[1001] Vols. v. vi. vii. on “Ancient Mexican Civilization,” “Pyramid of Teotihuacan,” “Sacrificial Calendar Stone,” “Central America at time of Conquest,” “Ruins at Palenque and Copan,” “Ruins of Uxmal,” etc.

[1002] Duplicates were placed in the Nat. Museum at Washington by the liberality of Pierre Lorillard.

[1003] The English translation is condensed in parts: The ancient cities of the New World: being travels and explorations in Mexico and Central America from 1857-1882. Translated from the French by J. Gonino and Helen S. Conant. (London, 1887.) Some of his notable results were the discovery of stucco ornaments in the province of Iturbide, among ruins which he unfortunately named Lorillard City (Eng. tr. ch. 22). The palace at Tula is also figured in Brocklehurst’s Mexico to-day, ch. 25. The discovery of what Charnay calls glass and porcelain is looked upon as doubtful by most archæologists, who believe the specimens to be rather traces of Spanish contact.

[1004] Bancroft, iv. 453, and references.

[1005] Bandelier (p. 235) is confident that it was built by an earlier people than the Nahuas.

[1006] Cf. Bandelier, p. 247. Short, p. 236.

[1007] Bancroft (v. 200) gives references on these points, and particular note may be taken of Veytia, i. 18, 155, 199; and Brasseur, Hist. Nations Civ. iv. 182. Cf. also Nadaillac, p. 351. Bandelier (Archæolog. Tour, 248, 249) favors the gradual growth theory, and collates early sources (p. 250). Bancroft (iv. 474) holds that we may feel very sure its erection dates back of the tenth, and perhaps of the seventh, century.

[1008] Bandelier’s idea (p. 254) is that as the Indians never repair a ruin, they abandoned this remaining mound after its disaster, and transplanted the worship of Quetzalcoatl to the new mound, since destroyed, while the old shrine was in time given to the new cult of the Rain-god.

[1009] As Bancroft thinks; but Bandelier says that it was not of this mound, but of the temple which stood where the modern convent stands, that this count was made. Arch. Tour, 242.

[1010] Storia Ant. del Messico, ii. 33.

[1011] Vues, i. 96 pl. iii., or pl. vii., viii. in folio ed.; Essai polit., 239. The later observers are: Dupaix (Antiq. Mex., and in Kingsborough, v. 218; with iv. pl. viii.). Bancroft remarks on the totally different aspects of Castañeda’s two drawings. Nebel, in his Viaje pintoresco y Arqueolójico sobre la república Mejicana, 1829-34 (Paris, 1839, folio), gave a description and a large colored drawing. Of the other visitors whose accounts add something to our knowledge, Bancroft (iv. 471) notes the following: J. R. Poinsett, Notes on Mexico (London, 1825). W. H. Bullock, Six Months in Mexico (Lond., 1825). H. G. Ward, Mexico in 1827 (Lond., 1828). Mark Beaufoy, Mex. Illustrations (Lond., 1828), with cuts. Charles Jos. Latrobe, Rambles in Mexico (Lond., 1836). Brantz Mayer, Mexico as it was (N. Y., 1854); Mexico, Aztec, etc. (Hartford, 1853); and in Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, vi. 582. Waddy Thompson, Recoll. of Mexico (N. Y., 1847). E. B. Tylor, Anahuac (Lond., 1861), p. 274. A. S. Evans, Our Sister Republic (Hartford, 1870). Summaries later than Bancroft’s will be found in Short, p. 369, and Nadaillac, p. 350. Bancroft adds (iv. 471-2) a long list of second-hand describers.

[1012] It is illustrated with a map of the district of Cholula (p. 158), a detailed plan of the pyramid or mound (Humboldt is responsible for the former term) as it stands amid roads and fields (p. 230), and a fac-simile of an old map of the pueblo of Cholula (1581).

Bandelier speaks of the conservative tendencies of the native population of this region, giving a report that old native idols are still preserved and worshipped in caves, to which he could not induce the Indians to conduct him (p. 156); and that when he went to see the Mapa de Cuauhtlantzinco, or some native pictures of the 16th century, representing the Conquest, and of the highest importance for its history, he was jealously allowed but one glance at them, and could not get another (Archæol. Tour, p. 123). He adds: “The difficulty attending the consultation of any documents in the hands of Indians is universal, and results from their superstitious regard for writings on paper. The bulk of the people watch with the utmost jealousy over their old papers.... They have a fear lest the power vested in an original may be transferred to a copy” (pp. 155-6).

