to adopt the notion that these divine culture heroes were “Toltecs,” and even in the modern writings of the Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg), of M. Désiré Charnay, and others, this unreal people continue to be set forth as the civilizers of Central America.

No supposition could have less support. The whole alleged story of the Toltecs is merely an euhemerized myth, and they are as pure creations of the fancy as the giants and fairies of mediæval romance. They have no business in the pages of sober history.

The same blending of their most ancient legends with those borrowed from the Aztecs, recurs in the records of the pure Mayas of Yucatan. I have shown this, and explained it at considerable length in the first volume of this series, to which I will refer the reader who would examine the question in detail.11-2

[12]There is a slight admixture of Aztec words in Cakchiquel. The names of one or two of their months, of certain objects of barter, and of a few social institutions, are evidently loan-words from that tongue. There are also some proper names, both personal and geographical, which are clearly of Nahuatl derivation. But, putting all these together, they form but a very small fraction of the language, not more than we can readily understand they would necessarily have borrowed from a nation with whom, as was the case with the Aztecs, they were in constant commercial communication for centuries.12-1 The Pipils, their immediate neighbors to the South, cultivating the hot and fertile slope which descends from the central plateau to the Pacific Ocean, were an Aztec race of pure blood, speaking a dialect of Nahuatl, very little different from that heard in the schools of classic Tezcuco.12-2 But the grammatical structure and stem-words of the Cakchiquel remained absolutely uninfluenced by this association.

Later, when the Spanish occupation had brought with it[13] thousands of Nahuatl speaking followers, who supplied the interpreters for the conquerers, Nahuatl names became much more abundant, and were adopted by the natives in addressing the Spaniards. Thus the four nations, whom I have mentioned as the original possessors of the land, are, in the documents of the time, generally spoken of by such foreign titles. The Cakchiquels were referred to as Tecpan Quauhtemallan, the Quiches as Tecpan Utlatlan, the Tzutuhils as Tecpan Atitlan, and the Akahals as Tecpan Tezolotlan. In these names, all of them pure Nahuatl, the word Tecpan means the royal residence or capital; Quauhtemallan (Guatemala), “the place of the wood-pile;” Utlatlan, “the place of the giant cane;” Atitlan, “the place by the water;” Tezolotlan, “the place of the narrow stone,” or “narrowed by stones.”13-1

These fanciful names, derived from some trivial local characteristic, were not at all translations of the native tribal names. For in their own dialects, Quiche, iche, means “many trees;” Tuztuhil, utuhil, “the flowery spot;” Akahal, “the honey-comb;” and Cakchiquel, a species of tree.

Culture of the Cakchiquels.

These four nations were on the same plane of culture, and this by no means a low one. They were agriculturists, cultivating for food beans, peppers, and especially maize. To the latter, indeed, they are charged with being fanatically[14] devoted. “If one looks closely at these Indians,” complains an old author, “he will find that everything they do and say has something to do with maize. A little more, and they would make a god of it. There is so much conjuring and fussing about their corn fields, that for them they will forget wives and children and any other pleasure, as if the only end and aim of life was to secure a crop of corn.”14-1

In their days of heathenism, all the labors of the field were directed by the observance of superstitious rites. For instance, the men, who always did a large share of the field work, refrained from approaching their wives for some days before planting the seed. Before weeding the patch, incense was burned at each of the four corners of the field, to the four gods of the winds and rains; and the first fruits were consecrated to holy uses.14-2 Their fields were large and extremely productive.14-3 In this connection it is worth noting, in passing, that precisely Guatemala is the habitat of the Euchlæna[15] luxurians, the wild grass from which, in the opinion of botanists, the Zea Mais is a variety developed by cultivation.

Cotton was largely cultivated, and the early writers speak with admiration of the skill with which the native women spun and wove it into graceful garments.15-1 As in Yucatan, bees were domesticated for their wax and honey, and a large variety of dye-stuffs, resins for incense, and wild fruits, were collected from the native forests.

Like the Mayas and Aztecs, they were a race of builders, skillful masons and stone-cutters, erecting large edifices, pyramids, temples, and defensive works, with solid walls of stone laid in a firm mortar.15-2 The sites of these cities were generally the summits of almost inaccessible crags, or on some narrow plain, protected on all sides by the steep and deep ravines—barrancas, as the Spaniards call them—which intersect the plateau in all directions, often plunging down to a depth of thousands of feet. So located and so constructed, it is no wonder that Captain Alvarado speaks of them as “thoroughly built and marvelously strong.”