, Squier
projected the publication of a _Collection_ of documents, but only a
letter (1576) of Palacio was printed (Icazbalceta, _Bibl. Mex._, i. p.
326). He had intended to make the series more correct and with fewer
omissions than Ternaux had allowed himself. His material, then the
result of ten years’ gathering, had been largely secured through the
instrumentality of Buckingham Smith. (See Vol. II. p. vii.)
[947] “Art of war and mode of warfare of the Ancient Mexicans”
(_Peabody Mus. Rept._, no. x.).
“Distribution and tenure of lands, and the customs with respect to
inheritance among the ancient Mexicans” (_Ibid._ no. xi.).
“Special organizations and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans”
(_Ibid._ no. xii.).
These papers reveal much thorough study of the earlier writers on the
general condition of the ancient people of Mexico, and the student
finds much help in their full references. It was this manifestation
of his learning that led to his appointment by the Archæological
Institute,—the fruit of his labor in their behalf appearing in his
_Report of an Archæological Tour in Mexico, 1881_, which constitutes
the second volume (1884) of the _Papers_ of that body. In his third
section he enlarges upon the condition of Mexico at the time of the
Conquest. His explorations covered the region from Tampico to Mexico
city.
[948] _Library of Aboriginal American Literature_, (Philadelphia.)
[949] James H. McCulloh, an officer of the U. S. army, published
_Researches on America_ (Balt., 1816), expanded later into _Researches,
philosophical and antiquarian, concerning the original History of
America_ (Baltimore, 1829). His fifth and sixth parts concern the
“Institutions of the Mexican Empire,” and “The nations inhabiting
Guatemala” (Field, no. 987).
G. F. Lyon’s _Journal of a residence and tour in the Republic of
Mexico_ (Lond., 1826, 1828).
Brantz Mayer’s _Mexico as it was and as it is_, and his more
comprehensive _Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican_ (Hartford, 1853),
which includes an essay on the ancient civilization. Mayer had good
opportunities while attached to the United States legation in Mexico,
but of course he wrote earlier than the later developments (Field, no.
1038).
The distinguished English anthropologist, E. B. Tylor’s _Anahuac;
or, Mexico and the Mexicans, ancient and modern_ (London, 1861), is
a readable rendering of the outlines of the ancient history, and he
describes such of the archæological remains as fell in his way.
H. C. R. Becher’s _Trip to Mexico_ (London, 1880) has an appendix on
the ancient races.
F. A. Ober’s _Travels in Mexico_ (1884).
[950] The important papers are:—Tome I. Brasseur de Bourbourg.
_Esquisses d’histoire, d’archéologie, d’ethnographie et de
linguistique._ Gros. _Renseignements sur les monuments anciens situés
dans les environs de Mexico._—Tome II. Br. de Bourbourg. _Rapport sur
les ruines de Mayapan et d’Uxmal au Yucatan._ Hay. _Renseignements
sur Texcoco._ Dolfus, Montserrat et Pavie. _Mémoires et notes
géologiques._—Tome III. Doutrelaine. _Rapports sur les ruines de Mitla,
sur la pierre de Tlalnepantla, sur un mss. mexicain (avec fac-simile)._
Guillemin Tarayre. _Rapport sur l’exploration minéralogique des régions
mexicaines._ Siméon. _Note sur la numération des anciens Mexicains._
[951] He says the work is very rare. A copy given by him is in Harvard
College library. _Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 26.
[952] His _Palenqué_, at a later day, was published by the French
government (_Quatre Lettres, avant-propos_).
[953] Introduction of his _Hist. Nations Civilisées_.
[954] Tome I. xcii. et 440 pp. _Les temps héroïques et l’histoire de
l’empire des Toltèques._—Tome II. 616 pp. _L’histoire du Yucatan et du
Guatémala, avec celle de l’Anahuac durant le moyen âge aztèque, jusqu’à
la fondation de la royauté à Mexico._—Tome III. 692 pp. _L’histoire
des Etats du Michoacan et d’Oaxaca et de l’empire de l’Anahuac jusqu’à
l’arrivée des Espagnols. Astronomie, religion, sciences et arts
des Aztèques, etc._—Tome IV. vi. et 851 pp. _Conquête du Mexique,
du Michoacan et du Guatémala, etc. Etablissement des Espagnols et
fondation de l’Eglise catholique. Ruine de l’idolâtrie, déclin et
abaissement de la race indigène, jusqu’à la fin du xvi^e siècle._
In his introduction (p. lxxiv) Brasseur gives a list of the manuscript
and printed books on which he has mainly depended, the chief of
which are: Burgoa, Cogolludo, Torquemada, Sahagún, Remesal, Gomara
(in Barcia), Lorenzana’s _Cortes_, Bernal Diaz, Vetancurt’s _Teatro
Mexicano_ (1698), Valades’ _Rhetorica Christiana_ (1579), Juarros,
Pelaez, Leon y Gama, etc.
[955] Kirk’s _Prescott_, i. 10. There are lists of Brasseur’s works
in his own _Bibliothèque Mex.-Guatémalienne_, p. 25; in the _Pinart
Catalogue_, no. 141, etc.; Field, p. 43; Sabin, ii. 7420. Cf. notices
of his labors by Haven in _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, Oct., 1870, p.
47; by Brinton in _Lippincott’s Mag._, i. 79. There is a _Sommaire
des voyages scientifiques et des travaux de géographie, d’histoire,
d’archéologie et de Philologie américaines, publiés par l’abbé Brasseur
de Bourbourg_ (St. Cloud, 1862).
[956] _Abor. Amer. Authors_, 57.
[957] Cf. Bandelier, _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. 93; Field, no.
176; H. H. Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, ii. 116, 780; v. 126, 153, 236,
241,—who says of Brasseur that “he rejects nothing, and transforms
everything into historic fact;” but Bancroft looks to Brasseur for the
main drift of his chapter on pre-Toltec history. Cf. Brinton’s _Myths
of the New World_, p. 41.
[958] Bancroft, _Nat. Races_, v. 176; Baldwin, _Anc. America_.
[959] Reference may be made to H. T. Moke’s _Histoire des peuples
Américains_ (Bruxelles, 1847); Michel Chevalier’s “Du Mexique avant et
pendant la Conquête,” in the _Revue des deux Mondes_, 1845, and his _Le
Méxique ancien et moderne_ (Paris, 1863); and some parts of the Marquis
de Nadaillac’s _L’Amérique préhistorique_ (Paris, 1883). A recent
popular summary, without references, of the condition and history of
ancient Mexico, is Lucien Biart’s _Les Aztèques, histoire, mœurs,
coutumes_ (Paris, 1885), of which there is an English translation, _The
Aztecs, their history_, etc., translated by J. L. Garnier (Chicago,
1887).
[960] Leclerc, no. 1147; Field, no. 620; Squier, no. 427; Sabin, vii.
28,255; Bandelier in _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. 116. It has
never yet been reprinted. The early date, as well as its rarity, have
contributed to give it, perhaps, undue reputation. It is worth from £3
to £4.
[961] Leclerc, no. 1119. See Vol. II. p. 415.
[962] Leclerc, no. 2079; Brasseur, _Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 113.
[963] For the _Historia de Mexico_ of Carbajal Espinosa, see Vol. II.
p. 428. Cf. Alfred Chavero’s _México á través de los Siglos_.
[964] Discrediting Gomara’s statement that De Ayllon found tribes near
Cape Hatteras who had tame deer and made cheese from their milk, Dr.
Brinton says: “Throughout the continent there is not a single authentic
instance of a pastoral tribe, not one of an animal raised for its milk,
nor for the transportation of persons, and very few for their flesh.
It was essentially a hunting race.” (_Myths of the New World_, 21.)
He adds: “The one mollifying element was agriculture, substituting a
sedentary for a wandering life, supplying a fixed dependence for an
uncertain contingency.”
[965] See Vol. II. p. 98.
[966] It was two years earlier, in 1517, that Hernandez de Cordova
had first noticed the ruins of the Yucatan coast, though Columbus, in
1502, near Yucatan had met a Maya vessel, which with its navigators had
astonished him.
[967] “No writer,” says Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Repts._ ii. 674), “has
been more prolific in pictures of pomp, regal wealth and magnificence,
than Bernal Diaz. Most of the later writers have placed undue reliance
on his statements, assuming that the truthfulness of his own individual
feelings was the result of cool observation. Any one who has read
attentively his _Mémoirs_ will become convinced that he is in fact one
of the most unreliable eye-witnesses, so far as general principles are
concerned.... Cortes had personal and political motives to magnify and
embellish the picture. If his statements fall far below those of his
troopers in thrilling and highly-colored details, there is every reason
to believe that they are the more trustworthy.... In the descriptions
by Cortes we find, on the whole, nothing but a barbarous display common
to other Indian celebrations of a similar character.”
Bandelier’s further comment is (_Ibid._ ii. 397) “A feudal empire at
Tezcuco was an invention of the chroniclers, who had a direct interest,
or thought to have one, in advancing the claims of the Tezcucan tribe
to an original supremacy.”
Bandelier again (_Ibid._ ii. 385) points out the early statements
of the conquerors, and of their annalists, which have prompted
the inference of a feudal condition of society; but he refers to
Ixtlilxochitl as “the chief originator of the feudal view;” and from
him Torquemada draws his inspiration. Wilson (_Prehist. Man_, i. 242)
holds much the same views.
[968] _Peabody Mus. Tenth Rept._ vol. ii. 114.
[969] Bandelier (“Art of War, etc.,” in _Peabody Mus. Rept._ x.
113) again says of De Pauw’s _Recherches philosophiques sur les
Américaines_, that it is “a very injudicious book, which by its
extravagance and audacity created a great deal of harm. It permitted
Clavigero to attack even Robertson, because the latter had also applied
sound criticism to the study of American aboriginal history, and by
artfully placing both as upon the same platform, to counteract much of
the good effects of Robertson’s work.”
[970] _Peabody Mus. Repts._ ii. 114.
[971] In regard to the nature of the chief-of-men we find, among much
else of the first importance in the study of the Mexican government,
an exposition in Sahagún (lib. vi. cap. 20), which seems to establish
the elective and non-hereditary character of the office. It was “this
office and its attributes,” says Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Repts._ ii.
670), “which have been the main stays of the notion that a high degree
of civilization prevailed in aboriginal Mexico, in so far as its people
were ruled after the manner of eastern despotisms.” Bandelier (_Ibid._
ii. 133) says: “It is not impossible that the so-called empire of
Mexico may yet prove to have been but a confederacy of the Nahuatlac
tribe of the valley, with the Mexicans as military leaders.” His
argument on the word translated “king” is not convincing.
[972] _Peabody Mus. Repts._ ii. 435.
[973] Introd. to _Conquest of Mexico_. See Vol. II. p. 426. In the
Appendix to his third volume, Prescott, relying mainly on the works of
Dupaix and Waldeck, arrived at conclusions as respects the origin of
the Mexican civilization, and its analogies with the Old World, which
accord with those of Stephens, whose work had not appeared at the time
when Prescott wrote.
