The Maya Chronicles

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A cycle of 52 years was thus obtained in a manner almost identical with
that of the Aztecs, Tarascos and other nations.

But the Mayas took an important step in advance of all their
contemporaries in arranging a much longer cycle.

This long cycle was an application of the vigesimal system to their
reckoning of time. Twenty days were a month, _u_ or _uinal_; twenty
years was a cycle, _katun_. To ask one's age the question was put
_haypel u katunil_? How many katuns have you? And the answer was,
_hunpel katun_, one katun (twenty years), or, _hopel in katunil_, I am
five katuns, or a hundred years old, as the case might be.

The division of the katuns was on the principle of the Beltran system of
numeration (see page 40), as,

_xel u ca katun_, thirty years.
_xel u yox katun_, fifty years.

Literally these expressions are, "dividing the second katun," "dividing
the third katun," _xel_ meaning to cut in pieces, to divide as with a
knife. They may be compared to the German _dritthalb_, two and a half,
or "the third a half."[54-1]

The Katun of 20 years was divided into five lesser divisions of 4 years
each, called _tzuc_, a word with a signification something like the
English "bunch," and which came to be used as a numeral particle in
counting parts, divisions, paragraphs, reasons, groups of towns,
etc.[54-2]

These _tzuc_ were called by the Spaniards _lustros_, from the Latin
_lustrum_, although that was a period _five_ years. Cogolludo says:
"They counted their eras and ages, which they entered in their books, by
periods of 20 years each, and by _lustros_ of four years each. The first
year they placed in the East [that is, on the Katun-wheel, and in the
figures in their books], calling it _cuch haab_; the second in the West,
called _Hijx_; the third in the South, _Cavac_; and the fourth, Muluc,
in the North, and this served them for the Dominical letter. When five
of the _lustros_ had passed, that is 20 years, they called it a _Katun_,
and they placed one carved stone upon another, cemented with lime and
sand, in the walls of their temples, or in the houses of their
priests."[55-1]

The historian is wrong in saying that the first year was called
_cuchhaab_; that was the name applied to all the Dominical days, and as
I have said, means "year bearer." The first year was called _Kan_, from
the first day of its first month.

This is but one of many illustrations of how cautious we must be in
accepting any statement of the early Spanish writers about the usages of
the natives.

There is, however, some obscurity about the length of the _Katun_. All
the older Spanish writers, without exception, and most of the native
manuscripts, speak of it distinctly as a period of twenty years. Yet
there are three manuscripts of high authority in the Maya which state
that it embraced twenty-four years, although the last four were not
reckoned. This theory was adopted and warmly advocated by Pio Perez, in
his essay on the ancient chronology of Yucatan, and is also borne out by
calculations which have been made on the hieroglyphic Codex Troano, by
M. Delaporte, in France, and Professor Cyrus Thomas, in the United
States.[56-1]

This discrepancy may arise from the custom of counting the katuns by two
different systems, ground for which supposition is furnished by various
manuscripts; but for purposes of chronology and ordinary life, it will
be evident that the writers of the annals in the present volume adopted
the Katun of twenty years' length; while on the other hand the native
Pech, in his History of the Conquest, which is the last piece in the
volume, gives for the beginning and the end of the Katun the years
1517-1541, and therefore must have had in mind one of twenty-four years'
duration. The solution of these contradictions is not yet at hand.

This great cycle of 13 x 20=260 years was called an _ahau Katun_
collectively, and each period in it bore the same name.

This name, _ahau Katun_, deserves careful analysis. _Ahau_ is the
ordinary word for chief, king, ruler. It is probably a compound of _ah_,
which is the male prefix and sign of the _nomen agentis_, and _u_,
collar, a collar of gold or other precious substance, distinguishing the
chiefs. _Katun_ has been variously analyzed. Don Pio Perez supposed it
was a compound of _kat_, to ask, and _tun_, a stone, because at the
close of these periods they set up the sculptured stone, which was
afterwards referred to in order to fix the dates of occurrences.[57-1]
This, however, would certainly require that _kat_ be in the passive,
_katal_ or _kataan_, and would give _katantun_. Beltran in his Grammar
treats the word as an adjective, meaning very long, perpetual.[57-2] But
this is a later, secondary sense. Its usual signification is a body or
batallion[TN-7] of warriors engaged in action. As a verb, it is to
fight, to give battle, and thus seems related to the Cakchiquel _[k]at_,
to cut, or wound, to make prisoner.[58-1] The series of years, ordered
and arranged under a controlling day and date, were like a row of
soldiers commanded by a chief, and hence the name _ahau katun_.

