The Prophecy
THE “that” which Fray José gave me to serve as an open sesame to the
Mayan priest was a strange combination of the old and the new, of the
pagan and the Christian. Upon a sheet of paper bearing the figure
of the Cross, he had written a message in hieroglyphic symbols, and
accompanying this, was a tiny bag of painted hide containing a medal
of St. Christopher and a tiny golden image of a Mayan deity. Good Fray
José was no narrow-minded bigot but was willing to recognize conditions
as they were and to make necessary concessions to the occasions that
arose. If the Indians were willing to please him by assuming the veneer
of Christianity, he was quite willing to reciprocate by pleasing the
Indians to the extent of employing pagan symbols and following pagan
customs, though he had no more faith in them than the Indians had in
his Church and its rites.
It is needless to describe the details of my trip to Totil or to
narrate my experiences while I remained in the isolated little Indian
village, studying the ancient Zutugil language under the tutelage of
the painstaking patient Pedro, a dignified-looking Indian, who, being
in charge of Fray José’s most outlying chapel, regarded himself as a
dignitary of the Church of Rome and the most important and exalted
personage in the district. But, being Indian, he was Indian to the
core, and I was both interested and amused to discover that he had
painted the images of all the saints a mahogany brown, and had painted
the figure of Christ upon the crucifix inky-black.
“It is that the people may regard them with greater reverence,” he
explained when I asked him about it. “How can one expect an Indian to
adore the white Santos when they have received nothing but harm from
those of white skin?” he asked. “And,” he added, “how can the white
Santos or the white Cristo know what is good for the brown Indians?”
Then, a bit hesitantly and shamefacedly, “and besides, the great God
of our ancestors was black and with a black Cristo before them they
feel that they are worshipping Ekah and are more devout. Does the Señor
think I have done wrong?”
I assured him I did not. If, by painting the images, he won more
converts or added to the sincerity of their devotions, I considered
the means were justified by the end. But I felt quite sure that Pedro
himself preferred a black Saviour and brown saints to those with white
skins, for which I could not blame him much either.
But regardless of his religious idiosyncracies, Pedro was an excellent
teacher of his native tongue, and at the end of six weeks in his
village, he assured me that I had mastered enough of the Zutugil
language to continue on my journey; although, he added: “No white man
can learn the tongue of my people. Even Fray José speaks it always with
the tongue of the white man.”
Accompanied by four Indians who acted as guides, porters and camp-boys,
I started on what I believed at the time to be the last lap of my
journey.
Truly my visit to that little shop in Vigo was leading me far afield.
At Totil I left civilization behind. Beyond was wilderness; unknown,
almost uninhabited country; vast forests, great mountains, wide plains;
land seldom or never trod by white men, where even the old conquerors
had not penetrated. For hundreds of miles there were no signs of human
beings; along our route were only the occasional huts of half-savage
Indians, or clusters of thatched homes of the tribesmen once--centuries
before--under Mayan dominion, though now showing no traces of the
culture of that wonderful race. But if no traces remained in the
people, there were abundant evidences in the mute remains the Mayas
had left behind. Time and again we came upon huge columns or stellae
of sculptured stone in the forest, wonderful monoliths that under
any other conditions I would have examined and studied with the most
intense interest. Twice, too, we passed enormous ruined temples, great
trees growing from their summits, tangled vines and tropical shrubs
sprouting from the crevices between the stones, their wonderfully
carved façades defaced by time and the elements; their interiors choked
with débris, but still imposing in their majestic proportions; their
beauty of design and the intricacy of their sculptured stone work.
Once, too, we gazed from a hilltop upon the ruins of an immense city,
upon a plain beside a river. But all was silent, deserted, forgotten.
* * * * *
FOR eleven days we traveled, sometimes following trails visible only
to the eyes of my Indian guides, at other times hewing a way through
the jungles, again following the rivers, ascending mountains, marching
through great open forests. The way seemed endless; I began to fear
my Indians had lost their way, when, issuing from the forest, we came
to a cleared plain. Tilled fields of maize, cane, sweet potatoes and
others plants covered many acres, and in the centre of the cultivated
lands was a village of thatch-roofed houses gleaming like gold in
the sun. That the modern village occupied the site of an ancient
city was evident. Ruins of stone walls and buildings rose above the
waving corn and banana trees. Towering above the village was a great
pyramidal Kus[1] topped by a temple bearing an ornate roof-comb, and
as we entered the village, we passed between two rows of sculptured
stone columns. I gazed at them in amazement. They were gay with red,
green and white paint; at their bases were flowers and fruits. There
was no doubt of it. Here in this remote village, the old faiths still
lived, the old gods were still worshipped. Very likely, the people
still worshipped in the ancient temple. There, no doubt, the priest,
Katchilcan, still officiated, though Fray José had not mentioned it.