[974] _Houses and House Life_, p. 222.
[975] Bancroft (ii. 92) says: “What is known of the Aztecs has
furnished material for nine tenths of all that has been written on the
American civilized nations in general.”
[976] _Anahuac, or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern_
(London, 1861). Tylor enlarges upon what he considers the evidences
of immense populations; and respecting some of their arts he adds,
from inspection of specimens of their handicraft, that “the Spanish
conquerors were not romancing in the wonderful stories they told of the
skill of the native goldsmiths.” On the other hand, Morgan (_Houses and
House Life_, 223) thinks the figures of population grossly exaggerated.
[977] Vol. II. p. 427.
[978] When we consider that Rome, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, in
spite of rapine, siege and fire, still retain numerous traces of
their earliest times, and that not a vestige of the Aztec capital
remains to us except its site, we must assume, in Wilson’s opinion
(_Prehistoric Man_, i. 331), that its edifices and causeways must have
been for the most part more slight and fragile than the descriptions
of the conquerors implied. Morgan instances as a proof of the flimsy
character of their masonry, that Cortes in seventeen days levelled
three fourths of the city of Mexico. But, adds Wilson, “so far as
an indigenous American civilization is concerned, no doubt can be
entertained, and there is little room for questioning, that among races
who had carried civilization so far, there existed the capacity for its
further development, independently of all borrowed aid” (p. 336). The
Baron Nordenskjöld informs me that there is in the library at Upsala
a MS. map of Mexico by Santa Cruz (d. 1572) which contains numerous
ethnographical details, not to be found in printed maps of that day.
[979] _Native Races_, ii. 159.
[980] _Ibid._ ii. 133.
[981] Bancroft has recently epitomized his views afresh in the _Amer.
Antiquarian_, Jan., 1888.
[982] Bancroft wrote in San Francisco, it will be remembered.
[983] It was for Bandelier, in his “Social organization and mode of
government of the ancient Mexicans” (_Peabody Mus. Repts._ ii. 557),
to demonstrate the proposition that tribal society based, according to
Morgan, upon kin, and not political society, which rests upon territory
and property, must be looked for among the ancient Mexicans.
[984] Morgan’s _Houses_, etc., 225. Bandelier (_Peabody Mus.
Rept._, vol. ii. 114) speaks of the views advanced by Morgan in
his “Montezuma’s Dinner,” as “a bold stroke for the establishment
of American ethnology on a new basis.” It must be remembered that
Bandelier was Morgan’s pupil.
[985] _Ibid._ 222.
[986] Morgan says of his predecessors, “they learned nothing and knew
nothing” of Indian society.
[987] _Ibid._ 223.
[988] In this he of course assumes that the ruins in Spanish America
are of communal edifices.
[989] Bandelier’s papers are in the second volume of the _Reports of
the Peabody Museum_ at Cambridge. He contends in his “Art of Warfare
among the Ancient Mexicans,” that he has shown the non-existence of
a military despotism, and proved their government to be “a military
democracy, originally based upon communism in living.” A similar
understanding pervades his other essay “On the social organization
and mode of government of the ancient Mexicans.” Morgan and Bandelier
profess great admiration for each other,—Morgan citing his friend as
“our most eminent scholar in Spanish American history” (_Houses_,
etc., 84), and Bandelier expresses his deep feeling of gratitude, etc.
(_Archæolog. Tour_, 32). This affectionate relation has very likely
done something in unifying their intellectual sympathies. The _Ancient
Society, or researches in the lines of human progress from savagery
through barbarism to civilization_ (N. Y. 1877), of Morgan is reflected
very palpably in these papers of Bandelier. The accounts of the war of
the conquest, as detailed in Bancroft’s _Mexico_ (vol. i.), and the
views of their war customs (_Native Races_, ii. ch. 13), contrasted
with Bandelier’s ideas,—who finds in Parkman’s books “the natural
parallelism between the forays of the Iroquois and the so-called
conquests of the Mexican confederacy” (_Archæol. Tour_, 32), and who
reduces the battle of Otumba to an affair like that of Custer and
the Sioux (_Art of Warfare_),—give us in the military aspects of the
ancient life the opposed views of the two schools of interpreters.
[990] Being vol. iv. of the _Contributions to No. Amer. Ethnol._ in
Powell’s _Survey of the Rocky Mt. Region_. Some of Morgan’s cognate
studies relating to the aboriginal system of consanguinity and laws of
descent are in the _Smithsonian Contributions_, xvii., the _Smithsonian
Misc. Coll._ ii., _Amer. Acad. Arts and Sci. Trans._ vii., and _Am.
Assoc. Adv. Sci. Proc._, 1857.
[991] Morgan in this, his last work, condenses in his first chapter
those which were numbered 1 to 4 in his _Ancient Society_, and in
succeeding sections he discusses the laws of hospitality, communism,
usages of land and food, and the houses of the northern tribes, of
those of New Mexico, San Juan River, the moundbuilders, the Aztecs,
and those in Yucatan and Central America. Among these he finds three
distinct ethnical stages, as shown in the northern Indian, higher in
the sedentary tribes of New Mexico, and highest among those of Mexico
and Central America. S. F. Haven commemorated Morgan’s death in the
_Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, Apr., 1880.
[992] Cf. Bandelier on “the tenure of lands” in _Peabody Mus. Repts._
(1878), no. xi., and Bancroft in _Nat. Races_, ii. ch. 6, p. 223.
[993] Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Repts._ ii. 391) points out that when
Martin Ursúa captured Tayasál on Lake Petin, the last pueblo inhabited
by Maya Indians, he found “all the inhabitants living brutally
together, an entire relationship together in one single house,” and
Bandelier refers further to Morgan’s _Ancient Society_, Part 2, p. 181.
[994] Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Repts._ ii. 673) accepts the views of
Morgan, calling it “a rude clannish feast,” given by the official
household of the tribe as a part of its daily duties and obligations.
[995] On the character of the Tecpan (council house, or official house)
of the Mexicans, which the early writers translate “palace,” with
its sense of magnificence, see Bandelier (_Peabody Mus. Repts._ ii.
406, 671, etc.), with his references. Morgan holds that Stephens is
largely responsible for the prevalence of erroneous notions regarding
the Mayas, by reason of using the words “palaces” and “great cities”
for defining what were really the pueblos of these southern Indians.
Bancroft (ii. 84), referring to the ruins, says: They have “the
highest value as confirming the truth of the reports made by Spanish
writers, very many, or perhaps most, of whose statements respecting the
wonderful phenomena of the New World, without this incontrovertible
material proof, would find few believers among the skeptical students
of the present day.” Bancroft had little prescience respecting what the
communal theorists were going to say of these ruins.
[996] Cf. Bancroft’s _Cent. America_, i. 317. Sir J. William Dawson, in
his _Fossil Men_ (p. 83), contends that Morgan has proved his point,
and he calls the ruins of Spanish America “communistic barracks” (p.
50). Higginson, in the first chapter of his _Larger History_, which is
a very excellent, condensed popular statement of the new views which
Morgan inaugurated, says of him very truly, that he lacked moderation,
and that there is “something almost exasperating in the positiveness
with which he sometimes assumes as proved that which is only probable.”
[997] Bancroft in his foot-notes (vol. ii.) embodies the best
bibliography of this ancient civilization. Cf. Wilson’s _Prehistoric
Man_, i. ch. 14; C. Hermann Berendt’s “Centres of ancient civilization
and their geographical distribution,” an _Address before the Amer.
Geog. Soc._ (N. Y. 1876); Draper’s _Intellectual Development of
Europe_; Brasseur’s _Ms. Troano_; Humboldt’s _Cosmos_ (English transl.
ii. 674); Michel Chevalier in the _Revue de deux Mondes_, Mar.-July,
1845, embraced later in his _Du Méxique avant et pendant la Conquête_
(Paris, 1845); Brantz Mayer’s _Mexico as it was; The Galaxy_, March,
1876; _Scribner’s Mag._ v. 724; _Overland Monthly_, xiv. 468; De
Charency’s _Hist. du Civilisation du Méxique_ (_Revue des Questions
historiques_), vi. 283; Dabry de Thiersant’s _Origine des indiens
du Nouveau Monde_ (Paris, 1883); Peschel’s _Races of Men_, 441;
Nadaillac’s _Les premiers hommes et les temps préhistoriques_, ii. ch.
9, etc.
[998] For the bibliography of his works see Brunet, Sabin, Field,
etc. The octavo edition of his _Vues_ has 19 of the 69 plates which
constitute the _Atlas_ of the large edition. See the chapter on Peru
for further detail.
[999] John Lloyd Stephens, _Incidents of travel in Central America,
Chiapas, and Yucatan_, Lond. and N. Y. 1841,—various later eds.,
that of London, 1854, being “revised from the latest Amer. ed., with
additions by Frederick Catherwood.” Stephens started on this expedition
in 1839, and he was armed with credentials from President Van Buren.
He travelled 3000 miles, and visited eight ruined cities, as shown by
his route given on the map in vol. i. Cf. references in Allibone, ii.
p. 2240; _Poole’s Index_, p. 212; his _Incidents of Travel in Yucatan_
will be mentioned later.
Frederick Catherwood’s _Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America,
Chiapas, and Yucatan_ (Lond. 1844) has a brief text (pp. 24) and 25
lithographed plates. Some of the original drawings used in making
these plates were included in the _Squier Catalogue_, p. 229. (Sabin’s
_Dict._ iii. no. 11520.) Captain Lindesay Brine, in his paper on the
“Ruined Cities of Central America” (_Journal Roy. Geog. Soc._ 1872,
p. 354; _Proc._ xvii. 67), testifies to the accuracy of Stephens and
Catherwood. These new developments furnished the material for numerous
purveyors to the popular mind, some of them of the slightest value,
like Asahel Davis, whose _Antiquities of Central America_, with some
slight changes of title, and with the parade of new editions, were
common enough between 1840 and 1850.
[1000] Viollet le Duc, in his _Histoire de l’habitation humaine
depuis les temps préhistoriques_ (Paris, 1875), has given a chapter
(no. xxii.) to the “Nahuas and Toltecs.” Views more or less studied,
comprehensive, and restricted are given in R. Cary Long’s _Ancient
Architecture of America, its historic value and parallelism of
development with the architecture of the Old World_ (N. Y. 1849), an
address from the _N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc._ 1849, p. 117; R. P. Greg on
“the Fret or Key Ornament in Mexico and Peru,” in the _Archæologia_
(London), vol. xlvii. 157; and a popular summary on “the pyramid
in America,” by S. D. Peet, in the _American Antiquarian_, July,
1888, comparing the mounds of Cholula, Uxmal, Palenqué, Teotihuacan,
Copan, Quemada, Cohokia, St. Louis, etc. John T. Short summarizes the
characteristics of the Nahua and Maya styles (_No. Amer. of Antiquity_,
340, 359). There are chapters on their architecture in Bancroft, _Nat.
Races_, ii.; but the references in his vol. iv. are most helpful.