Each of these _ahaus_ or chiefs of the Katuns was represented in the
native calendars by the picture or portrait of a particular personage
who in some way was identified with the Katun, and his name was given to
it. This has not been dwelt upon nor even mentioned by previous writers
on the subject, but I have copies of various native manuscripts which
illustrate it, and give the names of each of the rulers of the Katuns.

The thirteen _ahau katuns_ were not numbered from 1 upward, but
beginning at the 13th, by the alternate numbers, in the following
order:--

13, 11, 9, 7, 5, 3, 1, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2

Various reasons have been assigned for this arrangement. It would be
foreign to my purpose to discuss them here, and I shall merely quote the
following, from a paper I wrote on the subject, printed in the _American
Naturalist_, Sept., 1881:--

"Gallatin explained them as the numerical characters of the days
"Ahau" following the first day of each year called Cauac; Dr.
Valentini thinks they refer to the numbers of the various idols
worshiped in the different Ahaus; Professor Thomas that they are
the number of the year (in the indiction of 52 years) on which the
Ahau begins. Each of these statements is true in itself, but each
fails to show any practical use of the series; and of the last
mentioned it is to be observed that the objection applies to it
that at the commencement of an Ahau Katun the numbers would run 1,
12, 10, 8, etc., whereas we know positively that the numbers of the
Ahaus began with 13 and continued 11, 9, 7, 5, etc.

"The explanation which I offer is that the number of the Ahau was
taken from the last day Cauac preceding the Kan with which the
first year of each Ahau began--for, as 24 is divisible by 4, the
first year of each Ahau necessarily began with the day Kan. This
number was the "ruling number" of the Ahau, and not for any
mystical or ceremonial purpose, but for the practical one of at
once and easily converting any year designated in the Ahau into its
equivalent in the current Kin Katun, or 52 year cycle. All that is
necessary to do this is, to _add the number of the year in the Ahau
to the number of the year Cauac corresponding to this "ruling
number." When the sum exceeds 52, subtract that number._

"Take an example: To what year in the Kin Katun does 10 Ahau XI
(the 10th year of the 11th Ahau) correspond?

"On referring to a table, or, as the Mayas did, to a 'Katun wheel,'
we find the 11th Cauac to be the 24th year of the cycle; add ten to
this and we have 34 as the number of the year in the cycle to which
10 Ahau XI corresponds. The great simplicity and convenience of
this will be evident without further discussion."

The important question remains, how closely, by these cycles, did the
Mayas approximate to preserving the exact date of an event?

To answer this fairly, we should be sure that we have a perfectly
authentic translation of their hieroglyphic annals. It is doubtful that
we have. Those I present in this volume are the most perfect, so far as
I know, but they certainly do not agree among themselves. Can their
discrepancies be explained? I think they can in a measure (1) by the
differing length of the katuns, (2) by the era assumed as the
commencement of the reckoning.

It must be remembered that there was apparently no common era adopted by
the Mayas; each province may have selected its own; and it is quite
erroneous to condemn the annals off-hand for inaccuracy because they
conflict between themselves.

Sec. 8. _Ancient Hieroglyphic Books._

The Mayas were a literary people. They made frequent use of tablets,
wrote many books, and covered the walls of their buildings with
hieroglyphic signs, cut in the stones or painted upon the plaster.

The explanation of these signs is one of the leading problems in
American archaeology. It was supposed to have been solved when the
manuscript of Bishop Landa's account of Yucatan was discovered, some
twenty years ago, in Madrid. The Bishop gave what he called "an A, B,
C," of the language, but which, when applied to the extant manuscripts
and the mural inscriptions, proved entirely insufficient to decipher
them.

The disappointment of the antiquaries was great, and by one of them, Dr.
Felipe Valentini, Landa's alphabet has been denounced as "a Spanish
fabrication."[61-1] But certainly any one acquainted with the history of
the Latin alphabet, how it required the labor of thousands of years and
the demands of three wholly different families of languages, to bring it
to its perfection, should not have looked to find among the Mayas, or
anywhere else, a parallel production of human intelligence. Moreover,
rightly understood, Landa does not intimate anything of the kind. He
distinctly states that what he gives are the sounds of the Spanish
letters as they would be transcribed in Maya characters; not at all that
they analyzed the sounds of their words and expressed the phonetic
elements in these characters. On the contrary, he takes care to affirm
that they could not do this, and gives an example in point.[62-1] Dr.
Valentini, therefore, was attacking a windmill, and entirely
misconstrued the Bishop's statements.

