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shows a very strong resemblance to those of the Maya family. Without attaching very great importance to the last argument, I am inclined to believe that the most plausible conjecture respecting the origin of the Mound-Builders, is that which makes them a colony of the ancient Mayas, who settled in the north during the continuance of the great Maya empire of Xibalba in Central America, several centuries before Christ. We have seen that the ancient Mayas, under the name of Quinames, probably occupied eastern Mexico at that epoch, and in later times we find the Huastecs in southern Tamaulipas speaking a Maya dialect. It is not at all unlikely that a colony of these people passed northward along the coast by land or water, and introduced their institutions in the Mississippi Valley, building up a power which became very flourishing as the centuries passed, but was at last forced to yield to the presence of environing barbarism. I offer this not as a theory which can be fully substantiated by facts, but simply as the most plausible conjecture on the matter which has occurred to me.

CHAPTER XI.

THE QUICHÉ-CAKCHIQUEL EMPIRE IN GUATEMALA.

NO CHRONOLOGY IN THE SOUTH-OUTLINE VIEW-AUTHORITIES-XBALANQUE AT UTATLAN-THE MIGRATION FROM TULAN-BALAMQUITZÉ AND HIS COMPANIONS-SACRIFICES TO TOHIL THE QUICHÉS ON MT HACAVITZ-THE TAMUB AND ILOCAB-FIRST VICTORIES -QOCAVIB FOUNDS THE MONARCHY AT IZMACHI-THE TOLTEC THEORY-IMAGINARY EMPIRE OF THE EAST-DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF PRIMITIVE HISTORY-THE CAKCHIQUEL MIGRATION— JUARROS AND FUENTES-LISTS OF KINGS-CAKCHIQUELS UNDER HACAVITZ-REIGNS OF BALAM-CONACHE, COTUHA, AND IZTAYUL, AT IZMACHI-WAR AGAINST THE ILOCAB-THE STOLEN TRIBUTEGUCUMATZ, QUICHÉ EMPEROR AT UTATLAN-CHANGES IN THE GOVERNMENT-REIGNS OF COTUHA II., TEPEPUL, AND IZTAYUL II. --CAKCHIQUEL HISTORY-CONQUESTS OF QUICAB I.-REVOLT of THE ACHIHAB-DISMEMBERMENT OF THE EMPIRE-CAKCHIQUEL CONQUESTS-REIGNS OF THE LAST GUATEMALAN KINGS-APPEARANCE OF THE SPANIARDS UNDER ALVARADO IN 1524.

In the south we have no connected history except for two centuries immediately preceding the conquest, and no attempt at precise chronology even for that short period. The Quiché-Cakchiquel empire in Guatemala was, at the coming of the Spaniards, the most powerful and famous in North America, except that of the Aztecs in Anáhuac, with which it never came into direct conflict, although the fame of each was well known to the other, and commercial intercourse was carried on almost constantly. The southern empire, so far as may be learned from the slight

PRELIMINARY VIEW.

541

evidence bearing on the subject, was about three centuries old in the sixteenth century, and the nearest approach to chronology in its annals is the regular succession of monarchs who occupied the throne, the achievements of each king given in what may be considered to be their chronologic order, and an apparent connection in a few cases with occurrences whose date is known from the Aztec records.

In a preceding volume of this work I have presented all that the authorities have preserved respecting the manners and customs of the Guatemalan peoples, and their condition at the coming of the Spaniards, including their system or government and the order of royal succession. In a chapter devoted to a general preliminary view of these nations,1 I have already presented a brief outline of their history as follows: Guatemala and northern Honduras were found in possession of the Mames in the north-west, the Pokomams in the south-east, the Quichés in the interior, and the Cakchiquels in the south. The two latter were the most powerful, and ruled the country from their capitals of Utatlan and Tecpan Guatemala, where they resisted the Spaniards almost to the point of annihilation, retiring for the most part after defeat to live by the chase in the distant mountain gorges. Guatemalan history from the time of the Votanic empire down to an indefinite date not many centuries before the conquest, is a blank. It re-commences with the first traditions of the nations just mentioned. These traditions, as in the case of every American people, begin with the immigration of foreign tribes into the country, as the first in the series of events leading to the establishment of the Quiché-Cakchiquel empire. Assuming the Toltec dispersion from Anáhuac in the eleventh century as a well-authenticated fact, most writers have identified the Guatemalan nations, except perhaps the Mames, by some 1 See vol. ii., p. 121, et seq.

2 See map in vol. ii.

considered the descendants of the original inhabitants, with the migrating Toltecs who fled southward to found a new empire. I have already made known my scepticism respecting national American migrations in general, and the Toltec migration southward in particular, and there is nothing in the annals of Guatemala to modify the views previously expressed. The Quiché traditions are vague and without chronologic order, much less definite than those relating to the mythical Aztec wanderings. The sum and substance of the Quiché and Toltec identity is the traditional statement that the former people entered Guatemala at an unknown period in the past, while the latter left Anáhuac in the eleventh century. That the Toltecs should have migrated en masse southward, taken possession of Guatemala, established a mighty empire, and yet have abandoned their language for dialects of the original Maya tongue, is in the highest degree improbable. It is safer to suppose that the mass of the Quichés, and other nations of Guatemala, Chiapas, and Honduras, were descended directly from the Maya builders of Palenque, and from contemporary peoples,-that is, as has been shown in the chapter on pre-Toltec history in this volume, from the Maya peoples after they had been conquered by a new power and had become to a certain extent, so far as their institutions were concerned, Nahua nations.-Yet the differences between the Quiché-Cakchiquel structures and the older architectural remains of the Maya empire, indicate a new era of Maya culture, originated not improbably by the introduction of foreign elements. Moreover the apparent identity in name and teachings between the early civilizers of the Quiché tradition and the Nahua followers of Quetzalcoatl, together with reported resemblances between actual Quiché and Aztec institutions as observed by Europeans, indicate farther that the new element was engrafted on Maya civilization by contact with the Nahuas, a contact of which the

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presence of the exiled Toltec nobility may have been a prominent feature. After the overthrow of the original empire, we may suppose the people to have been subdivided during the course of centuries by civil wars and sectarian struggles into petty states, the glory of their former greatness vanished and partially forgotten, the spirit of progress dormant, to be roused again by the presence of the Nahua chiefs. These gathered and infused new life into the scattered remnants; they introduced some new institutions, and thus aided the ancient peoples to rebuild their empire on the old foundations, retaining the dialects of the original language. The preceding paragraphs, however, gave an exaggerated idea of the Toltec element in forming Quiché institutions, as has been shown by the investigations of the present volume, since, while the Nahua element in these institutions was very strong, yet the Nahua influence was exerted chiefly in pre-Toltec times while the two peoples were yet living together in Central America, rather than by the exiled Toltec nobles and priests.

The authorities for Quiché history are not numerous. They include the work of Juarros, which is chiefly founded on the manuscripts of Fuentes; the published Spanish and French translations of the Popol Vuh, or National Book, of which much has already been said; and a number of documents similar to the latter, written in Spanish letters, but in the various Quiché-Cakchiquel dialects, by native authors who wrote after the Conquest, of course, but relied upon the aboriginal records and traditions, never published and only known to the world through the writings of Brasseur de Bourbourg, who, in Maya as in many parts of Nahua history, is the chief and almost the only authority.

In the earliest annals of Central America, while the Xibalban empire was yet in the height of its power, we find what is, perhaps, the first mention of the territory known later as Guatemala, in the men