[1] KUS--A mound, usually pyramidal--supporting a temple, a shrine or
an altar used for religious or ceremonial purposes.
My thoughts were cut short as we reached the village and I glanced
about at the inhabitants. Some scurried out of sight at our approach,
others stared curiously at us, still others wore hostile expressions,
while some smiled friendly greetings; but one and all were totally
different from any Indians we had seen. I seemed to have stepped back
five hundred years, to have dropped into a Mayan village of the time
of the conquest. Living duplicates of Mayan sculptures were on every
side. Here were the artificially distorted skulls, the heavy noses,
the elaborately ornate costumes of the Mayan bas-reliefs. Not that
every individual was of that type. The features of many were typically
Indian, but in every case the costumes were those of the old Mayas.
There was not a coat, a shirt, a pair of trousers or a hat in the
entire village. Fray José had left much untold--perhaps he had wanted
to give me a surprise; perhaps it was so familiar to him that he had
forgotten to mention the details. Whatever the reason--with such people
before me, with the great temple on its lofty Kus now rising above my
head, it seemed perfectly natural that in this spot the old priest-cult
of the Mayas should still survive and hold its power. And it spoke
volumes for Fray José’s sympathy with the natives, for the Indians’
confidence and faith in the jolly Padre, that he had been allowed to
visit this village, had become friendly with the priest, and that I
also had been allowed to reach the place without molestation.
We had now passed through the village, had skirted the base of the
temple-mound and had approached a low, ancient stone building with a
sculptured frieze of jaguar heads and entwined serpents.
As we neared the building, a man stepped from the doorway, and
instantly my Indians halted, stooped, and gathering handfuls of
dust from the roadway, scattered it on their heads. That gesture of
humbling themselves was enough to identify the man in the doorway as
the high-priest of their ancient faith. I gazed at him with intense
interest. He was very old. His hair was white, his brown face seamed,
wrinkled, and creased until it resembled a withered, shrivelled
sapodillo.[2] His cheek-bones seemed about to break through the
tightly-drawn skin; his eyes were so sunken that they appeared mere
pin points of light in the depths of the sockets, and between his
eagle-beak nose and his sharp, bony chin his thin lips were like a
gash among cavernous wrinkles. In his ears he wore huge plugs of
carved jade; about his scrawny, turtle-like neck was a necklace of
huge turquoises, garnets and crystal from which depended a gold disk
representing the sun. About his head was a band of cotton woven in
an elaborate geometrical pattern of red, white and green, and with
two long tail feathers of the _Quetzal_ rising above his forehead. He
was dressed in a single loose robe of black cotton ornamented with
intricate designs in the sacred red, white and green of the ancient
Mayas, and he leaned upon a polished staff of black wood elaborately
carved and with the upper portion covered with turquoise mosaic work.
[2] A tropical tree bearing an edible fruit; its sap yields edible gum,
now in demand for making chewing gum.
* * * * *
FOR a moment he peered at me in silence, and a frown deepened the
wrinkles on his forehead. I stepped forward, greeted him in Zutugil,
and handed him the letter and the little skin bag I had received from
Fray José.
Instantly, as his claw-like hand grasped the token, his manner changed.
The frown vanished, he nodded his head, and he welcomed me to his
village. Such was my meeting with Katchilcan, high-priest of Tohil the
Rumbler-god of the Kitche Maya, descendant of the royal line of the
Great Snake of Mayapan. Fray José had spoken truly when he had said
he would help me to step into the past, for Katchilcan was the past
personified.
But though he was of the past, yet he was thoroughly aware of the
present. How old he was no one--not even he--could say, and undoubtedly
he exaggerated his age, when he declared that his parents had been
killed by the soldiers of Tonatiuh (Alvarado) and that he could
remember the Padre Landa. Yet who can say? Who can declare positively
that an Indian may not live for three centuries or more? Be that as it
may, the priest was very, very old--a centenarian beyond question--with
all the wisdom of his years, a keen, alert brain, and steeped in the
lore, the involved mythology, the legends, the customs and the history
of his people.