[1001] Vols. v. vi. vii. on “Ancient Mexican Civilization,” “Pyramid of
Teotihuacan,” “Sacrificial Calendar Stone,” “Central America at time of
Conquest,” “Ruins at Palenque and Copan,” “Ruins of Uxmal,” etc.
[1002] Duplicates were placed in the Nat. Museum at Washington by the
liberality of Pierre Lorillard.
[1003] The English translation is condensed in parts: _The ancient
cities of the New World: being travels and explorations in Mexico
and Central America from 1857-1882_. _Translated from the French by
J. Gonino and Helen S. Conant._ (London, 1887.) Some of his notable
results were the discovery of stucco ornaments in the province of
Iturbide, among ruins which he unfortunately named Lorillard City (Eng.
tr. ch. 22). The palace at Tula is also figured in Brocklehurst’s
_Mexico to-day_, ch. 25. The discovery of what Charnay calls glass and
porcelain is looked upon as doubtful by most archæologists, who believe
the specimens to be rather traces of Spanish contact.
[1004] Bancroft, iv. 453, and references.
[1005] Bandelier (p. 235) is confident that it was built by an earlier
people than the Nahuas.
[1006] Cf. Bandelier, p. 247. Short, p. 236.
[1007] Bancroft (v. 200) gives references on these points, and
particular note may be taken of Veytia, i. 18, 155, 199; and Brasseur,
_Hist. Nations Civ._ iv. 182. Cf. also Nadaillac, p. 351. Bandelier
(_Archæolog. Tour_, 248, 249) favors the gradual growth theory, and
collates early sources (p. 250). Bancroft (iv. 474) holds that we may
feel very sure its erection dates back of the tenth, and perhaps of the
seventh, century.
[1008] Bandelier’s idea (p. 254) is that as the Indians never repair
a ruin, they abandoned this remaining mound after its disaster, and
transplanted the worship of Quetzalcoatl to the new mound, since
destroyed, while the old shrine was in time given to the new cult of
the Rain-god.
[1009] As Bancroft thinks; but Bandelier says that it was not of this
mound, but of the temple which stood where the modern convent stands,
that this count was made. _Arch. Tour_, 242.
[1010] _Storia Ant. del Messico_, ii. 33.
[1011] _Vues_, i. 96 pl. iii., or pl. vii., viii. in folio ed.; _Essai
polit._, 239. The later observers are: Dupaix (_Antiq. Mex._, and in
Kingsborough, v. 218; with iv. pl. viii.). Bancroft remarks on the
totally different aspects of Castañeda’s two drawings. Nebel, in his
_Viaje pintoresco y Arqueolójico sobre la república Mejicana_, 1829-34
(Paris, 1839, folio), gave a description and a large colored drawing.
Of the other visitors whose accounts add something to our knowledge,
Bancroft (iv. 471) notes the following: J. R. Poinsett, _Notes on
Mexico_ (London, 1825). W. H. Bullock, _Six Months in Mexico_ (Lond.,
1825). H. G. Ward, _Mexico in 1827_ (Lond., 1828). Mark Beaufoy, _Mex.
Illustrations_ (Lond., 1828), with cuts. Charles Jos. Latrobe, _Rambles
in Mexico_ (Lond., 1836). Brantz Mayer, _Mexico as it was_ (N. Y.,
1854); _Mexico, Aztec, etc._ (Hartford, 1853); and in Schoolcraft,
_Ind. Tribes_, vi. 582. Waddy Thompson, _Recoll. of Mexico_ (N. Y.,
1847). E. B. Tylor, _Anahuac_ (Lond., 1861), p. 274. A. S. Evans, _Our
Sister Republic_ (Hartford, 1870). Summaries later than Bancroft’s will
be found in Short, p. 369, and Nadaillac, p. 350. Bancroft adds (iv.
471-2) a long list of second-hand describers.
[1012] It is illustrated with a map of the district of Cholula (p.
158), a detailed plan of the pyramid or mound (Humboldt is responsible
for the former term) as it stands amid roads and fields (p. 230), and a
fac-simile of an old map of the pueblo of Cholula (1581).
Bandelier speaks of the conservative tendencies of the native
population of this region, giving a report that old native idols are
still preserved and worshipped in caves, to which he could not induce
the Indians to conduct him (p. 156); and that when he went to see
the _Mapa de Cuauhtlantzinco_, or some native pictures of the 16th
century, representing the Conquest, and of the highest importance for
its history, he was jealously allowed but one glance at them, and could
not get another (_Archæol. Tour_, p. 123). He adds: “The difficulty
attending the consultation of any documents in the hands of Indians is
universal, and results from their superstitious regard for writings on
paper. The bulk of the people watch with the utmost jealousy over their
old papers.... They have a fear lest the power vested in an original
may be transferred to a copy” (pp. 155-6).
[1013] Pinart, no. 590.
[1014] He repeats Alzate’s plate of the restoration of the ruins.
[1015] Bancroft refers (iv. 483) to various compiled accounts, to which
may be added his own and Short’s (p. 371). Cf. F. Boncourt in the
_Revue d’Ethnographie_ (1887).
[1016] Prescott, Kirk ed., i. 12. See the map of the plateau of Anahuac
in Ruge, _Gesch. des Zeitalters der Entdeck._, i. 363.
[1017] Cf. Gros in the _Archives de la Com. Scient. du Méxique_, vol.
i.; H. de Saussure on the _Découverte des ruines d’une ancienne ville
Méxicaine située sur le plateau de l’Anahuac_ (Paris, 1858,—_Bull. Soc
Géog. de Paris_).
[1018] The same is true of the earliest Spanish buildings. Icazbalceta
(_México en 1554_, p. 74) says that the soil is constantly
accumulating, and the whole city gradually sinks.
[1019] Bancroft (iv. 505, 516, with references) says that such objects,
when brought to light by excavations, have not always been removed from
their hiding-places; and he argues that beneath the city there may yet
be “thousands of interesting monuments.” Cf. B. Mayer’s _Mexico as it
was_, vol. ii.
Bandelier (_Archæol. Tour_, Part ii. p. 49) gives us valuable
“Archæological Notes about the City of Mexico,” in which he says
that Alfredo Chavero owns a very large oil painting, said to have
been executed in 1523, giving a view of the aboriginal city and the
principal events of the Conquest. It shows that the ancient city was
about one quarter the size of the modern town.
We find descriptions of the city before the conquerors transformed
it, in Brasseur’s _Hist. Nations Civ._ iii. 187; iv. line 13; and in
Bancroft (ii. ch. 18) there is a collation of authorities on Nahua
buildings, with specific references on the city of Mexico (ii. p. 567).
Bandelier describes with citations its military aspects at the time of
the Conquest (_Peabody Mus. Reports_, x. 151).
The movable relics found in Mexico are the following:—
1. The calendar stone. See annexed cut.
2. Teoyamique. See cut in the appendix of this volume.
3. Sacrificial stone. See annexed cut.
4. Indio triste. See annexed cut.
5. Head of a serpent, discovered in 1881. Cf. Bandelier’s _Archæol.
Tour_, p. 69.
6. Human head. Cf. Bancroft, iv. 518. All of the above, except the
calendar stone, are in the Museo Nacional.
7. Gladiatorial stone, discovered in 1792, but left buried. Cf. B.
Mayer’s _Mexico_, 123; Bancroft, iv. 516; Kingsborough, vii. 94;
Sahagún, lib. ii.
8. A few other less important objects. Cf. Bandelier, _Archæol. Tour_,
52.
Antonio de Leon y Gama, who unfortunately had no knowledge of the
writings of Sahagún, has discussed most of these relics in his
_Descripcion histórico y Cronológico de las dos Piedras &_. (2d ed.
Bustamante, 1832.)
[1020] Bancroft, iv. 520, with authorities, p. 523. Cf. _American
Antiquarian_, May, 1888.
[1021] Bancroft’s numerous references make a foot-note (iv. 530). He
adds a plan from Almaraz, and says that the description of Linares
(_Soc. Mex. Geog. Boletin_, 30, i. 103) is mainly drawn from Almaraz.
It is believed, but not absolutely proven, that the mounds were natural
ones, artificially shaped (Bandelier, 44). The extent of the ruins
is very great, and it is a current belief that the city in its prime
must have been very large. The whole region is exceptionally rich in
fragmentary and small relics, like pottery, obsidian implements, and
terra-cotta heads. Cf. for these last, _Lond. Geog. Soc. Journal_,
vii. 10; Thompson’s _Mexico_, 140; Nebel, _Viaje_; Mayer’s _Mexico as
it was_, 227 (as cited in Bancroft, iv. 542); and later publications
like T. U. Brocklehurst’s _Mexico to-day_ (Lond., 1883), and Zelia
Nuttall’s “Terra Cotta Heads from Teotihuacan,” in the _Amer. Journal
of Archæology_ (June and Sept. 1886), ii. 157, 318.
Bancroft judges that the ruins date back to the sixth century, and
says that these mounds served for models of the Aztec teocallis. On
the commission already referred to was Antonio García y Cubas, who
conducted some personal explorations, and in describing these in a
separate publication, _Ensayo de un Estudio Comparativo entre las
Pirámides Egípcias y Mexicanas_ (Mexico, 1871), he points out certain
analogies of the American and Egyptian structures, which will be found
in epitome in Bancroft (iv. 543). In discussing the monoliths of the
ruins, Amos W. Butler (_Amer. Antiquarian_, May, 1885), in a paper
on “The Sacrificial Stone of San Juan Teotihuacan,” advanced some
views that are controverted by W. H. Holmes in the _Amer. Journal of
Archæology_ (i. 361), from whose foot-notes a good bibliography of the
subject can be derived. Bandelier (_Archæol. Tour_, 42) thinks that
because no specific mention is made of them in Mexican tradition, it is
safe to infer that these monuments antedate the Mexicans, and were in
ruins at the time of the Conquest.
[1022] The early writers make little mention of the place except as
one of the halting-places of the Aztec migration. Torquemada has
something to say (quoted in _Soc. Mex. Geog. Bol._, 2º, iii. 278, with
the earliest of the modern accounts by Manuel Gutierrez, in 1805).
Capt. G. F. Lyon (_Journal of a residence and tour in Mexico_, London,
1828) visited the ruins in 1828. Pedro Rivera in 1830 described them
in Márcos de Esparza’s _Informe presentado al Gobierno_ (Zacatecas,
1830,—also in _Museo Méxicano_, i. 185, 1843). The plan in Nebel’s
Viaje (copied in Bancroft, iv. 582) was made for Governor García, by
Berghes, a German engineer, in 1831, who at the time was accompanied by
J. Burkart (_Aufenthalt und Reisen in Mexico_, Stuttgart, 1836), who
gives a plan of fewer details. Bancroft (iv. 579) thinks Nebel’s views
of the ruins the only ones ever published, and he enumerates various
second-hand writers (iv. 579).
Cf. Fegeux, “Les ruines de la Quemada,” in the _Revue d’Ethnologie_, i.
119. The noticeable features of these ruins are their massiveness and
height of walls, their absence of decoration and carved idols, and the
lack of pottery and the smaller relics. Their history, notwithstanding
much search, is a blank.