I shall not, in this connection, enter into a discussion of the nature
of these hieroglyphics. It is enough for my purpose to say that they
were recognized by the earliest Spanish explorers as quite different
from those of Mexico, and as the only graphic system on the continent,
so far as they knew it, which merited the name of writing.[62-2]

The word for book in Maya is _huun_, a monosyllable which reappears in
the Kiche _vuh_ and the Huasteca _uuh_. In Maya this initial _h_ is
almost silent and is occasionally dropped, as _yuunil Dios_, the book of
God (syncopated form of _u huunil Dios_, the suffix _il_ being the
"determinative" ending). I am inclined to believe that _huun_ is merely
a form of _uoohan_, something written, this being the passive participle
of _uooh_, to write, which, as a noun, also means a character, a
letter.[63-1]

Another name for their books, especially those containing the prophecies
and forecasts of the priestly diviners, is said to have been _anahte_;
or _analte_. This word is not to be found in any of the early
dictionaries. The usual authority for it is Villagutierre Sotomayor, who
describes these volumes as they were seen among the Itzas of Lake Peten,
about 1690.[64-1]

These books consisted of one long sheet of a kind of paper made by
macerating and beating together the leaves of the maguey, and afterwards
sizing the surface with a durable white varnish. The sheet was folded
like a screen, forming pages about 9 x 5 inches. Both sides were covered
with figures and characters painted in various brilliant colors. On the
outer pages boards were fastened, for protection, so that the completed
volume had the appearance of a bound book of large octavo size.

Instead of this paper, parchment was sometimes used. This was made from
deerskins, thoroughly cured and also smoked, so that they should be less
liable to the attacks of insects. A very durable substance was thus
obtained, which would resist most agents of destruction, even in a
tropical climate. Twenty-seven rolls of such parchment, covered with
hieroglyphics, were among the articles burned by Bishop Landa, at Mani,
in 1562, in a general destruction of everything which related to the
ancient life of the nation. He himself says that he burned all that he
could lay his hands upon, to the great distress of the natives.[65-1]

A very few escaped the destructive bigotry of the Spanish priests. So
far as known these are.--

1. The Codex Tro, or Troano, in Madrid, published by the French
government, in 1869.

2. What is believed to be the second part of the Codex Troano, now
(1882) in process of publication in Paris.

3. The Codex Peresianus, in the National Library, Paris, a very limited
edition of which has been issued.

4. The Dresden Codex, in Kingsborough's Mexico, and photographed in
colors, to the number of 50 copies, in 1880, which is believed to
contain fragments of two different manuscripts.

To these are, perhaps, to be added one other in Europe and two in
Mexico, which are in private hands, and are alleged to be of the same
character.

All the above are distinctly in characters which were peculiar to the
Mayas, and which are clearly variants of those found on the sculptured
beams and slabs of Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Palenque and Copan.

It is possible that many other manuscripts may be discovered in time,
for Landa tells us that it was the custom to bury with the priests the
books which they had written. As their tombs were at times of solid
stones, firmly cemented together, and well calculated to resist the
moisture and other elements of destruction for centuries, it is nowise
unlikely that explorations in Yucatan will bring to light some of these
hidden documents.

The contents of these books, so far as we can judge from the hints in
the early writers, related chiefly to the ritual and calendar, to their
history or Katuns, to astrological predictions and divinations, to their
mythology, and to their system of healing disease.

Sec. 9. _Modern Maya Manuscripts._

As I have said, the Mayas were naturally a literary people. Had they
been offered the slightest chance for the cultivation of their
intellects they would have become a nation of readers and writers.
Striking testimony to this effect is offered by Doctor Don Augustin de
Echano, Prebend of the Cathedral Church of Merida, about the middle of
the last century. He observes that twelve years of experience among the
Indians had taught him that they were very desirous of knowledge, and
that as soon as they learned to read, they eagerly perused everything
they could lay their hands on; and as they had nothing in their tongue
but some old writings that treated of sorceries and quackeries, the
worthy Prebend thought it an excellent idea that they should be
supplied, in place of these, with some ---- _sermons_![67-1] But what
else could be expected of a body of men who crushed out with equal
bigotry every spark of mental independence in their own country?

