# A Glimpse at Guatemala/Chapter 8

ON THE STEPS OF THE CABILDO, ATITLAN
CHAPTER VIII.
THE QUICHÉS AND CACHIQUELS. (BY A. P. M.)
It will be as well now to give a slight sketch of the history of the Indians whose country we were passing through. At the time of Alvarado's entry into Guatemala in February 1524, the tableland round about the modern towns of Santa Cruz del Quiché and Quezaltenango was occupied by the Quiché Indians, who had their capital at Utatlan, close to Santa Cruz. The Cachiquels held the land to the east of the Quichés, and their capital, Patinamit or Iximché, stood near the modern town of Tecpan Guatemala, and is called by Alvarado the "City of Guatemala." The Tzutuhils, a less powerful tribe, appear to have held the land on the east and south shores of the lake of Atitlan, and probably had their headquarters on the site of the present Indian village of Atitlan. All three tribes spoke languages of (what is now known as) the Maya-Quiché stock, a family of languages which extends over the whole peninsula of Yucatan, through the greater part of Guatemala, ​and parts of Tabasco and Chiapas. The confederation of these three tribes or nations—Quichés, Cachiquels, and Tzutuhils—is sometimes spoken of as the Quiché-Cachiquel Empire; but whether it was ever a united empire, as we understand the term, is somewhat doubtful, while it is quite certain that at the time of the Spanish invasion all three tribes were at enmity with one another.
It is sometimes assumed that these people had attained a high degree of civilization, and were especially advanced in the art of building; but this assumption I believe to be mainly due to the grossly exaggerated descriptions of their towns given by the early Spanish historians, and unfortunately there are no other written records to which we can refer on these points.
Of the three aboriginal MSS. still extant, not one (so far as I know) has been attributed to the Quichés or Cachiquels, and no carved inscriptions have been found amongst the ruins of their towns; but a few glyphs painted on pottery which is ascribed to them would lead one to suppose that they made use of the Maya script. Of late years two documents have been discovered which have gained for these people some literary reputation—the 'Popul-Vuh,' or sacred book of the Quichés, and the Chronicles of the Cachiquels: the fact that they are written in Roman characters shows that the transcription at least is of recent date; but whilst they are of undoubted interest with regard to mythology and traditional history, they afford no guide to the then prevailing state of civilization.
After making due allowance for the inaccuracies of the available descriptions, it may undoubtedly be conceded that at the time of the Spanish conquest the Quichés and Cachiquels lived in organized communities and that they were fairly proficient in the arts, without attempting to exhalt their culture to the same level with that of the builders of Palenque or Copan, or the great towns in Yucatan. For their history since the Spanish invasion we must turn to the earliest accounts of them left to us by their conquerors.
Alvarado left Mexico in December 1523, with an army of 120 horsemen, and 40 led horses, 300 infantry, of whom 130 were crossbowmen and arquebusiers, four pieces of artillery, and some thousands of picked Indian warriors. He passed over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and marched on through the province of Soconusco, fighting a battle near Tonala, and on the 11th April he addressed a despatch from Utatlan to his great Captain Hernando Cortes, who was then in Mexico, as follows:—
"Señor, from Soconusco I wrote to your Highness all that had happened to me as far as that place, and said something of what I looked to find ahead of me. And after I had sent my messengers to this country to inform the ​people that I was coming to conquer and pacify certain provinces which were unwilling to place themselves under the dominion of his Majesty, I begged help and assistance from them as vassals (for as such they had offered themselves to your Highness begging favour and aid for their country) and said that if they gave their assistance in the way they ought to do as good and loyal vassals of his Majesty, they should be well treated by me and the Spaniards in my company; and if not, I would make war on them as against traitors rebelling and fighting against the dominion of our Lord the Emperor, and as such they would be treated, and in addition to this, that we would make slaves of all taken alive in the war. And having done all this and despatched the messengers, who were men of their own people, I reviewed all my people, both foot and horse, and the next day, on the morning of Saturday, I set out in search of their land, and after marching for three days through uninhabited forest, we pitched our camp, and the scouts whom I had sent out captured three spies from a town in this land named Zapotitlán. I asked them what they came for, and they told me that they were collecting honey, but it was notorious that they were spies. . . ."