[1023] Cf. Bandelier, p. 320.
[1024] Bandelier, p. 276.
[1025] Ramirez, ed. 1867.
[1026] His brief account is copied by Mendieta and Torquemada, and is
cited in Bandelier, p. 324.
[1027] _Geog. Descripcion_, ii. cited in Bandelier, 324. Cf. _Soc. Mex.
Geog. Boletin_, vii. 170.
[1028] Bandelier says (p. 279) that he saw them in the library of the
Institute of Oaxaca, and that, though admirable, they have a certain
tendency to over-restoration,—the besetting sin of all explorers who
make drawings.
[1029] Cf. Field, no. 1612.
[1030] _Ruines_, etc., 261, and Viollet le Duc, p. 74; _Anciens
Villes_, ch. 24.
[1031] There is a _Rapport sur les ruines_, by Doutrelaine, in the
_Archives de la Commission Scientifique du Méxique_ (vol. iii.);
Nadaillac (p. 364) and Short (p. 361) have epitomized results, and
Louis H. Aymé gives some _Notes on Mitla_ in the _Amer. Antiq. Soc.
Proc._, April, 1882, p. 82; Bancroft (iv. 391) enumerates various
second-hand descriptions.
[1032] I do not understand Bandelier’s statement (p. 277) that it is
taken from Bancroft’s plan, which it only resembles in a general way.
[1033] Bancroft classifies their architectural peculiarities (iv. pp.
267-279).
[1034] See Vol. II. ch. 3. Bancroft (ii. p. 784) collates the early
accounts of the habitations of the people, and (iv. 254, 260, 261) the
descriptions of the ruins and statelier edifices, as seen by these
explorers.
[1035] _For. Q. Rev._, xviii. 251.
[1036] Cf. _Poole’s Index_, p. 1439.
[1037] Bancroft, iv. 145; Field, no. 1138; Leclerc, no. 1217; Pilling,
p. 2767; _Dem. Review_, xi. 529. Cf. _Poole’s Index_, P. 1439.
[1038] _Registro Yucateco_, ii. 437; _Diccionario Universal_ (México,
1853), x. 290.
[1039] Bandelier, _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. 92, calls the
paper “not very valuable.”
[1040] This gentleman, since the death of his father, of the same name,
succeeded, after an interval, the elder antiquary in the president’s
chair of the American Antiquarian Society.
[1041] Cf. Short, p. 396. Le Plongeon retorts (_Amer. Antiq. Soc.
Proc._, n. s., i. 282) by telling his critic that he had never been
in Yucatan. Considering the effect of contact in many of those who
have written of the ruins, it may be a question if the implication is
valuable as a piece of criticism. Mr. Salisbury and Dr. Le Plongeon
reported from time to time in the _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._ the results
of the latter’s investigations, and the researches to which they gave
rise. Those in April, 1876, and April, 1877, of these _Proceedings_,
were privately printed by Mr. Salisbury, as _The Mayas_, etc. In
April, 1878, Mr. Salisbury reported upon the “Terra-cotta figures from
Isla Mujeres.” In Oct., 1878, there were communications from Dr. Le
Plongeon, and from Alice D. Le Plongeon, his wife. In April, 1879, Dr.
Le Plongeon communicated a letter on the affinities of Central America
and the East. Since this the Le Plongeons have found other channels
of communication. Dr. Le Plongeon expanded his somewhat extravagant
notions of Oriental affinities in his _Sacred mysteries among the
Mayas and the Quiches, 11,500 years ago; their relation to the sacred
mysteries of Egypt, Greece, Chaldea, and India. Freemasonry in times
anterior to the temple of Solomon_ (New York, 1886).
His preface is largely made up with a rehearsal of his rebuffs and in
complaints of the want of public appreciation of his labors. He is,
however, as confident as ever, and deciphers the bas-reliefs and mural
inscriptions of Chichen-Itza by “the ancient hieratic Maya alphabet”
which he claims to have discovered, and shows this alphabet in parallel
columns with that of Egypt as displayed by Champollion and Bunsen. Mrs.
Le Plongeon published her _Vestiges of the Mayas_ in New York, in 1881,
and gathered some of her periodical writings in her _Here and There
in Yucatan_ (N. Y., 1886). Cf. her letter on the ancient records of
Yucatan in _The Nation_, xxix. 224.
[1042] Baldwin (p. 125), in a condensed way, and likewise Short (ch.
8) and Bancroft (iv. ch. 5), more at length, have mainly depended on
Stephens. Cf. references in Bancroft, iv. 147, and Bandelier’s list in
the _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. 82, 95. E. H. Thompson has
contributed papers in _Ibid._ Oct., 1886, p. 248, and April, 1887, p.
379, and on the ruins of Kich-Moo and Chun-Kal-Cin in April, 1888, p.
162. Brasseur, beside his _Hist. Nat. Civ._, ii. 20, has something in
his introduction to his _Relation de Landa_. The description of the
ruins at Zayi, which Stephens gives, shows that some of the rooms were
filled solid with masonry, and he leaves it as an unaccountable fact;
but Morgan (_Houses and House Life_, p. 267) thinks it shows that the
builders constructed a core of masonry, over which they reared the
walls and ceilings, which last, after hardening, were able to support
themselves, when the cores were removed; and that in the ruins at Zayi
we see the cores unremoved.
[1043] Cf. the _pros_ and _cons_ in Waldeck and Charnay. Waldeck first
named the ornaments as “Elephants’ trunks” (_Voy. Pitt._ p. 74). There
are cuts in Stephens, reproduced in Bancroft. There is also a cut in
Norman. Cf. E. H. Thompson in _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1887,
p. 382.
[1044] Stephens, _Yucatan_, ii. 265, gives an ancient Indian map
(1557), and extracts from the archives of Mani, which lead him to infer
that at that time it was an inhabited Indian town.
[1045] Bancroft (iv. 151) gives various references to second-hand
descriptions, noted before 1875, to which may be added those in Short,
p. 347; Nadaillac, 334; Amer. Antiquarian, vii. 257, and again, July,
1888.
Probably the most accurate of the plans of the ruins is that of
Stephens (_Yucatan_, i. 165), which is followed by Bancroft (iv.
153). Brasseur’s report has a plan, and others, all differing, are
given by Waldeck (pl. viii.), Norman (p. 155), and Charnay (_Ruines_,
p. 62). Views and cuts of details are found in Waldeck, Stephens,
Charnay,—whence later summarizers like Bancroft, Baldwin, and Short
have drawn their copies; while special cuts are copied in Armin (_Das
Heutige Mexico_); Larenaudière (_Mexique et Guatemala_, Paris, 1847);
Le Plongeon (_Sacred Mysteries_); Ruge (_Zeitalter der Entdeckungen_,
p. 357); Morgan (_Houses_, etc., ch. xi.), and in various others. One
can best trace the varieties and contrasts of the different accounts of
the various edifices in Bancroft’s collations of their statements. His
constant citation, even to scorn them, of the impertinencies of George
Jones’s _Hist. of Anc. America_ (London, 1842),—the later notorious
Count Johannes,—was hardly worth while.
[1046] Landa described the ruins. _Relation_, p. 340.
[1047] All other accounts are based on these. Bancroft, who gives the
best summary (iv. 221), enumerates many of the second-hand writers,
to whom Short (p. 396) must be added. Stephens gives a plan (ii. 290)
which Bancroft (iv. 222) follows; and it apparently is worthy of
reasonable confidence, which cannot be said of Norman’s. The ruins
present some features not found in others, and the most interesting of
such may be considered the wall paintings, one representing a boat with
occupants, which Stephens found on the walls of the building called by
him the Gymnasium, because of stone rings projecting from the walls
(see annexed cut), which were supposed by him to have been used in ball
games. Norman calls the same building the Temple; Charnay, the Cirque;
but the native designation is Iglesia.
[1048] _Yucatan_, i. 94. Cf. Bancroft, _Native Races_, ii. 117; v. 164,
342.
[1049] Bancroft collates the views of different writers (iv. 285).
He himself holds that these buildings are more ancient than those of
Anáhuac; consequently he rejects the arguments of Stephens, that it
was by the Toltecs, after they migrated south from Anáhuac, that these
constructions were raised (_Native Races_, v. 165, and for references,
p. 169). Charnay (_Bull. de la Soc. de Géog._, Nov., 1881) believes
they were erected between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.
It is well known now that the concentric rings are a useless guide in
tropical regions to determine the age of trees, though in the past,
the immense size of trees as well as the deposition of soil have been
used to determine the supposed ages of ruins. Waldeck counted a ring a
year in getting two thousand years for the time since the abandonment
of Palenqué; but Charnay (Eng. tr. _Ancient Cities_, p. 260) says that
these rings are often formed monthly. Cf. Nadaillac, p. 323.
[1050] So called because near a modern village of that name, founded
by the Spaniards about 1564. Bancroft (iv. 296) says the ruins are
ordinarily called by the natives Casas de Piedra. Ordoñez calls them
Nachan, but without giving any authority, and some adopt the Aztec
equivalent Calhuacan, city of the serpents. Because Xibalba is held by
some to be the name of the great city of this region in the shadowy
days of Votan, that name has also been applied to the ruins. Otolum, or
the ruined place, is a common designation thereabouts, but Palenqué is
the appellation in use by most travellers and writers.
[1051] The fact is, that widely distinct estimates have been held, some
dating them back into the remotest antiquity, and others making them
later than the Conquest. Bancroft (iv. 362) collates these statements.
Cf. Dr. Earl Flint in _Amer. Antiquarian_, iv. 289. Morelet identifies
them with the Toltec remains, supposing them to be the work of that
people after their emigration, and to be of about the same age as
Mitla. Charnay (_Anc. Cities of the New World_, p. 260) claims that
Cortes knew the place as the religious metropolis of the Acaltecs. On
the question of Cortes’ knowledge see _Science_, Feb. 27, 1885, p. 171;
and _Ibid._ (by Brinton) March 27, 1885, p. 248.
[1052] The original is in the Roy. Acad. of Hist. at Madrid (Brasseur,
_Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 125), and is called _Descripcion del terreno
publacion antigua_.
[1053] Field, no. 231; Sabin, xvii. p. 292. The report of Rio was
brief, and as we would judge now, superficial. Dupaix treats him
disparagingly. The appended essay by Cabrera, an Italian, is said
to have been largely filched from Ramon’s paper, which had been
confidentially placed in his hands (Short, 207). A Spanish text of
Cabrera is in the Museo Nacional. Cf. Brasseur (_Bib. Mex.-Guat._), p.
30; Pinart, no. 186. It is a question if the plates, which constituted
the most interesting part of the English book, be Rio’s after all;
for though they profess to be engraved after his drawings, they are
suspiciously like those made by Castañeda, twenty years after Rio’s
visit (Bancroft, iv. 290). David B. Warden translated Rio’s report
in the _Recueil de voyages et de Mémoires, par la Soc. de in Géog.
de Paris_. (vol. ii.), and gave some of the plates. (Cf. Warden’s
_Recherches sur les antiquités de l’Amérique Septentrionale_, Paris,
1827, in _Mém. de la Soc. de Géog._) There is a German version,
_Beschreibung einer alten Stadt_ (Berlin, 1832), by J. H. von Minutoli,
which is provided with an introductory essay.
