Departure for Merida.--The Road.--Cacalchen.--Hacienda of Ake.--The
Ruins.--Great Mound called the Palace.--Immense Staircase.--Grand
Approach.--Columns.--No Remains of a Building on the Mound.--Other
Mounds.--Interior Chamber.--A Senote.--Rude and Massive Character of
these Ruins.--End of Journey among ruined Cities.--Number of Cities
discovered.--Of the Builders of the American Cities.--Opinion.--Built
by the Ancestors of the present Race of Indians.--Reply to Arguments
urged against this Belief.--Absence of Tradition.--Unparalleled
Circumstances which attended the Conquest.--Unscrupulous Policy of the
Spaniards.--Want of Tradition not confined to Events before the
Conquest.--Nor peculiar to American Ruins.--Degeneracy of the
Indians.--Insufficiency of these Arguments.--Farewell to Ruins.
The next morning we started for Merida, with the intention of diverging
for the last time to visit the ruins of Ake. The road was one of the
best in the country, made for carriages, but rough, stony, and
uninteresting. At Cacalchen, five leagues distant, we stopped to dine
and procure a guide to Ake.
In the afternoon we proceeded, taking with as only our hammocks, and
leaving Dimas to go on direct with the luggage to Merida. Turning off
immediately from the main road, we entered the woods, and following a
narrow path, a little before dark we reached the hacienda of Ake, and
for the last time were among the towering and colossal memorials of an
aboriginal city. The hacienda was the property of the Conde Peon, and,
contrary to our expectations, it was small, neglected, in a ruinous
condition, and entirely destitute of all kinds of supplies. We could
not procure even eggs, literally nothing but tortillas. The major domo
was away, the principal building locked up, and the only shelter we
could obtain was a miserable little hut, full of fleas, which no
sweeping could clear out. We had considered all our rough work over,
but again, and within a day's journey of Merida, we were in bad
straits. By great ingenuity, and giving them the shortest possible tie,
Albino contrived to swing our hammocks, and having no other resource,
early in the evening we fell into them. At about ten o'clock we heard
the tramp of a horse, and the major domo arrived. Surprised to find
such unexpected visiters, but glad to see them, he unlocked the
hacienda, and walking out in our winding sheets, we took possession;
our hammocks followed, and were hung up anew. In the morning he
provided us with breakfast, after which, accompanied by him and all the
Indians of the hacienda, being only six, we went round to see the
ruins.
[Engraving 70: Mound called El Palacio]
The plate opposite represents a great mound towering in full sight
sight from the door of the hacienda, and called El Palacio, or the
Palace. The ascent is on the south side, by an immense staircase, one
hundred and thirty-seven feet wide, forming an approach of rude
grandeur, perhaps equal to any that ever existed in the country. Each
step is four feet five inches long, and one foot five inches in height.
The platform on the top is two hundred and twenty-five feet in length,
and fifty in breadth. On this great platform stand thirty-six shafts,
or columns, in three parallel rows of twelve, about ten feet apart from
north to south, and fifteen from east to west. They are from fourteen
to sixteen feet in height, four feet on each side, and are composed of
separate stones, from one to two feet in thickness. But few have
fallen, though some have lost their upper layer of stones. There are no
remains of any structure or of a roof. If there ever was one, it must
have been of wood, which would seem most incongruous and inappropriate
for such a solid structure of stones. The whole mound was so overgrown
that we could not ascertain the juxtaposition of the pillars till the
growth was cleared away, when we made out the whole, but with little or
no enlargement of our knowledge as to its uses and purposes. It was a
new and extraordinary feature, entirely different from any we had seen,
and at the very end of our journey, when we supposed ourselves familiar
with the character of American ruins, threw over them a new air of
mystery.
In the same vicinity are other mounds of colossal dimensions, one of
which is also called the Palace, but of a different construction and
without pillars. On another, at the head of the ruined staircase, is an
opening under the top of a doorway, nearly filled up, crawling through
which, by means of the crotch of a tree I descended into a dark chamber
fifteen feet long and ten wide, of rude construction, and of which some
of the stones in the wall measured seven feet in length. This is called
Akabna, casa obscura, or dark house. Near this is a senote, with the
remains of steps leading down to water, which once supplied the ancient
city. The ruins cover a great extent, but all were overgrown, and in a
condition too ruinous to be presented in a drawing. They were ruder and
more massive than all the others we had seen, bore the stamp of an
older era, and more than any others, in fact, for the first time in the
country, suggested the idea of Cyclopean remains; but even here we have
a gleam of historic light, faint, it is true, but, in my mind,
sufficient to dispel all unsettled and wavering notions.