Alvarado had so far been marching through the tropical forest on the Pacific slope; now that he wished to turn inland and reach the plateau he found the path barred by a great host of Indians. A battle was fought at Zapotitlán, and the victorious Spaniards rested for two days in that town. Then Alvarado led his army up the Cuesta de Santa Maria to the high land, and at the top of the pass, near the town of Xelahú or Quezaltenango, another great battle was fought with the Quiché warriors. Again the Indians were defeated, and Alvarado entered the deserted town. In a short time his army was again on the march, and for a third and last time the despairing Indians offered battle; but, as usual, the Spaniards carried all before them, and the carnage amongst the Indians is described as fearful. The victorious army continued its march towards Utatlan, the capital of the Quichés; but Alvarado shall tell the tale in his own words:—
"And when the chiefs of this town found that their people were defeated
​entering it, one over thirty steep stone steps, and the other by a causeway made by hand, some part of which was already cut away, so that that night they might finish cutting it, and no horse could then have escaped into the country. As the city is very closely built and the streets very narrow we could not have escaped suffocation or falling down headlong in fleeing from the fire. And as we rode up, and I could see how large the fort was, and that within it one could not avail oneself of the horsemen because the streets were so narrow and walled in, I determined at once to clear out of it on to the plain, although the chiefs of the town asked me not to do so, and invited me to seat myself and eat before I departed, so as to gain time to carry out their plans. But I knew the danger in which we were, and sent some men ahead of me to take possession of the causeway and bridge, so that I could get out on to the plain, and the causeway was already in such a condition that one could hardly get over it on horseback, and outside the city were many warriors, and as they saw me pass out on to the plain, they retreated somewhat, so that I did not receive much harm from them. Then I concealed my real intentions so that I might capture the chiefs who were taking to flight, and by the cunning with which I approached them, and through the present which I gave them the better to carry out my plan, I took them captive and held them prisoners in my camp. But, nevertheless, their people did not cease fighting against me in the neighbourhood and killed and wounded many Indians who had gone out to cut grass. And one Spaniard who was cutting grass a gunshot from the camp was slain by a stone rolled down the hill. This land is very full of gulleys, there are gulleys two hundred fathoms in depth, and on account of them one cannot carry on war and punish these people as they deserve. And seeing that by fire and sword I might bring these people to the service of his Majesty, I determined to burn the chiefs, and they themselves said at the time that they wished to be burnt, as appears in their confessions (where they say that they were those who had declared and made the war against me and wished to burn me in the city; and it was with this intention that they brought me to the city, and that they had ordered their vassals not to come and give obedience to our Lord the Emperor, nor help us nor do anything else that was right). And as I knew them to have such a bad disposition towards the service of his Majesty, and to insure the good and peace of this land, I burnt them and sent to burn the town and to destroy it, for it is a very strong and dangerous place, that more resembles a robbers' stronghold than a city. And to enable me to hunt out these people I sent to the city of Guatemala, which is ten leagues distant from this place, and ordered them on the part of his Majesty to send me some warriors (and this I did so that I could find out what their disposition was, as well as to strike terror into the land), and they were well disposed ​towards me and agreed to do so, and sent me four thousand men, and with these men and those that were already with me, I made an expedition and overran the whole of the country. And seeing the damages which they had suffered they sent me messengers to tell me that now they wished to be good, and that if they had erred it had been at the order of their chiefs, and that whilst their chiefs had been living they dared not do otherwise, but as now their chiefs were dead they prayed me to pardon them, and I spared their lives, and ordered them to return to their houses and live as they had done formerly; and this they did, and at the present time I have them in the same condition as they were formerly, but at the service of his Majesty. And for greater security I chose out two sons of the chiefs, whom I placed in their fathers' position, and I believe that they will carry out faithfully all that tends to the service of his Majesty and the good of his lands. And as far as touches the war I have nothing more at present to relate, but that all the prisoners of war were branded and made slaves, of whom I gave his Majesty's fifth part to the treasurer Baltasar de Mendoza, which he sold by public auction, so that the payment to his Majesty should be secure.
"I would wish your Excellency to know that the country is healthy and the climate temperate, that there are many strong towns, and that this city is well built and wonderfully strong, and has much cornland and many people subject to it, the which, with all the subject towns and neighbourhoods, I have placed under the yoke and in the service of the royal crown of his Majesty.