[1054] Sabin, x. 209, 213. Cf. _Annales de Philos. Chrétienne_, xi.
[1055] _Bull. de la Soc. de Géog. de Paris_, ix. (1828) 198. Dupaix, i.
2d div. 76.
[1056] “Palenque et autres lieux circonvoisins,” in Dupaix, i. 2d div.
67 (in English in _Literary Gazette_, London, 1831, no. 769, and in
_Lond. Geog. Soc. Journal_, iii. 60). Cf. _Bull. de la Soc. de Géog. de
Paris_, 1832. He is overenthusiastic, as Bandelier thinks (_Amer. Ant.
Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. p. 111).
[1057] The report by Angrand, which induced this purchase, is in the
work as published.
[1058] He had described them in his _Hist. Nat. Civ._, i. ch. 3.
[1059] The book usually sells for about 150 francs.
[1060] Given, also enlarged, in the folio known as Catherwood’s _Views_.
[1061] The German version was made from this (Jena, 1872).
[1062] Particularly ch. 13, 14. Charnay is the last of the explorers
of Palenqué. All the other accounts of the ruins found here and there
are based on the descriptions of those who have been named, or at
least nothing is added of material value by other actual visitors like
Norman (_Rambles in Yucatan_, p. 284). Bancroft (iv. 294) enumerates
a number of such second-hand describers. The most important work
since Bancroft’s summary is Manuel Larrainzar’s _Estudios sobre la
historia de America, sus ruinas y antigüedades, y sobre el orígen de
sus habitantes_ (Mexico, 1875-78), in five vols., all of whose plates
are illustrations from the ruins of Palenqué, which are described and
compared with other ancient remains throughout the world. Cf. Brühl,
_Culturvölker d. alt. Amerikas_. Plans of the ruins will be found in
Waldeck (pl. vii., followed mainly by Bancroft, iv. 298, 307), Stephens
(ii. 310), Dupaix (pl. xi.), Kingsborough (iv. pl. 13), and Charnay
(ch. 13 and 14). The views of the ruins given by these authorities
mainly make up the stock of cuts in all the popular narratives.
The most interesting of the carvings is what is known as the Tablet of
the Cross, which was taken from one of the minor buildings, and is now
in the National Museum at Washington. It has often been engraved, but
such representations never satisfied the student till they could be
tested by the best of Charnay’s photographs. (Engravings in Brasseur
and Waldeck, pl. 21, 22; Rosny’s _Essai sur le déchiffrement_, etc.;
Minutoli’s _Beschreibung einer alten Stadt in Guatimala_ (Berlin,
1832); Stephens’s _Cent. Amer._, ii.; Bancroft, _Nat. Races_, iv. 333;
Charnay, _Les anciens Villes_, and Eng. transl. p. 255; Nadaillac,
325; _Powell’ s Rept._, i. 221; cf. p. 234; _Amer. Antiquarian_, vii.
200.) The most important discussion of the tablet is Charles Rau’s
_Palenqué Tablet in the U. S. National Museum_ (Washington, 1879),
being the _Smithsonian Contri. to Knowledge_, no. 331, or vol. xxii.
It contains an account of the explorations that have been made at
Palenqué, and a chapter on the “Aboriginal writing in Mexico, Central
America, and Yucatan, with some account of the attempted translations
of Maya hieroglyphics.” Rau’s conclusion is that it is a Phallic
symbol. Cf. a summary in _Amer. Antiquarian_, vi., Jan., 1884, and
in _Amer. Art Review_, 1880, p. 217. Rau’s paper was translated into
Spanish and French: _Tablero del Palenque en el Museo nacional de los
Estados-Unidos_ [traducido por Joaquin Davis y Miguel Perez], in the
_Anales del Museo nacional_. Tomo 2, pp. 131-203. (México, 1880.) _La
Stèle de Palenqué du Musée national des Etats-Unis, à Washington.
Traduit de l’Anglais avec autorisation de l’auteur._ In the _Annales du
Musée Guimet_, vol. x. (Paris, 1887.) Rau’s views were criticised by
Morgan.
There are papers by Charency on the interpretation of the hieroglyphs
in _Le Muséon_ (Paris, 1882, 1883).
The significance of the cross among the Nahuas and Mayas has been
the subject of much controversy, some connecting it with a possible
early association with Christians in ante-Columbian days (Bancroft,
iii. 468). On this later point see Bamps, _Les traditions relatives
à l’homme blanc et au signe de la cruz en Amérique à l’Epoque
précolumbienne_, in the _Compte rendu, Congrès des Américanistes_
(Copenhagen, 1883), p. 125; and “Supposed vestiges of early Christian
teaching in America,” in the _Catholic Historical Researches_ (vol. i.,
Oct., 1885). The symbolism is variously conceived. Bandelier (_Archæol.
Jour._) holds it to be the emblem of fire, indeed an ornamented
fire-drill, which later got mixed up with the Spanish crucifix. Brinton
(_Myths of the New World_, 95) sees in it the four cardinal points,
the rain-bringers, the symbol of life and health, and cites (p. 96)
various of the early writers in proof. Brinton (_Am. Hero Myths_, 155)
claims to have been the first to connect the Palenqué cross with the
four cardinal points. The bird and serpent—the last shown better in
Charnay’s photograph than in Stephens’s cut—is (_Myths_, 119) simply
a rebus of the air-god, the ruler of the winds. Brinton says that
Waldeck, in a paper on the tablet in the _Revue Américaine_ (ii. 69),
came to a similar conclusion. Squier (_Nicaragua_, ii. 337) speaks of
the common error of mistaking the tree of life of the Mexicans for the
Christian symbol. Cf. Powell’s _Second Rept., Bur. of Ethnol._, p. 208;
the _Fourth Rept._, p. 252, where discredit is thrown upon Gabriel
de Mortillet’s _Le Signe de la cross avant le Christianisme_ (Paris,
1866); Joly’s _Man before Metals_, 339; and Charnay’s _Les Anciens
Villes_ (or Eng. transl. p. 85). Cf. for various applications the
references in Bancroft’s index (v. p. 671).
[1063] Both were alike, and one was broken in two. There are engravings
in Waldeck, pl. 25; Stephens, ii. 344, 349; Squier’s _Nicaragua_, 1856,
ii. 337; Bancroft, iv. 337.
[1064] These have been the subject of an elaborate folio, thought,
however, to be of questionable value, _Die Steinbildwerke von Copân
und Quiriguâ, aufgenommen von Heinrich Meye; historisch erläutert und
beschrieben von Dr. Julius Schmidt_ (Berlin, 1883), of which there is
an English translation, _The stone sculptures of Copán and Quiriguá_;
translated from the German by A.D. Savage (New York, 1883). It gives
twenty plates, Catherwood’s plates, and the cuts in Stephens, with
reproductions in accessible books (Bancroft, iv. ch. 3; Powell’s
_First Rept. Bur. Ethn._ 224; Ruge’s _Gesch. des Zeitalters; Amer.
Antiquarian_, viii. 204-6), will serve, however, all purposes.
[1065] Squier says: “There are various reasons for believing that both
Copan and Quirigua antedate Olosingo and Palenqué, precisely as the
latter antedate the ruins of Quiché, Chichen-Itza, and Uxmal, and that
all of them were the work of the same people, or of nations of the same
race, dating from a high antiquity, and in blood and language precisely
the same that was found in occupation of the country by the Spaniards.”
[1066] Named apparently from a neighboring village.
[1067] Ref. in Bancroft, iv. 79.
[1068] This account can be found in Pacheco’s _Col. Doc. inéd._ vi. 37,
in Spanish; in Ternaux’s _Coll._ (1840), imperfect, and in the _Nouv.
Annales des Voyages_, 1843, v. xcvii. p. 18, in French; in Squier’s
_Cent. America_, 242, and in his ed. of Palacio (N. Y. 1860), in
English; and in Alexander von Frantzius’s _San Salvador und Honduras im
Jahre_ 1576, with notes by the translator and by C. H. Berendt.
[1069] Stephens, _Cent. Am._, i. 131, 144; Warden, 71; _Nouvelles
Annales des Voyages_, xxxv. 329; Bancroft, iv. 82; _Bull. de la Soc. de
Géog. de Paris_, 1836, v. 267; Short, 56, 82,—not to name others.
[1070] His account is in the _Amer. Antiq. Soc. Trans._, ii.; _Bull.
Soc. de Géog._ 1835; Dupaix, a summary, i. div. 2, p. 73; Bradford’s
_Amer. Antiq._, in part. Galindo’s drawings are unknown. Stephens calls
his account “unsatisfactory and imperfect.”
[1071] _Central America_, i. ch. 5-7; _Views of Anc. Mts._ It is
Stephens’s account which has furnished the basis of those given by
Bancroft (iv. ch. 3); Baldwin, p. 111; Short, 356; Nadaillac, 328, and
all others. Bancroft in his bibliog. note (iv. pp. 79-81), which has
been collated with my own notes, mentions others of less importance,
particularly the report of Center and Hardcastle to the Amer. Ethnol.
Soc. in 1860 and 1862, and the photographs made by Ellerley, which
Brasseur (_Hist. Nat. Civ._ i. 96; ii. 493; _Palenqué_, 8, 17) found to
confirm the drawings and descriptions of Catherwood and Stephens.
Stephens (_Cent. Am._, i. 133) made a plan of the ruins reproduced in
_Annales des Voyages_ (1841, p. 57), which is the basis of that given
by Bancroft (iv. 85). Dr. Julius Schmidt, who was a member of the
Squier expedition in 1852-53, furnished the historical and descriptive
text to a work which in the English translation by A.D. Savage is
known as _Stone Sculptures of Copán and Quiriguá, drawn by Heinrich
Meye_ (N. Y., 1883). What Stephens calls the Copan idols and altars
are considered by Morgan (_Houses and House Life_, 257), following the
analogy of the customs of the northern Indians, to be the grave-posts
and graves of Copan chiefs. Bancroft (iv. ch. 3) covers the other
ruins of Honduras and San Salvador; and Squier has a paper on those of
Tenampua in the _N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc._, 1853.
[1072] Stephens’s _Central America_, ii. ch. 7; and _Nouvelles Annales
des Voyages_, vol. lxxxviii. 376, derived from Catherwood.
[1073] Other travellers who have visited them are John Baily, _Central
America_ (Lond. 1850); A. P. Maudsley, _Explorations in Guatemala_
(Lond. 1883), with map and plans of ruins, in the _Proc. Roy. Geog.
Soc._ p. 185; W. T. Brigham’s _Guatemala_ (N. Y., 1886). Bancroft
(iv. 109) epitomizes the existing knowledge; but the remains seem to
be less known than any other of the considerable ruins. There are a
few later papers: G. Williams on the Antiquities of Guatemala, in
the _Smithsonian Report_, 1876; Simeon Habel’s “Sculptures of Santa
Lucia Cosumalhuapa in Guatemala” in the _Smithson. Contrib._ xxii.