In the account of the march of Don Francisco Montejo from the coast,
presented in the early part of these pages, it is mentioned that the
Spaniards reached a town called Ake, at which they found themselves
confronted by a great multitude of armed Indians. A desperate battle
ensued, which lasted two days, and in which the Spaniards were
victorious, but gained no easy triumph.
There is no other mention of Ake, and in this there is no allusion
whatever to the buildings, but from its geographical position, and the
direction of the line of march of the Spanish army from the coast, I
have little doubt that their Ake was the place now known by the same
name, and occupied by the ruins last presented. It is, indeed, strange
that no mention is made of the buildings, but regard must be had to the
circumstances of danger and death which surrounded the Spaniards, and
which were doubtless always uppermost in the minds of the soldiers who
formed that disastrous expedition. At all events, it is not more
strange than the want of any description of the great buildings of
Chichen, and we have the strongest possible proof that no correct
inference is to be drawn from the silence of the Spaniards, for in the
comparatively minute account of the conquest of Mexico, we find that
the Spanish army marched under the very shadow of the great pyramids of
Otumba, and yet not the slightest mention whatever is made of their
existence.
I have now finished my journey among ruined cities. I know that it is
impossible by any narrative to convey to the reader a true idea of the
powerful and exciting interest of wandering among them, and I have
avoided as much as possible all detailed descriptions, but I trust that
these pages will serve to give some general idea of the appearance
which this country once presented. In our long, irregular, and devious
route we have discovered the crumbling remains of forty-four ancient
cities, most of them but a short distance apart, though, from the great
change that has taken place in the country, and the breaking up of the
old roads, having no direct communication with each other; with but few
exceptions, all were lost, buried, and unknown, never before visited by
a stranger, and some of them, perhaps, never looked upon by the eyes of
a white man. Involuntarily we turn for a moment to the frightful scenes
of which this now desolate region must have been the theatre; the
scenes of blood, agony, and wo which preceded the desolation or
abandonment of these cities But, leaving the boundless space in which
imagination might rove, I confine myself to the consideration of facts.
If I may be permitted to say so, in the whole history of discoveries
there is nothing to be compared with those here presented. They give an
entirely new aspect to the great Continent on which we live, and bring
up with more force than ever the great question which I once, with some
hesitation, undertook to consider: Who were the builders of these
American cities?
My opinion on this question has been fully and freely expressed, "that
they are not the works of people who have passed away, and whose
history is lost, but of the same races who inhabited the country at the
time of the Spanish conquest, or of some not very distant progenitors."
Some were probably in ruins, but in general I believe that they were
occupied by the Indians at the time of the Spanish invasion. The
grounds of this belief are interspersed throughout these pages; they
are interwoven with so many facts and circumstances that I do not
recapitulate them; and in conclusion I shall only refer briefly to
those arguments which I consider the strongest that are urged against
this belief.
The first is the entire absence of all traditions. But I would ask, may
not this be accounted for by the unparalleled circumstances which
attended the conquest and subjugation of Spanish America? Every captain
or discoverer, on first planting the royal standard on the shores of a
new country, made proclamation according to a form drawn up by the most
eminent divines and lawyers in Spain, the most extraordinary that ever
appeared in the history of mankind; entreating and requiring the
inhabitants to acknowledge and obey the church as the superior and
guide of the universe, the holy father called the pope, and his majesty
as king and sovereign lord of these islands, and of the terra firma;
and concluding, "But if you will not comply, or maliciously delay to
obey my injunction, then, with the help of God, I will enter your
country by force; I will carry on war against you with the utmost
violence; I will subject you to the yoke of obedience, to the church
and king; I will take your wives and children, and make them slaves,
and sell or dispose of them according to his majesty's pleasure. I will
seize your goods, and do you all the mischief in my power, as
rebellious subjects, who will not acknowledge or submit to their lawful
sovereign; and I protest that all the bloodshed and calamities which
shall follow are to be imputed to you, and not to his majesty, or to
me, or the gentlemen who serve under me."