[1013] Pinart, no. 590.

[1014] He repeats Alzate’s plate of the restoration of the ruins.

[1015] Bancroft refers (iv. 483) to various compiled accounts, to which may be added his own and Short’s (p. 371). Cf. F. Boncourt in the Revue d’Ethnographie (1887).

[1016] Prescott, Kirk ed., i. 12. See the map of the plateau of Anahuac in Ruge, Gesch. des Zeitalters der Entdeck., i. 363.

[1017] Cf. Gros in the Archives de la Com. Scient. du Méxique, vol. i.; H. de Saussure on the Découverte des ruines d’une ancienne ville Méxicaine située sur le plateau de l’Anahuac (Paris, 1858,—Bull. Soc Géog. de Paris).

[1018] The same is true of the earliest Spanish buildings. Icazbalceta (México en 1554, p. 74) says that the soil is constantly accumulating, and the whole city gradually sinks.

[1019] Bancroft (iv. 505, 516, with references) says that such objects, when brought to light by excavations, have not always been removed from their hiding-places; and he argues that beneath the city there may yet be “thousands of interesting monuments.” Cf. B. Mayer’s Mexico as it was, vol. ii.

Bandelier (Archæol. Tour, Part ii. p. 49) gives us valuable “Archæological Notes about the City of Mexico,” in which he says that Alfredo Chavero owns a very large oil painting, said to have been executed in 1523, giving a view of the aboriginal city and the principal events of the Conquest. It shows that the ancient city was about one quarter the size of the modern town.

We find descriptions of the city before the conquerors transformed it, in Brasseur’s Hist. Nations Civ. iii. 187; iv. line 13; and in Bancroft (ii. ch. 18) there is a collation of authorities on Nahua buildings, with specific references on the city of Mexico (ii. p. 567). Bandelier describes with citations its military aspects at the time of the Conquest (Peabody Mus. Reports, x. 151).

The movable relics found in Mexico are the following:—

1. The calendar stone. See annexed cut.

2. Teoyamique. See cut in the appendix of this volume.

3. Sacrificial stone. See annexed cut.

4. Indio triste. See annexed cut.

5. Head of a serpent, discovered in 1881. Cf. Bandelier’s Archæol. Tour, p. 69.

6. Human head. Cf. Bancroft, iv. 518. All of the above, except the calendar stone, are in the Museo Nacional.

7. Gladiatorial stone, discovered in 1792, but left buried. Cf. B. Mayer’s Mexico, 123; Bancroft, iv. 516; Kingsborough, vii. 94; Sahagún, lib. ii.

8. A few other less important objects. Cf. Bandelier, Archæol. Tour, 52.

Antonio de Leon y Gama, who unfortunately had no knowledge of the writings of Sahagún, has discussed most of these relics in his Descripcion histórico y Cronológico de las dos Piedras &. (2d ed. Bustamante, 1832.)

[1020] Bancroft, iv. 520, with authorities, p. 523. Cf. American Antiquarian, May, 1888.

[1021] Bancroft’s numerous references make a foot-note (iv. 530). He adds a plan from Almaraz, and says that the description of Linares (Soc. Mex. Geog. Boletin, 30, i. 103) is mainly drawn from Almaraz. It is believed, but not absolutely proven, that the mounds were natural ones, artificially shaped (Bandelier, 44). The extent of the ruins is very great, and it is a current belief that the city in its prime must have been very large. The whole region is exceptionally rich in fragmentary and small relics, like pottery, obsidian implements, and terra-cotta heads. Cf. for these last, Lond. Geog. Soc. Journal, vii. 10; Thompson’s Mexico, 140; Nebel, Viaje; Mayer’s Mexico as it was, 227 (as cited in Bancroft, iv. 542); and later publications like T. U. Brocklehurst’s Mexico to-day (Lond., 1883), and Zelia Nuttall’s “Terra Cotta Heads from Teotihuacan,” in the Amer. Journal of Archæology (June and Sept. 1886), ii. 157, 318.