(Washington, 1878), or “Sculptures de Santa (Lucia) Cosumalwhuapa dans
le Guatémala, avec une rélation de voyages dans l’Amérique Centrale et
sur les cótes occidentales de l’Amérique du Sud, par S. Habel. Traduit
de l’anglais, par J. Pointet,” with eight plates, in the _Annales du
Musée Guimet_, vol. x. pp. 119-259 (Paris, 1887); Philipp Wilhelm
Adolf Bastian’s “Stein Sculpturen aus Guatemala,” in the _Jahrbuch
der k. Museen zu Berlin_, 1882, or “Notice sur les pierres sculptées
du Guatémala récemment acquises par le Musée royal d’ethnographie de
Berlin. Traduit avec autorisation de l’auteur par J. Pointet,” in the
_Annales du Musée Guimet_, vol. x. pp. 261-305 (Paris, 1887); and C.
E. Vreeland and J. F. Bransford, on the _Antiquities at Pantaleon,
Guatemala_ (Washington, 1885), from the _Smithsonian Report_ for 1884.
[1074] _Nicaragua; its people, scenery, monuments, and the proposed
interoceanic canal_ (N. Y., 1856; revised 1860), a portion (pp.
303-362) referring to the modern Indian occupants. Squier was helped by
his official station as U. S. chargé d’affaires; and the archæological
objects brought away by him are now in the National Museum at
Washington. He published separate papers in the _Amer. Ethnol. Soc.
Trans._ ii.; _Smithsonian Ann. Rept._ v. (1850); _Harper’s Monthly_, x.
and xi. Cf. list in Pilling, nos. 3717, etc.
[1075] His explorations were in 1865-66. He carried off what he could
to the British Museum.
[1076] Like Bedford Pim and Berthold Seemann’s _Dottings on the
Roadside in Panama, Nicaragua, and Mosquito_ (Lond., 1869).
[1077] J. F. Bransford’s “Archæological Researches in Nicaragua,”
in the _Smithsonian Contrib._ (Washington, 1881). Karl Bovallius’s
_Nicaraguan Antiquities_, with plates (Stockholm, 1886), published by
the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography, figures various
statues and other relics found by the author in Nicaragua, and he says
that his drawings are in some instances more exact than those given by
Squier before the days of photography. In his introduction he describes
the different Indian stocks of Nicaragua, and disagrees with Squier. He
gives a useful map of Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
[1078] It is only of late years that they have been kept apart, for the
elder writers like Kingsborough, Stephens, and Brantz Mayer, confounded
them.
[1079] The Father Alonzo Ponce, who travelled through Yucatan in 1586,
is the only writer, according to Brinton (_Books of Chilan Balam_, p.
5), who tells us distinctly that the early missionaries made use of
aboriginal characters in giving religious instruction to the natives
(_Relacion Breve y Verdadera_).
[1080] Leon y Gama tells us that color as well as form seems to have
been representative.
[1081] See references on the accepted difficulties in _Native Races_,
ii. 551. Mrs. Nuttall claims to have observed certain complemental
signs in the Mexican graphic system, “which renders a misinterpretation
of the Nahuatl picture-writings impossible” (_Am. Asso. Adv. Science,
Proc._, xxxv. Aug., 1886); _Peabody Mus. Papers_, i. App.
[1082] _Prehist. Man_, ii. 57, 64, for his views
[1083] Bancroft, _Native Races_, ii. ch. 17 (pp. 542, 552) gives
a good description of the Aztec system, with numerous references;
but on this system, and on the hieroglyphic element in general, see
Gomara; Bernal Diaz; Motolinia in Icazbalceta’s _Collection_, i. 186,
209; Ternaux’s _Collection_, x. 250; Kingsborough, vi. 87; viii.
190; ix. 201, 235, 287, 325; Acosta, lib. vi. cap. 7; Sahagún, i. p.
iv.; Torquemada, i. 29, 30, 36, 149, 253; ii. 263, 544; Las Casas’s
_Hist. Apologética_; Purchas’s _Pilgrimes_, iii. 1069; iv. 1135;
Clavigero, ii. 187; Robertson’s _America_; Boturini’s _Idea_, pp.
5, 77, 87, 96, 112, 116; Humboldt’s _Vues_, i. 177, 192; Veytia, i.
6, 250; Gallatin in _Am. Ethn. Soc. Trans._ i. 126, 165; Prescott’s
_Mexico_, i. ch. 4; Brasseur’s _Nat. Civ._, i. pp. xv, xvii; Domenech’s
_Manuscrit pictographique_, introd.; Mendoza, in the _Boletin Soc.
Mex._ Geog., 2^{de} ed. i. 896; Madier de Montjau’s _Chronologie
hiéroglyphico-phonetic des rois Aztèques, de 1322 à 1522_, with an
introduction “sur l’Ecriture Méxicaine;” Lubbock’s _Prehistoric
Times_, 279, and his _Origin of Civilization_, ch. 2; E. B. Tylor’s
_Researches into the Early Hist. of Mankind_, 89; Short’s _No. Amer.
of Antiq._, ch. 8; Müller’s _Chips_, i. 317; The Abbé Jules Pipart
in _Compte-rendu, Congrès des Amér._ 1877, ii. 346; Isaac Taylor’s
_Alphabets_; Foster’s _Prehistoric Races_, 322; Nadaillac, 376, not
to cite others. Bandelier has discussed the Mexican paintings in his
paper “On the sources for aboriginal history of Spanish America” in
_Am. Asso. Adv. Science, Proc._, xxvii. (1878). See also _Peabody Mus.
Reports_, ii. 631; and Orozco y Berra’s “Códice Mendozino” in the
_Anales del Museo Nacional_, vol. i. Mrs. Nuttall’s views are in the
_Peabody Mus., Twentieth Report_, p. 567. Quaritch (_Catal._ 1885, nos.
29040, etc.) advertised some original Mexican pictures; a native MS.
pictorial record of a part of the Tezcuco domain (supposed A.D. 1530),
and perhaps one of the “pinturas” mentioned by Ixtlilxochitl; a colored
Mexican calendar on a single leaf of the same supposed date and origin;
with other MSS. of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. (Cf. also his
_Catal._, Jan., Feb., 1888.)
The most important studies upon the Aztec system have been those of
Aubin. Cf. his _Mémoire sur la peinture didactique et l’écriture
figurative des Anciens Méxicains_, in the _Archives de la Soc.
Amér. de France_, iii. 225 (_Revue Orient. et Amér._), in which he
contended for the rebus-like character of the writings. He made further
contributions to vols. iv. and v. (1859-1861). Cf. his “Examen des
anciennes peintures figuratives de l’ancien Méxique,” in the new series
of _Archives_, etc., vol. i.; and the introd. to Brasseur’s _Nations
Civilisées_, p. xliv.
[1084] Bancroft (_Nat. Races_, ii. ch. 24) translates these from Landa,
Peter Martyr, Cogulludo, Villagutierre, Mendieta, Acosta, Benzoni, and
Herrera, and thinks all the modern writers (whom he names, p. 770) have
drawn from these earlier ones, except, perhaps, Medel in _Nouv. Annales
des Voyages_, xcvii. 49. Cf. Wilson, _Prehistoric Man_, ii. 61. It will
be seen later that Holden discredits the belief in any phonetic value
of the Maya system. But compare on the phonetic value of the Mexican
and Maya systems, Brinton in _Amer. Antiquarian_ (Nov. 1886); Lazarus
Geiger’s _Contrib. to the Hist. of the Development of the Human Race_
(Eng. tr. by David Asher). London, 1880, p. 75; and Zelia Nuttall in
_Am. Ass. Adv. Sci. Proc._, Aug. 1886.
[1085] Dr. Bernoulli, who died at San Francisco, in California,
in 1878, and whose labors are commemorated in a notice in the
_Verhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft_ (vi. 710) at Basle,
found at Tikal, in Guatemala, some fragments of sculptured panels of
wood, bearing hieroglyphics as well as designs, which he succeeded in
purchasing, and they were finally deposited in 1879 in the Ethnological
Museum in Basle, where Rosny saw them, and describes them, with
excellent photographic representations, in his _Doc. Ecrits de l’Antiq.
Amér._ (p. 97). These tablets are the latest additions to be made to
the store already possessed from Palenqué, as given by Stephens in his
_Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan_; those of the Temple of the
Cross at Palenqué, after Waldeck’s drawings in the _Archives de la Soc.
Amér. de France_ (ii., 1864); that from Kabah in Yucatan, given by
Rosny in his _Archives Paléographiques_ (i. p. 178; Atlas, pl. xx.),
and one from Chichen-Itza, figured by Le Plongeon in _L’Illustration_,
Feb. 10, 1882; not to name other engravings. Rosny holds that Rau’s
_Palenqué Tablet_ (Washington, 1879) gives the first really serviceably
accurate reproduction of that inscription. Cf. on Maya inscriptions,
Bancroft, ii. 775; iv. 91, 97, 234; Morelet’s _Travels_; and Le
Plongeon in _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. 246. This last writer
has been thought to let his enthusiasm—not to say dogmatism—turn his
head, under which imputation he is not content, naturally (_Ibid._ p.
282).
[1086] “Landa’s alphabet a Spanish fabrication,” appeared in the _Amer.
Antiq. Soc. Proc._, April, 1880. In this, Philipp J. J. Valentini
interprets all that the old writers say of the ancient writings to mean
that they were pictorial and not phonetic; and that Landa’s purpose
was to devise a vehicle which seemed familiar to the natives, through
which he could communicate religious instruction. His views have been
controverted by Léon de Rosny (_Doc. Ecrits de la Antiq. Amér._ p. 91);
and Brinton (_Maya Chronicles_, 61), calls them an entire misconception
of Landa’s purpose.
[1087] _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, n. s., i. 251.
[1088] _Troano_ MS., p. viii.
[1089] _Relation_, Brasseur’s ed., section xli.
[1090] This is given in the _Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France_, ii.
pl. iv.; in Brasseur’s ed. of Landa; in Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, ii.
779; in Short, 425; Rosny (_Essai sur le déchiff._ etc., pl. xiii.)
gives a “Tableau des caractères phonétique Mayas d’après Diégo de Landa
et Brasseur de Bourbourg.”
[1091] _Manuscrit Troano Etudes sur le système graphique et la langue
des Mayas_ (Paris, 1869-70)—the first volume containing a fac-simile
of the Codex in seventy plates, with Brasseur’s explications and
partial interpretation. In the second volume there is a translation
of Gabriél de Saint Bonaventure’s _Grammaire Maya_, a “Chrestomathie”
of Maya extracts, and a Maya lexicon of more than 10,000 words.