The "old writings" to which the Prebend alludes were composed by natives
who had learned to write the Maya in the alphabet adopted by the early
missionaries and conquerors. An official document in Maya, still extant,
dates from 1542, and from that time on there were natives who wrote
their tongue with fluency. But their favorite compositions were works
similar to those to which their forefathers had been partial,
prophecies, chronicles and medical treatises.

Relying on their memories, and no doubt aided by some of the ancient
hieroglyphical manuscripts, carefully secreted from the vandalism of the
monks, they wrote out what they could recollect of their national
literature.

There were at one time a large number of these records. They are
referred to by Cogolludo, Sanchez Aguilar and other early historians.
Probably nearly every village had one, which in time became to be
regarded with superstitious veneration.

Wherever written, each of these books bore the same name; it was always
referred to as "The Book of Chilan Balam." To distinguish them apart,
the name of the village where one was composed was added. Thus we have
still preserved to us, in whole or in fragments, the Book of Chilan
Balam of Chumayel, of Kaua, of Nabula, etc., in all, it is said, about
sixteen.

"Chilan Balam" was the designation of a class of priests. "Chilan," says
Bishop Landa, "was the name of their priests, whose duty it was to teach
the sciences, to appoint holy days, to treat the sick, to offer
sacrifices, and especially to utter the oracles of the gods. They were
so highly honored by the people that usually they were carried on
litters on the shoulders of the devotees."[69-1] Strictly speaking, in
Maya, _chilan_ means "interpreter," "mouth-piece," from "_chij_," "the
mouth," and in this ordinary sense frequently occurs in other writings.
The word _balam_--literally, "tiger,"--was also applied to a class of
priests, and is still in use among the natives of Yucatan as the
designation of the protective spirits of fields and towns, as I have
shown at length in a study of the word as it occurs in the native myths
of Guatemala.[70-1] "_Chilan Balam_," therefore, is not a proper name,
but a title, and in ancient times designated the priest who announced
the will of the gods and explained the sacred oracles. This accounts for
the universality of the name and the sacredness of its associations.

The dates of the books which have come down to us are various. One of
them, "The Book of Chilan Balam of Mani," was undoubtedly composed not
later than 1595, as is proved by internal evidence. Various passages in
the works of Landa, Lizana, Sanchez Aguilar and Cogolludo--all early
historians of Yucatan--prove that many of these native manuscripts
existed in the sixteenth century. Several rescripts date from the
seventeenth century--most from the latter half of the eighteenth.

The names of the writers are generally not given, probably because the
books, as we have them, are all copies of older manuscripts, with merely
the occasional addition of current items of note by the copyist; as, for
instance, a malignant epidemic which prevailed in the peninsula in 1673
is mentioned as a present occurrence by the copyist of "The Book of
Chilan Balam of Nabula."

These "Books of Chilan Balam" are the principal sources from which Senor
Pio Perez derived his knowledge of the ancient Maya system of computing
time, and also drew what he published concerning the history of the
Mayas before the Conquest, and from them also are taken the various
chronicles which I present in the present volume.

That I am enabled to do so is due to the untiring researches of Dr. Carl
Hermann Berendt, who visited Yucatan four times, in order to study the
native language, to examine the antiquities of the peninsula, and to
take accurate copies, often in fac-simile, of as many ancient
manuscripts as he could discover. After his death, his collection came
into my hands.

The task of deciphering these manuscripts is by no means a light one,
and I must ask in advance for considerable indulgence for my attempt.
Words and phrases are used which are not explained in the dictionaries,
or, if explained, are used in a different sense from that now current.
The orthography is far from uniform, each syllable is often written
separately, and as the punctuation is wholly fanciful or entirely
absent, the separation of words, sentences and paragraphs is often
uncertain and the meaning obscure.

Another class of documents are the titles to the municipal lands, the
records of surveys, etc. I have copies of several of these, and among
them was found the history of the Conquest, by Nakuk Pech, which I
publish. It was added to the survey of his town, as a general statement
of his rights and defence of the standing of his family.

My translations are not in flowing and elegant language. Had they been
so, they would not have represented the originals. For the sake of
accuracy I have not hesitated to sacrifice the requirements of English
composition.