Though he sedulously carried out the ceremonials and practices of his
faith, though his people revered and respected him, yet he realized
that his faith and his people were doomed. Never having come into
contact with any Christian priest other than Fray José (unless his
seemingly impossible tale were true and he _had_ known Bishop Landa in
his youth) he regarded the good Padre as the head of both the Christian
Church and the entire white race, and as such held the most profound
respect and reverence for him, aside from his personal friendship
and a deep gratitude for some service rendered him, but what it was
he would not reveal. For these reasons he received me as the direct
representative of Fray José and treated me as the Padre’s envoy. But I
was far too familiar with Indian psychology to broach the purpose of
my visit at once. Impatient as I was, I was forced to bide my time, to
become acquainted with Katchilcan, to win his entire confidence, to
lead the conversation by degrees to the myths and history of the Mayas,
before I showed him the codex.
But when at last I felt the time was ripe and I spread the papyrus
before him, I was wholly unprepared for the effect. With a strange,
sharp cry he fell upon his knees, cast dust upon his head, and in his
thin cracked voice began chanting in an unintelligible dialect. Then,
rising, he reverently returned the codex to my hands.
“Blessed of the gods are you, my lord,” he cried in Zutugil. “I am an
old man, my lord, but were I a youth in my strength, gladly would I
give half my life to possess that book.”
I gasped. What secret, what import did the codex hold? What had caused
the old priest to be so deeply affected by his first glance at it?
Why would he have given “half his life” to have owned it? Eagerly I
questioned him. For a time he was silent, motionless, thinking deeply.
Then at last he spoke.
“My lord does not know?” he asked. “My lord knows not that he has the
book of Kukulcan? That he holds in his hands the prophecy of him who
was known to Mayapan as the ‘snake with feathers?’ That he holds the
secret of that prophecy and its fulfillment, that he holds the symbols
that no other has seen? Know you, then, my lord, that in the long ago,
ere Kukulcan the ‘plumed serpent’ departed, he gave unto my people a
prophecy. Great should the people of my race be, mighty their power and
their conquests, but in the end they should wither and die. Those who
builded the temples and carved the stones and placed the great images
should vanish, and the gods should be forgotten, and those who remained
should war one with another and should be scattered far and wide. And
they should each speak with a different tongue and be divided among
themselves, and should forget their greatness and their gods and their
arts. But some few of the great ones should survive, and they should go
far from their homes to a place called Mictolan and there they should
remain and worship their old gods and have their temples and should
abide, until, in the fullness of the allotted time, they should be
called forth by their gods and should once more rule the land and be
great again and should cast down the new gods. And that they might know
when the gods called them forth, the wise Kukulcan caused to be made a
book telling of the prophecy and of Mictolan, and of the hidden people,
and bearing the symbol that would serve as a token to let the people
know that the allotted time had passed when the book with the symbol
was brought to them. And to you, my lord, has come that token, which
borne to the people at Mictolan, shall call them forth to rule the land
and be great once more and shall cast down the new gods. Blessed by
the gods of my fathers is my lord. And that it should fall to a white
man to bear the symbol and to fulfill the prophecy is not strange, for
Kukulcan the Plumed Serpent was white of skin and was bearded, and it
was said in the prophecy that a son of his sons’ sons should bear the
book with the token of Kukulcan.”
* * * * *
I WAS utterly astounded at his words. But equally, of course, I did
not take them literally. Much of what he said was the same well known
ancient legend or myth. Much of the so-called prophecy I had heard
before, for it was common to the Aztecs, the Mayas and even the Incas,
and much of what had been foretold centuries before the conquest had
occurred exactly as prophesied. Or perhaps, Indian like, the prophecy
had been invented to fit the facts. Yet, over and over again, I, like
many others, had heard the tale, the rumors of the remnants of the
race dwelling in some remote, unknown, secret district, where they
retained their ancient customs and religion. Was it not possible
there might be truth in these stories; some foundation of fact? Such
things had occurred before. There was that Aztec colony in the hidden
valley in Mexico of which Professor Cervantes had told me. There was
that isolated group of Incas in the interior of Peru, that had been
discovered and described by Dr. Armand. And I could see no reason
why, somewhere in the wild interior of Guatemala or southern Mexico,
a similar colony of the Mayans might not also exist. For that matter,
here was this village where I sat, where the old priest Katchilcan
still held sway, where the ancient temple was still in daily use,
where the sacred fires still burned continuously, where Tohil the
Rumbler-god and Xibalba the Great Snake were still worshipped, where
the people still lived in the past, and yet neither hidden nor secreted
from the rest of the world. If such villages and people could survive
almost unaltered, was there anything improbable in the idea of others,
entirely cut off from the world, retaining even more of their ancient
life? At any rate, of one thing I was convinced. My codex was the
record of the prophecy of Kukulcan, it was Maya, and it was of the Old
Empire. All I had journeyed so far to learn was now clear. I possessed
a priceless document of the Mayas, a codex more valuable than any
in existence, and if Katchilcan had not drawn upon his imagination,
the actual work of that semi-mythical hero-god, the Plumed Serpent,
Kukulcan, or as he was known to the Aztecs, Quetzalcoatl, himself. I
was elated, overjoyed. But I wondered about that story of the isolated
colony, and I wondered just how much old Katchilcan really knew, how
much he had left unsaid.
