Part 2

I will not describe here the majestic monuments raised by the Mayas. Mrs. Le Plongeon, in her letters to the _New York World_, has given of those of UXMAL, AKE and MAYAPAN, the only correct description ever published. My object at present is to relate some of the curious facts revealed to us by their weather-beaten and crumbling walls, and show how erroneous is the opinion of some European scientists, who think it not worth while to give a moment of their precious time to the study of American archæology, because say they: _No relations have ever been found to have existed between the monuments and civilizations of the inhabitants of this continent and those of the old world_. On what ground they hazard such an opinion it is difficult to surmise, since to my knowledge the ancient ruined cities of Yucatan, until lately, have never been thoroughly, much less scientifically, explored. The same is true of the other monumental ruins of the whole of Central America.

When Mrs. Le Plongeon and myself landed at Progresso, in 1873, we thought that because we had read the works of Stephens, Waldeck, Norman, Fredeichstal; carefully examined the few photographic views made by Mr. Charnay of some of the monuments, we knew all about them. Alas! vain presumption! When in presence of the antique shrines and palaces of the Mayas, we soon saw how mistaken we had been; how little those writers had seen of the monuments they had pretended to describe: that the work of studying them systematically was not even begun; and that many years of close observation and patient labor would be necessary in order to dispel the mysteries which hang over them, and to discover the hidden meaning of their ornaments and inscriptions. To this difficult task we resolved to dedicate our time, and to concentrate our efforts to find a solution, if possible, to the enigma.

We began our work by taking photographs of all the monuments in their _tout ensemble_, and in all their details, as much as practicable. Next, we surveyed them carefully; made accurate plans of them in order to be able to comprehend by the disposition of their different parts, for what possible use they were erected; taking, as a starting point, that the human mind and human inclinations and wants are the same in all times, in all countries, in all races when civilized and cultured. We next carefully examined what connection the ornaments bore to each other, and tried to understand the meaning of the designs. At first the maze of these designs seemed a very difficult riddle to solve. Yet, we believed that if a human intelligence had devised it, another human intelligence would certainly be able to unravel it. It was not, however, until we had nearly completed the tracing and study of the mural paintings, still extant in the funeral chamber of Chaacmol, or room built on the top of the eastern wall of the gymnasium at Chichen-Itza, at its southern end, that Stephens mistook for a shrine dedicated to the god of the players at ball, that a glimmer of light began to dawn upon us. In tracing the figure of Chaacmol in battle, I remarked that the shield worn by him had painted on it round green spots, and was exactly like the ornaments placed between tiger and tiger on the entablature of the same monument. I naturally concluded that the monument had been raised to the memory of the warrior bearing the shield; that the tigers represented his totem, and that _Chaacmol_ or _Balam_ maya[TN-2] words for spotted tiger or leopard, was his name. I then remembered that at about one hundred yards in the thicket from the edifice, in an easterly direction, a few days before, I had noticed the ruins of a remarkable mound of rather small dimensions. It was ornamented with slabs engraved with the images of spotted tigers, eating human hearts, forming magnificent bas-reliefs, conserving yet traces of the colors in which it was formerly painted. I repaired to the place. Doubts were no longer possible. The same round dots, forming the spots of their skins, were present here as on the shield of the warrior in battle, and that on the entablature of the building. On examining carefully the ground around the mound, I soon stumbled upon what seemed to be a half buried statue. On clearing the _débris_ we found a statue in the round, representing a wounded tiger reclining on his right side. Three holes in the back indicated the places where he received his wounds. It was headless. A few feet further, I found a human head with the eyes half closed, as those of a dying person. When placed on the neck of the tiger it fitted exactly. I propped it with sticks to keep it in place. So arranged, it recalled vividly the Chaldean and Egyptian deities having heads of human beings and bodies of animals. The next object that called my attention was another slab on which was represented in bas-relief a dying warrior, reclining on his back, the head was thrown entirely backwards. His left arm was placed across his chest, the left hand resting on the right shoulder, exactly in the same position which the Egyptians were wont, at times, to give to the mummies of some of their eminent men. From his mouth was seen escaping two thin, narrow flames--the spirit of the dying man abandoning the body with the last warm breath.

These and many other sculptures caused me to suspect that this monument had been the mausoleum raised to the memory of the warrior with the shield covered with the round dots. Next to the slabs engraved with the image of tigers was another, representing an _ara militaris_ (a bird of the parrot specie, very large and of brilliant plumage of various colors). I took it for the totem of his wife, MOÓ, _macaw_; and so it proved to be when later I was able to interpret their ideographic writings. _Kinich-Kakmó_ after her death obtained the honors of the apotheosis; had temples raised to her memory, and was worshipped at Izamal up to the time of the Spanish conquest, according to Landa, Cogolludo and Lizana.