Sec. 10. _Grammars and Dictionaries of the Language._

The learned Yucatecan, Canon Crescencio Carillo y Ancona, states in his
last work that there have been written thirteen grammars and seventeen
dictionaries of the Maya.[72-1]

The first grammar printed was that of Father Luis de Villalpando. This
early missionary died in 1551 or 1552, and his work was not issued until
some years later. Father Juan Coronel also gave a short Maya grammar to
the press, together with a _Doctrina_. It is believed that copies of
both of these are preserved. Beltran, however, acknowledges that in
preparing his own grammar he has never seen either of these earlier
works.[73-1]

In 1684, the _Arte de la Lengua Maya_, composed by Father Gabriel de San
Buenaventura, a French Franciscan stationed in Yucatan, was printed in
Mexico.[73-2] Only a few copies of this work are known. It has, however,
been reprinted, though not with a desirable fidelity, by the Abbe
Brasseur (de Bourbourg), in the second volume of the reports of the
_Mission Scientifique au Mexique et a l'Amerique Centrale_, Paris, 1870.

The leading authority on Maya grammar is Father Pedro Beltran, who was a
native of Yucatan, and instructor in the Maya language in the convent of
Merida about 1740. He was thoroughly conversant with the native tongue,
and his _Arte_ was reprinted in Merida, in 1859, as the best work of the
kind which had been produced.[74-1]

The eminent antiquary, Don Juan Pio Perez contemplated writing a Maya
grammar, and collected a number of notes for that purpose,[74-2] as did
also the late Dr. Berendt, but neither brought his work to any degree of
completeness. I have copies of the notes left by both these diligent
students, as also both editions of Beltran, and an accurate MS. copy of
Buenaventura, from all of which I have derived assistance in completing
the present study.

The first Maya dictionary printed was issued in the City of Mexico in
1571. It was published as that of Father Luis de Villalpando, but as he
had then been dead nearly twenty years, it was probably merely based
upon his vocabulary. It was in large 4to, of the same size as the second
edition of Molina's _Vocabulario de la Lengua Mexicana_. At least one
copy of it is known to be in existence.

For more than three centuries no other dictionary was put to press,
although for some unexplained reason that of Villalpando was unknown in
Yucatan. At length, in 1877, the publication was completed at Merida, of
the _Diccionario de la Lengua Maya_, by Don Juan Pio Perez.[75-1] It
contains about 20,000 words, and is Maya-Spanish only. It is the result
of a conscientious and lifelong study of the language, and a work of
great merit. The deficiencies it presents are, that it does not give the
principal parts of the verbs, that it omits or does not explain
correctly many old terms in the language, and that it gives very few
examples of idioms or phrases showing the uses of words and the
construction of sentences.

I can say little in praise of the _Vocabulaire Maya-Francais-Espagnole_,
compiled by the Abbe Brasseur (de Bourbourg), and printed in the second
volume of the Report of the _Mission Scientifique au Mexique et a
l'Amerique Centrale_. It contains about ten thousand words, but many of
these are drawn from doubtful sources, and are incorrectly given; while
the derivations and analogies proposed are of a character unknown to the
science of language.

Besides the above and various vocabularies of minor interest, I have
made use of three manuscript dictionaries of the first importance, which
were obtained by the late Dr. Berendt. They belonged to three Franciscan
convents which formerly existed in Yucatan, and as they are all
anonymous, I shall follow Dr. Berendt's example, and refer to them by
the names of the convents to which they belonged. These were the convent
of San Francisco in Merida, that at the town of Ticul and that at Motul.

The most recent of these is that of the convent of Ticul. It bears the
date 1690, and is in two parts, Spanish-Maya and Maya-Spanish.

The _Diccionario del Convento de San Francisco de Merida_ bears no date,
but in the opinion of the most competent scholars who have examined it,
among them Senor Pio Perez, it is older than that of Ticul, probably by
half a century. It is also in two parts, which have evidently been
prepared, by different hands.

_The Diccionario del Convento de Motul_ is by far the most valuable of
the three, and has not been known to Yucatecan scholars. A copy of it
was picked up on a book stall in the City of Mexico by the Abbe
Brasseur, and sold by him to Mr. John Carter Brown, of Providence, R. I.
In 1864 this was very carefully copied by Dr. Berendt, who also made
extensive additions to it from other sources, indicating such by the use
of inks of different colors. This copy, in three large quarto volumes,
in all counting over 2500 pages, is that which I now have, and have
found of indispensable assistance in solving some of the puzzles
presented by the ancient texts in the present volume.

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