Brasseur published at the same time (1869) in the _Mémoires de la
Soc. d’Ethnographie a Lettre à M. Léon de Rosny sur la découverte
de documents relatifs à la haute antiquité américaine, et sur le
déchiffrement et l’interprétation de l’écriture phonétique et
figurative de la langue Maya_ (Paris, 1869). He explained his
application of Landa’s alphabet in the introduction to the _MS.
Troano_, i. p. 36. Brasseur later confessed he had begun at the wrong
end of the MS. (_Bib. Mex.-Guat._, introd.). The pebble-shape form of
the characters induced Brasseur to call them _calculiform_; and Julien
Duchateau adopted the term in his paper “Sur l’écriture calculiforme
des Mayas” in the _Annuaire de la Soc. Amér._ (Paris, 1874), iii. p. 31.
[1092] _L’écriture hiératique_, and _Archives de la Soc. Am. de
France_, n. s., ii. 35.
[1093] _Ancient Phonetic Alphabets of Yucatan_ (N. Y., 1870), p. 7.
[1094] It is the development of a paper given at the Nancy session
of the Congrès des Américanistes (1875). Landa’s alphabet with the
variations make 262 of the 700 signs which Rosny catalogues. He printed
his “Nouvelles Recherches pour l’interpretation des caractères de
l’Amérique Centrale” in the _Archives_, etc., iii. 118. There is a
paper on Rosny’s studies by De la Rada in the Compte-rendu of the
Copenhagen session (p. 355) of the Congrès des Américanistes. Rosny’s
_Documents écrits de l’antiquité Américaine_ (Paris, 1882), from the
_Mémoires de la Société d’Ethnographie_ (1881), covers his researches
in Spain and Portugal for material illustrative of the pre-Columbian
history of America. Cf. also his “Les sources de l’histoire
anté columbienne du nouveau monde,” in the _Mémoires de la Soc.
d’Ethnographie_ (1877). For the titles in full of Rosny’s linguistic
studies, see Pilling’s _Proof-sheets_, p. 663.
[1095] _Anthropol. Review_, May, 1864; _Memoirs of the Anthropol.
Soc._, i.
[1096] _Memoirs_, etc., ii. 298.
[1097] _Memoirs_, etc., 1870, iii. 288; _Trans. Anthrop. Inst. Gt.
Britain_.
[1098] Introd. to Cyrus Thomas’s _MS. Troano_.
[1099] _Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc._, _n. s._, i. 250.
[1100] _Actes de la Soc. philologique_, March, 1870. Cf. _Revue de
Philologie_, i. 380; _Recherches sur le Codex Troano_ (Paris, 1876);
_Actes_, etc., March, 1878; Baldwin’s _Anc. America_, App.
[1101] Cf. _Sabin’s Amer. Bibliopolist_, ii. 143.
[1102] _Contributions to N. A. Ethnology, Powell’s Survey_, vol. v.
Cf. also his _Phonetic elements in the graphic system of the Mayas
and Mexicans_ in the _Amer. Antiquarian_ (Nov., 1886), and separately
(Chicago, 1886), and his _Ikonomic method of phonetic writing_ (Phila.,
1886). Thomas in _The Amer. Antiquarian_ (March, 1886) points out the
course of his own studies in this direction.
[1103] Cf. Short, p. 425. Dr. Harrison Allen in 1875, in the _Amer.
Philosophical Society’s Transactions_, made an analysis of Landa’s
alphabet and the published codices. Rau, in his _Palenqué Tablet of the
U. S. Nat. Museum_ (ch. 5), examines what had been done up to 1879. In
the same year Dr. Carl Schultz-Sellack wrote on “Die Amerikanischen
Götter der vier Weltgegenden und ihre Tempel in Palenqué,” touching
also the question of interpretation (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_,
vol. xi.); and in 1880 Dr. Förstemann examined the matter in his
introduction to his reproduction of the Dresden Codex.
[1104] _Studies in Central American picture-writing_ (Washington,
1881), extracted from the _First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_.
His method is epitomized in _The Century_, Dec., 1881. He finds
Stephens’s drawings the most trustworthy of all, Waldeck’s being
beautiful, but they embody “singular liberties.” His examination was
confined to the 1500 separate hieroglyphs in Stephens’s _Central
America_. Some of Holden’s conclusions are worth noting: “The Maya
manuscripts do not possess to me the same interest as the stones,
and I think it may be certainly said that all of them are younger
than the Palenqué tablets, far younger than the inscriptions at
Copan.” “I distrust the methods of Brasseur and others who start
from the misleading and unlucky alphabet handed down by Landa,” by
forming variants, which are made “to satisfy the necessities of the
interpreter in carrying out some preconceived idea.” He finds a rigid
adherence to the standard form of a character prevailing throughout
the same inscription. At Palenqué the inscriptions read as an English
inscription would read, beginning at the left and proceeding line
by line downward. “The system employed at Palenqué and Copan was
the same in its general character, and almost identical even in
details.” He deciphers three proper names: “all of them have been pure
picture-writing, except in so far as their rebus character may make
them in a sense phonetic.” Referring to Valentini’s _Landa Alphabet a
Spanish Fabrication_, he agrees in that critic’s conclusions. “While
my own,” he adds, “were reached by a study of the stones and in the
course of a general examination, Dr. Valentini has addressed himself
successfully to the solution of a special problem.” Holden thinks
his own solution of the three proper names points of departure for
subsequent decipherers. The Maya method was “pure picture-writing. At
Copan this is found in its earliest state; at Palenqué it was already
highly conventionalized.”
[1105] See references in Bancroft’s _Nat. Races_, ii. 576.
[1106] Cogulludo’s _Hist. de Yucatan_, 3d ed., i. 604.
[1107] Prescott, i. 104, and references.
[1108] Dec. iv., lib. 8.
[1109] Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _Troano MS._, i. 9. Cf. on the Aztec
books Kirk’s Prescott, i. 103; Brinton’s _Myths_, 10; his _Aborig.
Amer. Authors_, 17; and on the Mexican Paper, Valentini in _Amer.
Antiq. Soc. Proc._, 2d s., i. 58.
[1110] Cf. Icazbalceta’s _Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga, primer Obispo y
Arzobispo de México (1529-48)_. _Estudio biográfico y bibligráfico.
Con un apéndice de documentos inéditos ó raros_ (Mexico, 1881). A part
of this work was also printed separately (fifty copies) under the
title of _De la destruction de antigüedades méxicanas atribuida á los
misioneros en general, y particularmente al Illmo. Sr. D. Fr. Juan de
Zumárraga, primer Obispo y Arzobispo de México_ (Mexico, 1881). In
this he exhausts pretty much all that has been said on the subject
by the bishop himself, by Pedro de Gante, Motolinía, Sahagún, Duran,
Acosta, Davila Padilla, Herrera, Torquemada, Ixtlilxochitl, Robertson,
Clavigero, Humboldt, Bustamante, Ternaux, Prescott, Alaman, etc.
Brasseur (_Nat. Civil._, ii. 4) says of Landa that we must not forget
that he was oftener the agent of the council for the Indies than of the
Church. Helps (iii. 374) is inclined to be charitable towards a man
in a skeptical age, so intensely believing as Zumárraga was. Sahagún
relates that earlier than Zumárraga, the fourth ruler of his race,
Itzcohuatl, had caused a large destruction of native writings, in order
to remove souvenirs of the national humiliation.
[1111] Humboldt was one of the earliest to describe some of these
manuscripts in connection with his _Atlas_, pl. xiii.
[1112] Cf. _Catal. of the Phillipps Coll._, no. 404. An original
colored copy of the _Antiquities of Mexico_, given by Kingsborough
to Phillipps, was offered of late years by Quaritch at £70-£100; it
was published at £175. The usual colored copies sell now for about
£40-£60; the uncolored for about £30-£35. It is usually stated that
two copies were printed on vellum (British Museum, Bodleian), and ten
on large paper, which were given to crowned heads, except one, which
was given to Obadiah Rich. Squier, in the _London Athenæum_, Dec. 13,
1856 (Allibone, p. 1033), drew attention to the omission of the last
signature of the _Hist. Chichimeca_ in vol. ix.
[1113] Rich, _Bibl. Amer. Nova_, ii. 233; _Gentleman’s Mag._, May,
1837, which varies in some particulars. Cf. for other details Sabin’s
_Dictionary_, ix. 485; De Rosny in the _Rev. Orient et Amér._, xii.
387. R. A. Wilson (_New Conquest of Mexico_, p. 68) gives the violent
skeptical view of the material.
[1114] Sabin, ix., no. 37,800.
[1115] Léon de Rosny (_Doc. écrits de l’Antiq. Amér._, p. 71) speaks of
those in the Museo Archæológico at Madrid.
[1116] _Hist. Nueva España._
[1117] _Pilgrimes_, vol. iii. (1625). It is also included in Thevenot’s
_Coll. de Voyages_ (1696), vol. ii., in a translation. Clavigero (i.
23) calls this copy faulty. See also Kircher’s _Œdipus Ægypticus_;
Humboldt’s plates, xiii., lviii., lix., with his text, in which he
quotes Du Palin’s _Study of Hieroglyphics_, vol. i. See the account in
Bancroft, ii. 241.
[1118] Prescott, i. 106. He thinks that a copy mentioned in Spineto’s
_Lectures on the Elements of Hieroglyphics_, and then in the Escurial,
may perhaps be the original. Humboldt calls it a copy.
[1119] Humboldt placed some tribute-rolls in the Berlin library, and
gave an account of them. See his pl. xxxvi.
[1120] Cf. references in Bancroft’s _Native Races_, ii. 529. The
“Explicacion” of the MS. is given in Kingsborough’s volume v., and an
“interpretation” in vol. vi.
[1121] Kingsborough’s “explicacion” and “explanation” are given in
his vols. v. and vi. Rosny has given an “explication avec notes par
Brasseur de Bourbourg” in his _Archives paléographiques_ (Paris,
1870-71), p. 190, with an atlas of plates. Cf. references in Bancroft,
ii. 530; and in another place (iii. 191) this same writer cautions the
reader against the translation in Kingsborough, and says that it has
every error that can vitiate a translation. Humboldt thinks his own
plates, lv. and lvi., of the codex carefully made.
[1122] Prescott says (i. 108) of this that it bears evident marks of
recent origin, when “the hieroglyphics were read with the eye of faith
rather than of reason.” Cf. Bancroft, _Nat. Races_, ii. 527.
[1123] Portions of it are also reproduced in the _Archives de la Soc.
Amér. de France_; in Rosny’s _Essai sur le déchiffrement de l’Ecriture
Hiératique_; and in Powell’s _Third Rept. Bur. of Ethnology_, p.
56. Cf. also Humboldt’s _Atlas_, pl. xiii.; and H. M. Williams’s
translation of his _Aues_, i. 145.
[1124] It is known to have been given in 1665 by the Marquis de Caspi
by Count Valerio Zani. There is a copy in the museum of Cardinal Borgia
at Veletri.
[1125] Known to have been given in 1677 by the Duke of Saxe-Eisenach
to the Emperor Leopold. Some parts are reproduced in Robertson’s
_America_, Lond., 1777, ii. 482.