Bancroft judges that the ruins date back to the sixth century, and says that these mounds served for models of the Aztec teocallis. On the commission already referred to was Antonio García y Cubas, who conducted some personal explorations, and in describing these in a separate publication, Ensayo de un Estudio Comparativo entre las Pirámides Egípcias y Mexicanas (Mexico, 1871), he points out certain analogies of the American and Egyptian structures, which will be found in epitome in Bancroft (iv. 543). In discussing the monoliths of the ruins, Amos W. Butler (Amer. Antiquarian, May, 1885), in a paper on “The Sacrificial Stone of San Juan Teotihuacan,” advanced some views that are controverted by W. H. Holmes in the Amer. Journal of Archæology (i. 361), from whose foot-notes a good bibliography of the subject can be derived. Bandelier (Archæol. Tour, 42) thinks that because no specific mention is made of them in Mexican tradition, it is safe to infer that these monuments antedate the Mexicans, and were in ruins at the time of the Conquest.

[1022] The early writers make little mention of the place except as one of the halting-places of the Aztec migration. Torquemada has something to say (quoted in Soc. Mex. Geog. Bol., 2º, iii. 278, with the earliest of the modern accounts by Manuel Gutierrez, in 1805). Capt. G. F. Lyon (Journal of a residence and tour in Mexico, London, 1828) visited the ruins in 1828. Pedro Rivera in 1830 described them in Márcos de Esparza’s Informe presentado al Gobierno (Zacatecas, 1830,—also in Museo Méxicano, i. 185, 1843). The plan in Nebel’s Viaje (copied in Bancroft, iv. 582) was made for Governor García, by Berghes, a German engineer, in 1831, who at the time was accompanied by J. Burkart (Aufenthalt und Reisen in Mexico, Stuttgart, 1836), who gives a plan of fewer details. Bancroft (iv. 579) thinks Nebel’s views of the ruins the only ones ever published, and he enumerates various second-hand writers (iv. 579).

Cf. Fegeux, “Les ruines de la Quemada,” in the Revue d’Ethnologie, i. 119. The noticeable features of these ruins are their massiveness and height of walls, their absence of decoration and carved idols, and the lack of pottery and the smaller relics. Their history, notwithstanding much search, is a blank.

[1023] Cf. Bandelier, p. 320.

[1024] Bandelier, p. 276.

[1025] Ramirez, ed. 1867.

[1026] His brief account is copied by Mendieta and Torquemada, and is cited in Bandelier, p. 324.

[1027] Geog. Descripcion, ii. cited in Bandelier, 324. Cf. Soc. Mex. Geog. Boletin, vii. 170.

[1028] Bandelier says (p. 279) that he saw them in the library of the Institute of Oaxaca, and that, though admirable, they have a certain tendency to over-restoration,—the besetting sin of all explorers who make drawings.

[1029] Cf. Field, no. 1612.

[1030] Ruines, etc., 261, and Viollet le Duc, p. 74; Anciens Villes, ch. 24.

[1031] There is a Rapport sur les ruines, by Doutrelaine, in the Archives de la Commission Scientifique du Méxique (vol. iii.); Nadaillac (p. 364) and Short (p. 361) have epitomized results, and Louis H. Aymé gives some Notes on Mitla in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April, 1882, p. 82; Bancroft (iv. 391) enumerates various second-hand descriptions.

[1032] I do not understand Bandelier’s statement (p. 277) that it is taken from Bancroft’s plan, which it only resembles in a general way.

[1033] Bancroft classifies their architectural peculiarities (iv. pp. 267-279).

[1034] See Vol. II. ch. 3. Bancroft (ii. p. 784) collates the early accounts of the habitations of the people, and (iv. 254, 260, 261) the descriptions of the ruins and statelier edifices, as seen by these explorers.

[1035] For. Q. Rev., xviii. 251.

[1036] Cf. Poole’s Index, p. 1439.

[1037] Bancroft, iv. 145; Field, no. 1138; Leclerc, no. 1217; Pilling, p. 2767; Dem. Review, xi. 529. Cf. Poole’s Index, P. 1439.

[1038] Registro Yucateco, ii. 437; Diccionario Universal (México, 1853), x. 290.

[1039] Bandelier, Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 92, calls the paper “not very valuable.”

[1040] This gentleman, since the death of his father, of the same name, succeeded, after an interval, the elder antiquary in the president’s chair of the American Antiquarian Society.