The conquest and subjugation of the country were carried out in the
unscrupulous spirit of this proclamation. The pages of the historians
are dyed with blood; and sailing on the crimson stream, with a master
pilot at the helm, appears the leading, stern, and steady policy of the
Spaniards, surer and more fatal than the sword, to subvert all the
institutions of the natives, and to break up and utterly destroy all
the rites, customs, and associations that might keep alive the memory
of their fathers and their ancient condition. One sad instance shows
the effects of this policy. Before the destruction of Mayapan, the
capital of the kingdom of Maya, all the nobles of the country had
houses in that city, and were exempted from tribute; according to the
account from which Cogolludo derives his authority, in the year 1582,
forty years after the conquest, all who held themselves for lords and
nobles still claimed their solares (sites for mansions) as tokens of
their rank; but now, he says, "from the change of government and the
little estimation in which they are held, it does not appear that they
care to preserve nobility for their posterity, for at this day the
descendants of Tutul Xiu, who was the king and natural lord by right of
the land of Maya, if they do not work with their own hands in manual
offices, have nothing to eat." And if at that early date nobles no
longer cared for their titles, and the descendants of the royal house
had nothing to eat but what they earned with their own hands, it is not
strange that the present inhabitants, nine generations removed, without
any written language, borne down by three centuries of servitude, and
toiling daily for a scanty subsistence, are alike ignorant and
indifferent concerning the history of their ancestors, and the great
cities lying in ruins under their eyes. And strange or not, no argument
can be drawn from it, for this ignorance is not confined to ruined
cities or to events before the conquest. It is my belief, that among
the whole mass of what are called Christianized Indians, there is not
at this day one solitary tradition which can shed a ray of light upon
any event in their history that occurred one hundred and fifty years
from the present time; in fact, I believe it would be almost impossible
to procure any information of any kind whatever beyond the memory of
the oldest living Indian.
Besides, the want of traditionary knowledge is not peculiar to these
American ruins. Two thousand years ago the Pyramids towered on the
borders of the African Desert without any certain tradition of the time
when they were founded; and so long back as the first century of the
Christian era, Pliny cites various older authors who disagreed
concerning the persons who built them, and even concerning the use and
object for which they were erected. No traditions hang round the ruins
of Greece and Rome; the temples of Paestum, lost until within the last
half century, have no traditions to identify their builders; the "holy
city" has only weak inventions of modern monks. But for written
records, Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman remains would be as mysterious as
the ruins of America; and to come down to later times and countries
comparatively familiar, tradition sheds no light upon the round towers
of Ireland, and the ruins of Stonehenge stand on Salisbury plain
without a tradition to carry us back to the age or nation of their
builders.
The second argument I shall notice is, that a people possessing the
power, art, and skill to erect such cities, never could have fallen so
low as the miserable Indians who now linger about their ruins. To this,
too, it might be sufficient to answer that their present condition is
the natural and inevitable consequence of the same ruthless policy
which laid the axe at the root of all ancient recollections, and cut
off forever all traditionary knowledge. But waiving this ground, the
pages of written history are burdened with changes in national
character quite equal to that here exhibited. And again, leaving
entirely out of the question all the analogous examples which might be
drawn from those pages, we have close at hand, and under our very eyes,
an illustration in point. The Indians who inhabit that country now are
not more changed than their Spanish masters. Whether debased, and but
little above the grade of brutes, as it was the policy of the Spaniards
to represent them, or not, we know that at the time of the conquest
they were at least proud, fierce, and warlike, and poured out their
blood like water to save their inheritance from the grasp of strangers.
Crushed, humbled, and bowed down as they are now by generations of
bitter servitude, even yet they are not more changed than the
descendants of those terrible Spaniards who invaded and conquered their
country. In both, all traces of the daring and warlike character of
their ancestors are entirely gone. The change is radical, in feelings
and instincts, inborn and transmitted, in a measure, with the blood;
and in contemplating this change in the Indian, the loss of mere
mechanical skill and art seems comparatively nothing; in fact, these
perish of themselves, when, as in the case of the Indians, the school
for their exercise is entirely broken up. Degraded as the Indians are
now, they are not lower in the scale of intellect than the serfs of
Russia, while it is a well-known fact that the greatest architect in
that country, the builder of the Cazan Church at St. Petersburgh, was
taken from that abject class, and by education became what he is. In my
opinion, teaching might again lift up the Indian, might impart to him
the skill to sculpture stone and carve wood; and if restored to
freedom, and the unshackled exercise of his powers of mind, there might
again appear a capacity to originate and construct, equal to that
exhibited in the ruined monuments of his ancestors.
The last argument, and that upon which most stress has been laid,
against the hypothesis that the cities were constructed by the
ancestors of the present Indians, is the alleged absence of historical
accounts in regard to the discovery or knowledge of such cities by the
conquerors. But it is manifest that even if this allegation were true,
the argument would be unsound, for it goes to deny that such cities
ever existed at all. Now there can be no doubt as to the fact of their
existence; and as it is never pretended that they were erected since
the conquest, they must be allowed to have been standing at that time.
Whether erected by the Indians or by races perished and unknown,
whether desolate or inhabited, beyond all question the great buildings
were there; if not entire, they must at least have been far more so
than they are now; if desolate, perhaps more calculated to excite
wonder than if inhabited; and in either case the alleged silence of the
historian would be equally inexplicable.
But the allegation is untrue. The old historians are not silent. On the
contrary, we have the glowing accounts of Cortez and his companions, of
soldiers, priests, and civilians, all concurring in representations of
existing cities, then in the actual use and occupation of the Indians,
with buildings and temples, in style and character like those presented
in these pages. Indeed, these accounts are so glowing that modern
historians, at the head of whom stands Robertson, have for that reason
thrown discredit over them, and ascribed them to a heated imagination.