“And did the prophecy fall out as told?” I asked. “Do the survivors
of your race still worship their old gods and await the coming of the
token? And where O, most Wise One, is this place called Mictolan?”
The old fellow’s eyes held a far away look, as though he were gazing
into the past and seeing the glories of the civilization of his
ancestors. But at my words he came back to earth and turned towards
me, his deep-set eyes, like pin points of fire, seeming to pierce my
innermost thoughts.
“That I cannot say, my lord,” he replied. “But being a prophecy of the
mighty Kukulcan, of a surety it must have been fulfilled. Did not my
people vanish? Did they not forget their gods? Are they not scattered?
Do they not speak the Pipil, the Kitche, the Zutugil, the Katchiquel
and other tongues? Why then should I doubt that they still dwell in
Mictolan? But where that spot may be, I know not. Upon the book that my
lord has, a part of the symbol is missing. But I can read that it is to
the north and west.” He waved his skinny arm in a wide, all-embracing
gesture towards the endless mountains. “And, my lord,” he continued,
lowering his voice, “maybe of this I should not speak; mayhap I have
said too much already. But to him who has the Master’s book, I feel I
may speak freely. And my lord is not like other white men. To him has
been given the token, and he must be the son of the sons of Kukulcan
who also was bearded and white of skin. But even though my lord is not
of the sons of the Master, yet all men, white or red, are brothers at
heart, although some are bad and seek only to rob and destroy. But to
you, my lord, may I speak with freedom, for you come with the pledge
of the great priest of your people, of him whom I know and trust as a
brother though we worship different gods.
“Though I cannot say where lies this place of Mictolan, yet in the book
it is written that great bars were placed in the way and cleverly was
it hidden, and magic surrounds it. To reach it one must pass through
the Valley of Death, through the Tunnel of the Serpents, through the
pit of the great Zotional (alligator); and even then one must cross
the eight deserts with the raging whirlwind that cuts the solid rock,
and must face the demon Ixputeque and the fiend Neztpehua in the realm
of hot ashes and the two blazing mountains, and at last must enter the
cave of bats and cross the bridge of life. Did I not say, my lord,
that I would give half my life to possess the book of Kukulcan? And
why, my lord? Ah, for it is foretold that to him who has the book and
comes by it by honest means, the way to Mictolan shall be made easy,
and he shall be welcomed as a great lord and shall gain great peace and
happiness and shall abide forever with the gods. So, my lord, I was
told by my father, who had it from his father and from his father’s
father before him for many generations, aye, till one goes back even
to those far-off days when all this land was of my people, and the old
gods ruled and walked among men, and sacred fires burned before all the
altars, and sons of the Plumed Serpent sat in their palaces.”
Very impressive were the old priest’s words. There was something
indescribably convincing about his manner, perhaps something hypnotic.
There, in the ancient room, with the ancient priest so like a Mayan
sculptured figure, with the still more ancient codex--the Book of
Kukulcan--in my hands, there seemed nothing improbable, nothing
incongruous in his story. The prophecy seemed very real. Though under
any other circumstances, among any other surroundings, I might have
scoffed at it all, might have put the whole thing down as a fanciful
myth, yet there, with the words of Katchilcan in my ears, somehow I
felt a conviction that I was destined to find that hidden spot called
Mictolan, that the whole chain of circumstances, from finding the
codex in the book at Vigo to my coming to this village and meeting
Katchilcan, seemed destiny and fate, and that I would fulfill that
destiny.
Strange as it may appear now, at the time it never occurred to me
that I might fail, that, having no definite knowledge of the site of
Mictolan, if for that matter there was such a spot, I might never find
it. And, quite as though I had planned to do so from the beginning, I
at once set about making preparations to start on what, to me in my
sober senses, would have appeared the wildest of wild goose chases, the
most preposterous of adventures.