Satisfied that I had found the tomb of a great warrior among the Mayas, I resolved to make an excavation, notwithstanding I had no tools or implements proper for such work. After two months of hard toil, after penetrating through three level floors painted with yellow ochre, at last a large stone urn came in sight. It was opened in presence of Colonel D. Daniel Traconis. It contained a small heap of grayish dust over which lay the cover of a terra cotta pot, also painted yellow; a few small ornaments of macre that crumbled to dust on being touched, and a large ball of jade, with a hole pierced in the middle. This ball had at one time been highly polished, but for some cause or other the polish had disappeared from one side. Near, and lower than the urn, was discovered the head of the colossal statue, to-day the best, or one of the best pieces, in the National Museum of Mexico, having been carried thither on board of the gunboat _Libertad_, without my consent, and without any renumeration having even been offered by the Mexican government for my labor, my time and the money spent in the discovery. Close to the chest of the statue was another stone urn much larger than the first. On being uncovered it was found to contain a large quantity of reddish substance and some jade ornaments. On closely examining this substance I pronounced it organic matter that had been subjected to a very great heat in an open vessel. (A chemical analysis of some of it by Professor Thompson, of Worcester, Mass., at the request of Mr. Stephen Salisbury, Jr., confirmed my opinion). From the position of the urn I made up my mind that its contents were the heart and viscera of the personage represented by the statue; while the dust found in the first urn must have been the residue of his brains.

Landa tells us that it was the custom, even at the time of the Spanish conquest, when a person of eminence died to make images of stone, or terra cotta or wood in the semblance of the deceased, whose ashes were placed in a hollow made on the back of the head for the purpose. Feeling sorry for having thus disturbed the remains of _Chaacmol_, so carefully concealed by his friends and relatives many centuries ago; in order to save them from further desecration, I burned the greater part reserving only a small quantity for future analysis. This finding of the heart and brains of that chieftain, afforded an explanation, if any was needed, of one of the scenes more artistically portrayed in the mural paintings of his funeral chamber. In this scene which is painted immediately over the entrance of the chamber, where is also a life-size representation of his corpse prepared for cremation, the dead warrior is pictured stretched on the ground, his back resting on a large stone placed for the purpose of raising the body and keeping open the cut made across it, under the ribs, for the extraction of the heart and other parts it was customary to preserve. These are seen in the hands of his children. At the feet of the statue were found a number of beautiful arrowheads of flint and chalcedony; also beads that formed part of his necklace. These, to-day petrified, seemed to have been originally of bone or ivory. They were wrought to figure shells of periwinkles. Surrounding the slab on which the figure rests was a large quantity of dried blood. This fact might lead us to suppose that slaves were sacrificed at his funeral, as Herodotus tells us it was customary with the Scythians, and we know it was with the Romans and other nations of the old world, and the Incas in Peru. Yet not a bone or any other human remains were found in the mausoleum.

The statue forms a single piece with the slab on which it reclines, as if about to rise on his elbows, the legs being drawn up so that the feet rest flat on the slab. I consider this attitude given to the statues of dead personages that I have discovered in Chichen, where they are still, to be symbolical of their belief in reincarnation. They, in common with the Egyptians, the Hindoos, and other nations of antiquity, held that the spirit of man after being made to suffer for its shortcomings during its mundane life, would enjoy happiness for a time proportionate to its good deeds, then return to earth, animate the body and live again a material existence. The Mayas, however, destroying the body by fire, made statues in the semblance of the deceased, so that, being indestructible the spirit might find and animate them on its return to earth. The present aborigines have the same belief. Even to-day, they never fail to prepare the _hanal pixan_, the food for the spirits, which they place in secluded spots in the forests or fields, every year, in the month of November. These statues also hold an urn between their hands. This fact again recalls to the mind the Egpptian[TN-3] custom of placing an urn in the coffins with the mummies, to indicate that the spirit of the deceased had been judged and found righteous.

The ornament hanging on the breast of Chaacmol's effigy, from a ribbon tied with a peculiar knot behind his neck, is simply a badge of his rank; the same is seen on the breast of many other personages in the bas-reliefs and mural paintings. A similar mark of authority is yet in usage in Burmah.