[1041] Cf. Short, p. 396. Le Plongeon retorts (Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 282) by telling his critic that he had never been in Yucatan. Considering the effect of contact in many of those who have written of the ruins, it may be a question if the implication is valuable as a piece of criticism. Mr. Salisbury and Dr. Le Plongeon reported from time to time in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc. the results of the latter’s investigations, and the researches to which they gave rise. Those in April, 1876, and April, 1877, of these Proceedings, were privately printed by Mr. Salisbury, as The Mayas, etc. In April, 1878, Mr. Salisbury reported upon the “Terra-cotta figures from Isla Mujeres.” In Oct., 1878, there were communications from Dr. Le Plongeon, and from Alice D. Le Plongeon, his wife. In April, 1879, Dr. Le Plongeon communicated a letter on the affinities of Central America and the East. Since this the Le Plongeons have found other channels of communication. Dr. Le Plongeon expanded his somewhat extravagant notions of Oriental affinities in his Sacred mysteries among the Mayas and the Quiches, 11,500 years ago; their relation to the sacred mysteries of Egypt, Greece, Chaldea, and India. Freemasonry in times anterior to the temple of Solomon (New York, 1886).

His preface is largely made up with a rehearsal of his rebuffs and in complaints of the want of public appreciation of his labors. He is, however, as confident as ever, and deciphers the bas-reliefs and mural inscriptions of Chichen-Itza by “the ancient hieratic Maya alphabet” which he claims to have discovered, and shows this alphabet in parallel columns with that of Egypt as displayed by Champollion and Bunsen. Mrs. Le Plongeon published her Vestiges of the Mayas in New York, in 1881, and gathered some of her periodical writings in her Here and There in Yucatan (N. Y., 1886). Cf. her letter on the ancient records of Yucatan in The Nation, xxix. 224.

[1042] Baldwin (p. 125), in a condensed way, and likewise Short (ch. 8) and Bancroft (iv. ch. 5), more at length, have mainly depended on Stephens. Cf. references in Bancroft, iv. 147, and Bandelier’s list in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 82, 95. E. H. Thompson has contributed papers in Ibid. Oct., 1886, p. 248, and April, 1887, p. 379, and on the ruins of Kich-Moo and Chun-Kal-Cin in April, 1888, p. 162. Brasseur, beside his Hist. Nat. Civ., ii. 20, has something in his introduction to his Relation de Landa. The description of the ruins at Zayi, which Stephens gives, shows that some of the rooms were filled solid with masonry, and he leaves it as an unaccountable fact; but Morgan (Houses and House Life, p. 267) thinks it shows that the builders constructed a core of masonry, over which they reared the walls and ceilings, which last, after hardening, were able to support themselves, when the cores were removed; and that in the ruins at Zayi we see the cores unremoved.

[1043] Cf. the pros and cons in Waldeck and Charnay. Waldeck first named the ornaments as “Elephants’ trunks” (Voy. Pitt. p. 74). There are cuts in Stephens, reproduced in Bancroft. There is also a cut in Norman. Cf. E. H. Thompson in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April, 1887, p. 382.

[1044] Stephens, Yucatan, ii. 265, gives an ancient Indian map (1557), and extracts from the archives of Mani, which lead him to infer that at that time it was an inhabited Indian town.

[1045] Bancroft (iv. 151) gives various references to second-hand descriptions, noted before 1875, to which may be added those in Short, p. 347; Nadaillac, 334; Amer. Antiquarian, vii. 257, and again, July, 1888.

Probably the most accurate of the plans of the ruins is that of Stephens (Yucatan, i. 165), which is followed by Bancroft (iv. 153). Brasseur’s report has a plan, and others, all differing, are given by Waldeck (pl. viii.), Norman (p. 155), and Charnay (Ruines, p. 62). Views and cuts of details are found in Waldeck, Stephens, Charnay,—whence later summarizers like Bancroft, Baldwin, and Short have drawn their copies; while special cuts are copied in Armin (Das Heutige Mexico); Larenaudière (Mexique et Guatemala, Paris, 1847); Le Plongeon (Sacred Mysteries); Ruge (Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p. 357); Morgan (Houses, etc., ch. xi.), and in various others. One can best trace the varieties and contrasts of the different accounts of the various edifices in Bancroft’s collations of their statements. His constant citation, even to scorn them, of the impertinencies of George Jones’s Hist. of Anc. America (London, 1842),—the later notorious Count Johannes,—was hardly worth while.