"In this country there is a mountain range of alum, another of copperas, and another of sulphur, the best which I have yet seen, and with a piece of it which they brought me without refining or any such process, I made half an arroba of very good gun-powder but as I wish to send off Argueta without delay, I do not send to your Excellency 50 charges of it, but whenever there should be a messenger there will be time for it. On Monday, April 11th, I started for Guatemala, where I mean to halt for a short time, because the town which is situated on the water called Atitlan is at war with me, and has killed four of my messengers, and I think with the aid of our Lord soon to subdue it to the service of his Majesty."
Alvarado then marched to Iximché, or Guatemala, as he calls it, and was received in a most friendly manner by the Cachiquels: "we could not have been better treated in our fathers' houses," he writes to Cortéz. After a few days' rest he joined his hosts in an expedition against the Tzutuhils; but he shall continue to tell the story in his own words:—
"I left this town (Iximché) to go against them with seventy horsemen and a hundred and fifty foot, in company with the chieftains and people of this land, and we marched so far that we arrived in the enemy's land on the ​same day. And no one came out to receive me in peace or otherwise, and when I was aware of this I started with thirty horsemen along the edge of the lagoon, and when we came to an inhabited rock, which stood out in the water, we saw a company of men very near us, and I attacked them with the horsemen that were with me, and as we followed in pursuit they got on to a narrow causeway which led to the rock where we could not follow on horseback, so I and my companions dismounted, and almost carried along with the Indians we reached the rock along with them on foot, so that they had no time to break down the bridges, for had they done so we could not have reached them.
"In the meantime many of my men, who had been marching behind me, came up to us, and we gained possession of the rock, which was thickly inhabited, but all the people threw themselves into the water to swim to another island. And many of them escaped, because my allies, who were bringing three hundred canoes across the lake, did not arrive soon enough. And that afternoon I left the rock with all my men and we camped in a maize field, where we passed the night.
"And the next day we commended ourselves to God, and set out for the town on ahead of us, which was very strong on account of the many rocks and pallisades about it, and we found it deserted; and as they had lost the fortress which they had in the lake they did not dare to face us on land, although a few of them waited for us at the end of the town, but owing to the roughness of the ground, which I have already mentioned, no more people were killed. And then we encamped about midday, and commenced to overrun the country, and we captured some of the native Indians, and I sent off three of them as messengers to their chiefs, advising them that they should come and render obedience to his Majesty and submit themselves to the Imperial crown, and to me in his Majesty's name, or otherwise I should still carry on the war, and follow them and seek them in the mountains. These chiefs replied to me that hitherto their land had never been broken into nor entered by force of arms, and that since I had forced an entrance they would be glad to serve his Majesty in any way I might direct them, and soon afterwards they came to place themselves at my orders."
Alvarado had now subdued two of the strong tribes of the country, and was in alliance with the third, so was free to continue his march; and after a most arduous journey and frequent collisions with other and less important Indian tribes he succeeded in reaching Cuzcatlán, a town in what is now the Republic of Salvador. By the month of July he was back again in Iximché, and the ceremony which then took place of founding there the city of Santiago and the subsequent changes of locality which the city underwent have been described in an earlier chapter.
Interesting as Alvarado's letters are in showing us his method of procedure in dealing with the Indians and the nature of the resistance he met with, they give us very little information about the natives themselves, the way in which they lived, or the culture to which they had attained. For these particulars it has been usual to rely upon later writings, and especially on the 'History of Guatemala,' written between 1808 and 1818 by Domingo Juarros, who, in his turn, relies for much of his information on the 'Recordacion Florida,' a manuscript account of the kingdom of Guatemala written, in 1690, by Francisco Antonio Fuentes y Guzman, and still preserved in the city of Guatemala.