To my mind, they bear on the face of them the stamp of truth, and it
seems strange that they have been deemed worthy of so little reliance.
But Robertson wrote upon the authority of correspondents in New Spain,
one of whom, long resident in that country, and professing to have
visited every part of it, says that "at this day there does not remain
the smallest vestige of any Indian building, public or private, either
in Mexico or any province of New Spain." Robertson's informants were
probably foreign merchants resident in the city of Mexico, whose
travels had been confined to the beaten road, and to places occupied by
the Spaniards; and at that time the white inhabitants were in utter
ignorance of the great cities, desolate and in ruins, that lay buried
in the forests. But at this day better information exists; vast remains
have been brought to light, and the discoveries prove incontestably
that those histories which make no mention of these great buildings are
imperfect, those which deny their existence are untrue. The graves cry
out for the old historians, and the mouldering skeletons of cities
confirm Herrera's account of Yucatan, that "there were so many and such
stately Stone Buildings that it was Amazing; and the greatest Wonder
was that, having no Use of any Metal, they were able to raise such
Structures, which seem to have been Temples, for their Houses were all
of Timber, and thatched." And again, he says, that "for the Space of
twenty Years there was such Plenty throughout the Country, and the
People multiplied so much that Men said the whole Province looked like
one Town."
These arguments then--the want of tradition, the degeneracy of the
people, and the alleged absence of historical accounts--are not
sufficient to disturb my belief, that the great cities now lying in
ruins were the works of the same races who inhabited the country at the
time of the conquest.
Who these people were, whence they came, and who were their
progenitors, are questions that involve too many considerations to be
entered upon at the conclusion of these pages; but all the light that
history sheds upon them is dim and faint, and may be summed up in few
words.
According to traditions, picture writings, and Mexican manuscripts
written after the conquest, the Toltecs, or Toltecans, were the first
inhabitants of the land of Anahuac, now known as New Spain or Mexico,
and they are the oldest nations on the continent of America of which we
have any knowledge. Banished, according to their own history, from
their native country, which was situated to the northwest of Mexico, in
the year 596 of our era, they proceeded southward under the directions
of their chiefs, and, after sojourning at various places on the way for
the space of one hundred and twenty-four years, arrived at the banks of
a river in the vale of Mexico, where they built the city of Tula, the
capital of the Toltecan kingdom, near the site of the present city of
Mexico.
Their monarchy lasted nearly four centuries, during which they
multiplied, extended their population, and built numerous and large
cities; but direful calamities hung over them. For several years Heaven
denied them rain; the earth refused them food; the air, infected with
mortal contagion, filled the graves with dead; a great part of the
nation perished of famine or sickness; the last king was among the
number, and in the year 1052 the monarchy ended. The wretched remains
of the nation took refuge, some in Yucatan and others in Guatimala,
while some lingered around the graves of their kindred in the great
vale where Mexico was afterward founded. For a century the land of
Anahuac lay waste and depopulated. The Chechemecas, following in the
track of their ruined cities, reoccupied it, and after them the
Acolhuans, the Tlastaltecs, and the Aztecs, which last were the
subjects of Montezuma at the time of the invasion by the Spaniards. The
history of all these tribes or nations is misty, confused, and
indistinct. The Toltecans, represented to have been the most ancient,
are said to have been also the most polished. Probably they were the
originators of that peculiar style of architecture found in Guatimala
and Yucatan, which was adopted by all the subsequent inhabitants; and
as, according to their own annals, they did not set out on their
emigration to those countries from the vale of Mexico until the year
1052 of our era, the oldest cities erected by them in those countries
could have been in existence but from four to five hundred years at the
time of the Spanish conquest. This gives them a very modern date
compared with the Pyramids and temples of Egypt, and the other ruined
monuments of the Old World; it gives them a much less antiquity than
that claimed by the Maya manuscript, and, in fact, much less than I
should ascribe to them myself. In identifying them as the works of the
ancestors of the present Indians, the cloud which hung over their
origin is not removed; the time when and the circumstances under which
they were built, the rise, progress, and full development of the power,
art, and skill required for their construction, are all mysteries which
will not easily be unravelled. They rise like skeletons from the grave,
wrapped in their burial shrouds; claiming no affinity with the works of
any known people, but a distinct, independent, and separate existence.
They stand alone, absolutely and entirely anomalous, perhaps the most
interesting subject which at this day presents itself to the inquiring
mind. I leave them with all their mystery around them; and in the
feeble hope that these imperfect pages may in some way throw a glimmer
of light upon the great and long vainly mooted question, who were the
peoplers of America? I will now bid farewell to ruins.