I have tarried so long on the description of my first important discovery because I desired to explain the method followed by me in the investigation of these monuments, to show that the result of our labors are by no means the work of imagination--as some have been so kind a _short_ time ago as to intimate--but of careful and patient analysis and comparison; also, in order, from the start, to call your attention to the similarity of certain customs in the funeral rites that the Mayas seem to have possessed in common with other nations of the old world: and lastly, because my friend, Dr. Jesus Sanchez, Professor of Archæology in the National Museum of Mexico, ignoring altogether the circumstances accompanying the discovery of the statue, has published in the _Anales del Museo Nacional_, a long dissertation--full of erudition, certainly--to prove that the statue discovered by me at Chichen-Itza, was a representation of the _God of the natural production of the earth_, and that the name given by me was altogether arbitrary; and, also, because an article has appeared in the _North American Review_ for October, 1880, signed by Mr. Charnay, in which the author, after re-producing Mr. Sanchez's writing, pronounces _ex cathedra_ and _de perse_, but without assigning any reason for his opinion, that the statue is the effigy of the _god of wine_--the Mexican Bacchus--without telling us which of them, for there were two.

Having been obliged to abandon the statue in the forests--well wrapped in oilcloth, and sheltered under a hut of palm leaves, constructed by Mrs. Le Plongeon and myself--my men having been disarmed by order of General Palomino, then commander-in-chief of the federal forces in Yucatan, in consequence of a revolutionary movement against Dr. Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada and in favor of General Diaz--I went to Uxmal to continue my researches among its ruined temples and palaces. There I took many photographs, surveyed the monuments, and, for the first time, found the remnants of the phallic worship of the Nahualts. Its symbols are not to be seen in Chichen--the city of the holy and learned men, Itzaes--but are frequently met with in the northern parts of the peninsula, and all the regions where the Nahualt influence predominated.

There can be no doubt that in very ancient times the same customs and religious worship existed in Uxmal and Chichen, since these two cities were founded by the same family, that of CAN (serpent), whose name is written on all the monuments in both places. CAN and the members of his family worshipped Deity under the symbol of the mastodon's head. At Chichen a tableau of said worship forms the ornament of the building, designated in the work of Stephens, "Travels in Yucatan," as IGLESIA; being, in fact, the north wing of the palace and museum. This is the reason why the mastodon's head forms so prominent a feature in all the ornaments of the edifices built by them. They also worshipped the sun and fire, which they represented by the same hieroglyph used by the Egyptians for the sun [sun]. In this worship of the fire they resembled the Chaldeans and Hindoos, but differed from the Egyptians, who had no veneration for this element. They regarded it merely as an animal that devoured all things within its reach, and died with all it had swallowed, when replete and satisfied.

From certain inscriptions and pictures--in which the _Cans_ are represented crawling on all fours like dogs--sculptured on the façade of their house of worship, it would appear that their religion of the mastodon was replaced by that of the reciprocal forces of nature, imported in the country by the big-nosed invaders, the Nahualts coming from the west. These destroyed Chichen, and established their capital at _Uxmal_. There they erected in all the courts of the palaces, and on the platforms of the temples the symbols of their religion, taking care, however, not to interfere with the worship of the sun and fire, that seems to have been the most popular.

Bancroft in his work, "_The Native Races of the Pacific States_," Vol. IV., page 277, remarks: "That the scarcity of idols among the Maya antiquities must be regarded as extraordinary. That the people of Yucatan were idolators there is no possible doubt, and in connection with the magnificent shrines and temples erected by them, and rivalling or excelling the grand obelisks of Copan, might naturally be sought for, but in view of the facts it must be concluded that the Maya idols were very small, and that such as escaped the fatal iconoclasms of the Spanish ecclesiastics were buried by the natives as the only means of preventing their desecration."

That the people who inhabited the country at the time of the Spanish conquest had a multiplicity of gods there can be no doubt. The primitive form of worship, with time and by the effect of invasions from outside, had disappeared, and been replaced by that of their great men and women, who were deified and had temples raised to their memory, as we see, for example, in the case of _Moo_,[TN-4] wife and sister of Chaacmol, whose shrine was built on the high mound on the north side of the large square in the city of Izamal. There pilgrims flocked from all parts of the country to listen to the oracles delivered by the mouth of her priests; and see the goddess come down from the clouds every day, at mid-day, under the form of a resplendent macaw, and light the fire that was to consume the offerings deposited on her altar; even at the time of the conquest, according to the chroniclers, Chaacmol himself seems to have become the god of war, that always appeared in the midst of the battle, fighting on the side of his followers, surrounded with flames. Kukulcan, "the culture" hero of the Mayas, the winged serpent, worshipped by the Mexicans as the god Guetzalcoalt,[TN-5] and by the Quichés as Cucumatz, if not the father himself of Chaacmol, CAN, at least one of his ancestors.

The friends and followers of that prince may have worshipped him after his death, and the following generations, seeing the representation of his totems (serpent) covered with feathers, on the walls of his palaces, and of the sanctuaries built by him to the deity, called him Kukulcan, the winged serpent: when, in fact, the artists who carved his emblems on the walls covered them with the cloaks he and all the men in authority and the high priests wore on ceremonial occasions--feathered vestments--as we learned from the study of mural paintings.