The following description of Utatlan is taken from Baily's translation of Juarros:—
"The history of this place is singular, as it was once the large and opulent city of Utatlan, the court of the native kings of Quiché, and indubitably the most sumptuous that was discovered by the Spaniards in this country. That indefatigable writer Francisco de Fuentes, the historian, who went to Quiché for the purpose of collecting information, partly from the antiquities of the place, and partly from manuscripts, has given a tolerably good description of this capital. It stood nearly in the situation that Santa Cruz now occupies, and it is presumable that the latter was one of its suburbs; it was surrounded by a deep ravine that formed a natural fosse, leaving only two very narrow roads as entrances to the city, both of which were so well defended by the castle of Resguardo, as to render it impregnable. The centre of the city was occupied by the royal palace, which was surrounded by the houses of the nobility; the extremities were inhabited by the plebeians. The streets were very narrow, but the place was so populous as to enable the king to draw from it alone no less than 72,000 combatants, to oppose the progress of the Spaniards. It contained many very sumptuous edifices, the most superb of them was a seminary, where between 5000 and 6000 children were educated; they were all maintained and provided for at the charge of the royal treasury; their instruction was superintended by 70 masters and professors. The castle of the Atalaya was a remarkable structure, which being raised four stories high, was capable of furnishing quarters for a very strong garrison. The castle of Resguardo was not inferior to the other; it extended 188 paces in front, 230 in depth, and was 5 stories high. The grand alcazar, or palace of the kings of Quiché, surpassed every other edifice, and, in the opinion of Torquemada, it could compete in opulence with that of Moctesuma in Mexico, or that of the Incas in Cuzco. The front of this building extended from east to west 376 geometrical paces, and in depth 728; it was constructed of hewn stone of different colours; its form was elegant, and altogether most magnificent: there were 6 principal divisions, ​the first contained lodgings for a numerous troop of lancers, archers, and other well-disciplined troops, constituting the royal body-guard; the second was destined to the accommodation of the princes and relations of the king, who dwelt in it and were served with regal splendour, as long as they remained unmarried; the third was appropriated to the use of the king, and contained distinct suites of apartments, for the mornings, evenings, and nights. In one of the saloons stood the throne, under four canopies of plumage, the ascent to it was by several steps; in this part of the palace were, the treasury, the tribunals of the judges, the armory, the gardens, aviaries, and menageries, with all the requisite offices appending to each department. The 4th and 5th divisions were occupied by the queens and royal concubines; they were necessarily of great extent, from the immense number of apartments requisite for the accommodation of so many females, who were all maintained in a style of sumptuous magnificence; gardens for their recreation, baths, and proper places for breeding geese, that were kept for the sole purpose of furnishing feathers, with which hangings, coverings, and other similar ornamental articles, were made. Contiguous to this division was the sixth and last; this was the residence of the king's daughters and other females of the blood royal, where they were educated, and attended in a manner suitable to their rank. The nation of the Quichés, or Tultecas, extended its empire over the greatest portion of the present kingdom of Guatemala; and, on the authority of the manuscripts mentioned above (which were composed by some of the Caciques, who first acquired the art of writing), it is related that from Tanuh, who commanded them, and conducted them from the old to the new continent, down to Tecum Umam, who reigned at the period when the Spaniards arrived, there was a line of 20 monarchs."
To show how far these statements can be relied on, it will now be worth while to pass in review the remains of Utatlan as it can be seen at the present day. I visited both Utatlan and Iximché in January 1887, and made surveys of the sites. Utatlan lies about two miles to the W.S.W. of the modern town of Santa Cruz del Quiché. On the left of the track from the town, just before reaching the great barranca, there is a natural mound, the sides of which have been terraced, and on the top is a more or less level space measuring 200 by 150 feet. Within this space are several mounds surrounding a level plaza. A reference to the plan will show that two of the mounds are nearly square at the base, and these probably supported small "cues" or temples; the other two mounds are longer, and may have supported long houses. If these houses were built of stone with stone roofs they probably contained two parallel corridors or rooms not more than 9 feet wide and 200 feet long, divided off by transverse partitions into smaller chambers. If the lower part only were built of stone and the upper part of the walls and the roof were of ​wood and thatch, then the breadth of the houses may have been 20 to 25 feet, as no longitudinal partition-wall would have been needed. At the present time no traces of house or temple walls are to be seen, and the stone facings have even been stripped off the foundation mounds, for the whole group of ruined buildings has long been treated as a quarry by the people of Santa Cruz. There can be no doubt that this group of mounds represents the guard-house or Castle of Resguardo; but it is quite clear from the plan that the buildings were of the same nature as those found throughout the country, and they stand grouped together in the usual manner. The position they occupy is a naturally strong one, and would offer great facilities for defence, but there is nothing especially characteristic of a fortress about the buildings themselves.