[1046] Landa described the ruins. Relation, p. 340.

[1047] All other accounts are based on these. Bancroft, who gives the best summary (iv. 221), enumerates many of the second-hand writers, to whom Short (p. 396) must be added. Stephens gives a plan (ii. 290) which Bancroft (iv. 222) follows; and it apparently is worthy of reasonable confidence, which cannot be said of Norman’s. The ruins present some features not found in others, and the most interesting of such may be considered the wall paintings, one representing a boat with occupants, which Stephens found on the walls of the building called by him the Gymnasium, because of stone rings projecting from the walls (see annexed cut), which were supposed by him to have been used in ball games. Norman calls the same building the Temple; Charnay, the Cirque; but the native designation is Iglesia.

[1048] Yucatan, i. 94. Cf. Bancroft, Native Races, ii. 117; v. 164, 342.

[1049] Bancroft collates the views of different writers (iv. 285). He himself holds that these buildings are more ancient than those of Anáhuac; consequently he rejects the arguments of Stephens, that it was by the Toltecs, after they migrated south from Anáhuac, that these constructions were raised (Native Races, v. 165, and for references, p. 169). Charnay (Bull. de la Soc. de Géog., Nov., 1881) believes they were erected between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries.

It is well known now that the concentric rings are a useless guide in tropical regions to determine the age of trees, though in the past, the immense size of trees as well as the deposition of soil have been used to determine the supposed ages of ruins. Waldeck counted a ring a year in getting two thousand years for the time since the abandonment of Palenqué; but Charnay (Eng. tr. Ancient Cities, p. 260) says that these rings are often formed monthly. Cf. Nadaillac, p. 323.

[1050] So called because near a modern village of that name, founded by the Spaniards about 1564. Bancroft (iv. 296) says the ruins are ordinarily called by the natives Casas de Piedra. Ordoñez calls them Nachan, but without giving any authority, and some adopt the Aztec equivalent Calhuacan, city of the serpents. Because Xibalba is held by some to be the name of the great city of this region in the shadowy days of Votan, that name has also been applied to the ruins. Otolum, or the ruined place, is a common designation thereabouts, but Palenqué is the appellation in use by most travellers and writers.

[1051] The fact is, that widely distinct estimates have been held, some dating them back into the remotest antiquity, and others making them later than the Conquest. Bancroft (iv. 362) collates these statements. Cf. Dr. Earl Flint in Amer. Antiquarian, iv. 289. Morelet identifies them with the Toltec remains, supposing them to be the work of that people after their emigration, and to be of about the same age as Mitla. Charnay (Anc. Cities of the New World, p. 260) claims that Cortes knew the place as the religious metropolis of the Acaltecs. On the question of Cortes’ knowledge see Science, Feb. 27, 1885, p. 171; and Ibid. (by Brinton) March 27, 1885, p. 248.

[1052] The original is in the Roy. Acad. of Hist. at Madrid (Brasseur, Bib. Mex.-Guat., p. 125), and is called Descripcion del terreno publacion antigua.

[1053] Field, no. 231; Sabin, xvii. p. 292. The report of Rio was brief, and as we would judge now, superficial. Dupaix treats him disparagingly. The appended essay by Cabrera, an Italian, is said to have been largely filched from Ramon’s paper, which had been confidentially placed in his hands (Short, 207). A Spanish text of Cabrera is in the Museo Nacional. Cf. Brasseur (Bib. Mex.-Guat.), p. 30; Pinart, no. 186. It is a question if the plates, which constituted the most interesting part of the English book, be Rio’s after all; for though they profess to be engraved after his drawings, they are suspiciously like those made by Castañeda, twenty years after Rio’s visit (Bancroft, iv. 290). David B. Warden translated Rio’s report in the Recueil de voyages et de Mémoires, par la Soc. de in Géog. de Paris. (vol. ii.), and gave some of the plates. (Cf. Warden’s Recherches sur les antiquités de l’Amérique Septentrionale, Paris, 1827, in Mém. de la Soc. de Géog.) There is a German version, Beschreibung einer alten Stadt (Berlin, 1832), by J. H. von Minutoli, which is provided with an introductory essay.