[1126] Humboldt, _Vues des Cordillères_, p. 89; pl. 15, 27, 37;
Prescott, i. 106. There is a single leaf of it reproduced in Powell’s
_Third Rept. Bur. of Eth._, p. 33.
[1127] Cf. his _Denkwürdigkeiten der Dresdener Bibliothek_ (1744), p. 4.
[1128] Stephens (_Central America_, ii. 342, 453; _Yucatan_, ii.
292, 453) was in the same way at a loss respecting the conditions of
the knowledge of such things in his time. Cf. also Orozco y Berra,
_Geografia de las Lenguas de México_, p. 101.
[1129] _Die Mayahandschrift der königlichen öffentlichen Bibliothek zu
Dresden; herausgegeben von E. Förstemann_ (Leipzig, 1880). Only thirty
copies were offered for sale at two hundred marks. There is a copy in
Harvard College library. Parts of the manuscript are found figured in
different publications: Humboldt’s _Vues des Cordillères_, ii. 268,
and pl. 16 and 45; Wuttke’s _Gesch. der Schrift. Atlas_, pl. 22, 23
(Leipzig, 1872); _Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France_, n. s., vol. i.
and ii.; Silvestre’s _Paléographie Universelle_; Rosny’s _Les Ecritures
figuratives et hiéroglyphiques des peuples anciens et modernes_ (Paris,
1860, pl. v.), and in his _Essai sur le déchiffrement_, etc.; Ruge,
_Zeitalter der Entdeckungen_, p. 559. Cf. also Le Noir in _Antiquités
Méxicaines_, ii. introd.; Förstemann’s separate monographs, _Der
Maya apparat in Dresden (Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen_, 1885,
p. 182), and _Erläuterungen zur Mayahandschrift der königlichen
öffentlichen Bibliothek zu Dresden_ (Dresden, 1886); Schellhas’ _Die
Maya-Handschrift zu Dresden_ (Berlin, 1886); C. Thomas on the numerical
signs in _Arch. de la Soc. Am. de France_, n. s., iii. 207.
[1130] Cf. Powell’s _Third Rept. Eth. Bureau_, p. 32
[1131] Brinton’s _Maya Chronicles_, 66; Brasseur de Bourbourg’s
_Troano_ (1868).
[1132] It constitutes vol. ii. and iii. of the series.
_Mission scientifique au Méxique et dans l’Amérique Centrale. Ouvrages
publiés par ordre de l’Empereur et par les soins du Ministre de
l’Instruction publique_ (Paris, 1868-70), under the distinctive title:
_Linguistique, Manuscrit Troano. Etudes sur le système graphique et la
langue des Mayas, par Brasseur de Bourbourg_ (1869-70).
Rosny, who compared Brasseur’s edition with the original, was satisfied
with its exactness, except in the numbering of the leaves; and Brasseur
(_Bibl. Mex.-Guat._, 1871) confessed that in his interpretation he had
read the MS. backwards. The work was reissued in Paris in 1872, without
the plates, under the following title: _Dictionnaire, Grammaire et
Chrestomathie de la langue maya, précédés d’une étude sur les système
graphique des indigènes du Yucatan (Méxique)_ (Paris, 1872).
Brasseur’s _Rapport, addressé à son Excellence M. Duruy_, included in
the work, gives briefly the abbé’s exposition of the MS. Professor
Cyrus Thomas and Dr. D. G. Brinton, having printed some expositions in
the _American Naturalist_ (vol. xv.) united in an essay making vol. v.
of the _Contributions to North American Ethnology_ (Powell’s survey)
under the title: _A Study of the Manuscript Troano by Cyrus Thomas,
with an introduction by D. G. Brinton_ (Washington, 1882), which gives
facsimiles of some of the plates. Thomas calls it a kind of religious
calendar, giving dates of religious festivals through a long period,
intermixed with illustrations of the habits and employments of the
people, their houses, dress, utensils. He calls the characters in a
measure phonetic, and not syllabic. Cf. Rosny in the _Archives de la
Soc. Am. de France_, n. s., ii. 28; his _Essai sur le déchiffrement_,
etc. (1876); Powell’s _Third Rept. Bur. of Eth._, xvi.; Bancroft’s
_Nat. Races_, ii. 774; and Brinton’s _Notes on the Codex Troano and
Maya Chronology_ (Salem, 1881).
[1133] Cf. _Science_, iii. 458.
[1134] _Codex Cortesianus. Manuscrit hiératique des anciens Indiens
de l’Amérique centrale conservé au Musée archéologique de Madrid.
Photographié et publié pour la première fois, avec une introduction, et
un vocabulaire de l’écriture hiératique yucatéque par Léon de Rosny_
(Paris, 1883). At the end is a list of works by De Rosny on American
archæology and paleography.
[1135] _Archives de la Soc. Am. de France_, n. s., ii. 25.
[1136] _Bib. Mex.-Guat._, p. 95.
[1137] Cf. Rosny in _Archives paléographiques_ (Paris, 1869-71), pl.
117, etc.; and his _Essai sur le dé chiffrement_, etc., pl. viii., xvi.
[1138] [Mr. Markham made a special study of this point in the _Journal
of the Roy. Geog. Soc_. (1871), xli. p. 281, collating its authorities.
Cf. the views of Marcoy in _Travels in South America_, tr. by Rich,
London, 1875.—ED.]
[1139] Except those portions which Garcilasso de la Vega has embodied
in his _Commentaries_.
[1140] It is, of course, necessary to consider the weight to be
attached to the statements of different authors; but the most
convenient method of placing the subject before the reader will be to
deal in the present chapter with general conclusions, and to discuss
the comparative merits of the authorities in the Critical Essay on the
sources of information.
[1141] For special study, see Paz Soldan’s _Geografía del Peru_;
Menendez’ _Manual de Geografía del Peru_; and Wiener’s _L’Empire des
Incas_, ch. i.—ED.
[1142] “Jusqu’à present on n’a pas retrouvé le maïs, d’une manière
certaine, a l’état sauvage” (De Candolle’s _Géographie botanique
raisonnée_, p. 951).
[1143] De Candolle, p. 983.
[1144] There is a wild variety in Mexico, the size of a nut, and
attempts have been made to increase its size under cultivation during
many years, without any result. This seems to show that a great
length of time must have elapsed before the ancient Peruvians could
have brought the cultivation of the potato to such a high state of
perfection as they undoubtedly did.
[1145] Some years ago a priest named Cabrera, the cura of a village
called Macusani, in the province of Caravaya, succeeded in breeding a
cross between the wild vicuña and the tame alpaca. He had a flock of
these beautiful animals, which yielded long, silken, white wool; but
they required extreme care, and died out when the sustaining hand of
Cabrera was no longer available. There is also a cross between a llama
and an alpaca, called _guariso_, as large as the llama, but with much
more wool. The guanaco and llama have also been known to form a cross;
but there is no instance of a cross between the two wild varieties,—the
guanaco and vicuña. The extremely artificial life of the alpaca, which
renders that curious and valuable animal so absolutely dependent on the
ministrations of its human master, and the complete domestication of
the llama, certainly indicate the lapse of many centuries before such a
change could have been effected.
[1146] [Cf. remarks of Daniel Wilson in his _Prehistoric Man_, i.
243.—ED.]
[1147] The name is of later date. One story is that, when an Inca was
encamped there, a messenger reached him with unusual celerity, whose
speed was compared with that of the “_huanaco_.” The Inca said, “_Tia_”
(sit or rest), “_O! huanaco_.”
[1148] Basadre’s measurement is 32 inches by 21.
[1149] Quoted by Garcilasso de la Vega, Pte. I. lib. III. cap. 1.
[1150] Basadre mentions a carved stone brought from the department
of Ancachs, in Peru, which had some resemblances to the stones at
Tiahuanacu. A copy of it is in possession of Señor Raimondi.
[1151] [Cf. plans and views in Squier’s _Peru_, ch. 24.—ED.]
[1152] Cap. 94.
[1153] See page 238.
[1154] The name of the place where these remains are situated is
Concacha, from the Quichua word “_Cuncachay_,”—the act of holding down
a victim for sacrifice; literally, “to take by the neck.”
[1155] The names of this god were _Con-Illa-Tici-Uira-cocha_, and he
was the _Pachayachachic_, or Teacher of the World. _Pacha_ is “time,”
or “place;” also “the universe.” “_Yachachic_,” a teacher, from
“_Yachachini_,” “I teach.” _Con_ is said to signify the creating Deity
(_Betanzos, Garcia_). According to Gomara, Con was a creative deity who
came from the north, afterwards expelled by Pachacamac, and a modern
authority (Lopez, p. 235) suggests that _Con_ represented the “cult
of the setting sun,” because _Cunti_ means the west. _Tici_ means a
founder or foundation, and _Illa_ is light, from _Illani_, “I shine:”
“The Origin of Light” (_Montesinos. Anonymous Jesuit._ Lopez suggests
“_Ati_,” an evil omen,—the Moon God); or, according to one authority,
“Light Eternal” (_The anonymous Jesuit_). _Vira_ is a corruption of
_Pirua_, which is said by some authorities to be the name of the
first settler, or the founder of a dynasty; and by others to mean a
“depository,” a “place of abode;” hence a “dweller,” or “abider.”
_Cocha_ means “ocean,” “abyss,” “profundity,” “space.” _Uira-cocha_,
“the Dweller in Space.” So that the whole would signify “God: the
Creator of Light:” “the Dweller in Space: the Teacher of the World.”
Some authors gave the meaning of _Uira-cocha_ to be “foam of the sea:”
from _Uira_ (_Huira_), “grease,” or “foam,” and _Cocha_, “ocean,”
“sea,” “lake.” Garcilasso de la Vega pointed out the error. In compound
words of a nominative and genitive, the genitive is invariably placed
first in Quichua; so that the meaning would be “a sea of grease,” not
“grease of the sea.” Hence he concludes that _Uira-cocha_ is not a
compound word, but simply a name, the derivation of which he does not
attempt to explain. Blas Valera says that it means “the will and power
of God;” not that this is the signification of the word, but that
such were the godlike attributes of the being who was known by it.
Acosta says that to _Ticsi Uira-cocha_ they assigned the chief power
and command over all things. The anonymous Jesuit tells us that _Illa
Ticsi_ was the original name, and that _Uira-cocha_ was added later.
Of these names, _Illa Ticci_ appears to have been the most ancient.
[1156] Cieza de Leon and Salcamayhua.
[1157] Montesinos calls the ancient people, who were peaceful and
industrious, _Hatu-runa_, or “Great men.” See also Matienza (MS. Brit.
Mus.).
[1158] _The anonymous Jesuit_, p. 178. A work referred to by Oliva as
having been written by Blas Valera also mentions some of the early
kings by name. (See Saldamando, _Jesuitas del Peru_, p. 22.)
[1159] _Cachi_ (“salt”) was the Inca’s instruction in rational life,
_Uchu_ (“pepper”) was the delight the people derived from this
teaching, and _Sauca_ (“joy”) means the happiness afterward experienced.
[1160] G. de la Vega.
[1161] Molina, p. 7.