After leaving this hill a walk of about two hundred yards brings one to the edge of the barranca and to the narrow natural causeway by which alone the city or stronghold of Utatlan could be approached. On crossing this narrow bridge one finds oneself on a fairly level space of ground about eighteen acres in extent, with almost precipitous sides, over which one can look down to the bottom of the barranca four hundred feet below.
Nearly the whole area affords some trace of ruined buildings, but almost all the stonework has been stripped from the foundations, and the buildings which stood on them have altogether disappeared. Stephens, who visited the ruins in 1840, gives the following account of the principal temple:—"The most important part remaining of these ruins is that which appears in the engraving, and which is called 'El Sacrificatorio,' or the place of sacrifice. It is a quadrangular stone structure, sixty-six feet on each side at ​the base, and rising in a pyramidal form to a height, in its present condition, of thirty-three feet. On three sides there is a range of steps in the middle, each step seventeen inches high, and but eight inches on the upper surface, which makes the range so steep that in descending some caution is necessary. At the corners are four buttresses of cut stone, diminishing in size from the line of the square, and apparently intended to support the structure. On the side facing the west there are no steps, but the surface is smooth and covered with stucco, grey from long exposure. By breaking a little at the corners, we saw that there were different layers of stucco, doubtless put on at different times, and all had been ornamented with painted figures. In one place we made out the body of a leopard, well drawn and coloured.
"The top of the Sacrificatorio is broken and ruined, but there is no doubt that it once supported an altar.... It was barely large enough for the altar and officiating priests and the Idol to whom the sacrifice was offered."
I have reproduced Catherwood's sketch and plan which accompanies this description; the scale given on the plan does not agree with the description, and unfortunately I did not take any detailed measurements of the mound in its present ruined condition; but in any case it is clear that the building was a small one. The sides of the long mounds, which are just indicated in my plan, are perpendicular, and these foundations may have supported stone-roofed buildings, in which case we know that the chambers could not have been more than nine feet wide, and even on the larger mounds there would not have been room for more than two of such chambers side by side. The small fragment of a stone-vaulted roof in the remains of a half-buried chamber shows that the Quichés understood the art of building stone roofs. But, to judge from Alvarado's statement that it was the intention of the Indians to set fire to the town and burn or smother him and his followers, there can be little doubt that some of the houses must have been built of inflammable material, probably of wood and thatch. But amongst these small and distinct foundation mounds where is the Palace to be found?
The absurdity of Fuentes's oft-copied description at once becomes evident. According to the measurements he gives, the Palace alone would occupy nearly three times the whole space available for building, and with the seminary, the gardens, and the aquatic fowl must be relegated to a dreamland suffused with the afterglow of Oriental splendour from which the Spanish chronicler was so ready to seek inspiration.
It is hardly worth while to compare the account of Iximché given by Fuentes and Juarros with the facts revealed by an examination of the ruins it would be to a great extent a repetition of what has already been said with regard to Utatlan. The sites were similar; both were peninsulas almost ​surrounded by deep barrancas, and approachable only by a single neck of land, and each was guarded on the outer edge of the barranca by a girdle of "atalayas" or watch-towers, which were most probably small truncated pyramids supporting a cue or shrine which served for the religious use of the outlying population.
All the tribes or nations whom the Spaniards encountered in the subjugation of Guatemala and its neighbourhood appear to have had as their headquarters such strongholds as Utatlan and Iximché, or towns built on rocky islands in the lakes. Such was the stronghold in the lake of the Lacandones and the island town of Puchutla, described in the pages of Remesal, which was conquered in the year 1559. Such, too, was the island of Tayasal in the Lake of Peten, the headquarters of the Itzas, captured in 1697, of which some account will be given in a later chapter and with these may be classed the ruins on the hill-top at Uspantan and the curious groups of temples and houses which crown the ridges of the hills round the valley of Rabinal. None of them appear to have possessed walls and bastions such as we are accustomed to associate with fortresses; but all were placed in naturally strong positions, and were easily defensible, and their existence tends to the conclusion that the condition of society was one of continual intertribal warfare.
None of the sites of these strongholds have yielded any examples of the carved hieroglyphic inscriptions, highly ornamented stone buildings, or elaborately-sculptured monolithic monuments which are to be found at Copan, Quirigua, or Palenque; and it cannot be too strongly insisted on that between the civilization revealed to us by those great ruins and the culture of the Indian tribes conquered by the Spaniards there is a great gap which at present we have no means of bridging.