In the temples and palaces of the ancient Mayas I have never seen anything that I could in truth take for idols. I have seen many symbols, such as double-headed tigers, corresponding to the double-headed lions of the Egyptians, emblems of the sun. I have seen the representation of people kneeling in a peculiar manner, with their right hand resting on the left shoulder--sign of respect among the Mayas as among the inhabitants of Egypt--in the act of worshiping the mastodon head; but I doubt if this can be said to be idol worship. _Can_ and his family were probably monotheists. The masses of the people, however, may have placed the different natural phenomena under the direct supervision of special imaginary beings, prescribing to them the same duties that among the Catholics are prescribed, or rather attributed, to some of the saints; and may have tributed to them the sort of worship of _dulia_, tributed to the saints--even made images that they imagined to represent such or such deity, as they do to-day; but I have never found any. They worshiped the divine essence, and called it KÚ.

In course of time this worship may have been replaced by idolatrous rites, introduced by the barbarous or half civilized tribes which invaded the country, and implanted among the inhabitants their religious belief, their idolatrous superstitions and form of worship with their symbols. The monuments of Uxmal afford ample evidence of that fact.

My studies, however, have nothing to do with the history of the country posterior to the invasion of the Nahualts. These people appear to have destroyed the high form of civilization existing at the time of their advent; and tampered with the ornaments of the buildings in order to introduce the symbols of the reciprocal forces of nature.

The language of the ancient Mayas, strange as it may appear, has survived all the vicissitudes of time, wars, and political and religious convulsions. It has, of course, somewhat degenerated by the mingling of so many races in such a limited space as the peninsula of Yucatan is; but it is yet the vernacular of the people. The Spaniards themselves, who strived so hard to wipe out all vestiges of the ancient customs of the aborigines, were unable to destroy it; nay, they were obliged to learn it; and now many of their descendants have forgotten the mother tongue of their sires, and speak Maya only.

In some localities in Central America it is still spoken in its pristine purity, as, for example, by the _Chaacmules_, a tribe of bearded men, it is said, who live in the vicinity of the unexplored ruins of the ancient city of _Tekal_. It is a well-known fact that many tribes, as that of the Itzaes, retreating before the Nahualt invaders, after the surrender and destruction of their cities, sought refuge in the islands of the lake _Peten_ of to-day, and called it _Petenitza_, the _islands of the Itzaes_; or in the well nigh inaccessible valleys, defended by ranges of towering mountains. There they live to-day, preserving the customs, manners, language of their forefathers unaltered, in the tract of land known to us as _Tierra de Guerra_. No white man has ever penetrated their zealously guarded stronghold that lays between Guatemala, Tabasco, Chiapas and Yucatan, the river _Uzumasinta_ watering part of their territory.

The Maya language seems to be one of the oldest tongues spoken by man, since it contains words and expressions of all, or nearly all, the known polished languages on earth. The name _Maya_, with the same signification everywhere it is met, is to be found scattered over the different countries of what we term the Old World, as in Central America.

I beg to call your attention to the following facts. They may have no significance. They may be mere coincidences, the strange freaks of hazard, of no possible value in the opinion of some among the learned men of our days. Just as the finding of English words and English customs, as now exist among the most remote nations and heterogeneous people and tribes of all races and colors, who do not even suspect the existence of one another, may be regarded by the learned philologists and ethonologists[TN-6] of two or three thousand years hence. These will, perhaps, also pretend that _these coincidences_ are simply the curious workings of the human mind--the efforts of men endeavoring to express their thoughts in language, that being reduced to a certain number of sounds, must, of necessity produce, if not the same, at least very similar words to express the same idea--and that this similarity does not prove that those who invented them had, at any time, communication, unless, maybe, at the time of the building of the hypothetical Tower of Babel. Then all the inhabitants of earth are said to have bid each other a friendly good night, a certain evening, in a universal tongue, to find next morning that everybody had gone stark mad during the night: since each one, on meeting sixty-nine of his friends, was greeted by every one in a different and unknown manner, according to learned rabbins; and that he could no more understand what they said, than they what he said[TN-7]

It is very difficult without the help of the books of the learned priests of _Mayab_ to know positively why they gave that name to the country known to-day as Yucatan. I can only surmise that they so called it from the great absorbant[TN-8] quality of its stony soil, which, in an incredibly short time, absorbs the water at the surface. This percolating through the pores of the stone is afterward found filtered clear and cool in the senotes and caves. _Mayab_, in the Maya language, means a tammy, a sieve. From the name of the country, no doubt, the Mayas took their name, as natural; and that name is found, as that of the English to-day, all over the ancient civilized world.