[1054] Sabin, x. 209, 213. Cf. Annales de Philos. Chrétienne, xi.

[1055] Bull. de la Soc. de Géog. de Paris, ix. (1828) 198. Dupaix, i. 2d div. 76.

[1056] “Palenque et autres lieux circonvoisins,” in Dupaix, i. 2d div. 67 (in English in Literary Gazette, London, 1831, no. 769, and in Lond. Geog. Soc. Journal, iii. 60). Cf. Bull. de la Soc. de Géog. de Paris, 1832. He is overenthusiastic, as Bandelier thinks (Amer. Ant. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. p. 111).

[1057] The report by Angrand, which induced this purchase, is in the work as published.

[1058] He had described them in his Hist. Nat. Civ., i. ch. 3.

[1059] The book usually sells for about 150 francs.

[1060] Given, also enlarged, in the folio known as Catherwood’s Views.

[1061] The German version was made from this (Jena, 1872).

[1062] Particularly ch. 13, 14. Charnay is the last of the explorers of Palenqué. All the other accounts of the ruins found here and there are based on the descriptions of those who have been named, or at least nothing is added of material value by other actual visitors like Norman (Rambles in Yucatan, p. 284). Bancroft (iv. 294) enumerates a number of such second-hand describers. The most important work since Bancroft’s summary is Manuel Larrainzar’s Estudios sobre la historia de America, sus ruinas y antigüedades, y sobre el orígen de sus habitantes (Mexico, 1875-78), in five vols., all of whose plates are illustrations from the ruins of Palenqué, which are described and compared with other ancient remains throughout the world. Cf. Brühl, Culturvölker d. alt. Amerikas. Plans of the ruins will be found in Waldeck (pl. vii., followed mainly by Bancroft, iv. 298, 307), Stephens (ii. 310), Dupaix (pl. xi.), Kingsborough (iv. pl. 13), and Charnay (ch. 13 and 14). The views of the ruins given by these authorities mainly make up the stock of cuts in all the popular narratives.

The most interesting of the carvings is what is known as the Tablet of the Cross, which was taken from one of the minor buildings, and is now in the National Museum at Washington. It has often been engraved, but such representations never satisfied the student till they could be tested by the best of Charnay’s photographs. (Engravings in Brasseur and Waldeck, pl. 21, 22; Rosny’s Essai sur le déchiffrement, etc.; Minutoli’s Beschreibung einer alten Stadt in Guatimala (Berlin, 1832); Stephens’s Cent. Amer., ii.; Bancroft, Nat. Races, iv. 333; Charnay, Les anciens Villes, and Eng. transl. p. 255; Nadaillac, 325; Powell’ s Rept., i. 221; cf. p. 234; Amer. Antiquarian, vii. 200.) The most important discussion of the tablet is Charles Rau’s Palenqué Tablet in the U. S. National Museum (Washington, 1879), being the Smithsonian Contri. to Knowledge, no. 331, or vol. xxii. It contains an account of the explorations that have been made at Palenqué, and a chapter on the “Aboriginal writing in Mexico, Central America, and Yucatan, with some account of the attempted translations of Maya hieroglyphics.” Rau’s conclusion is that it is a Phallic symbol. Cf. a summary in Amer. Antiquarian, vi., Jan., 1884, and in Amer. Art Review, 1880, p. 217. Rau’s paper was translated into Spanish and French: Tablero del Palenque en el Museo nacional de los Estados-Unidos [traducido por Joaquin Davis y Miguel Perez], in the Anales del Museo nacional. Tomo 2, pp. 131-203. (México, 1880.) La Stèle de Palenqué du Musée national des Etats-Unis, à Washington. Traduit de l’Anglais avec autorisation de l’auteur. In the Annales du Musée Guimet, vol. x. (Paris, 1887.) Rau’s views were criticised by Morgan.

There are papers by Charency on the interpretation of the hieroglyphs in Le Muséon (Paris, 1882, 1883).

The significance of the cross among the Nahuas and Mayas has been the subject of much controversy, some connecting it with a possible early association with Christians in ante-Columbian days (Bancroft, iii. 468). On this later point see Bamps, Les traditions relatives à l’homme blanc et au signe de la cruz en Amérique à l’Epoque précolumbienne, in the Compte rendu, Congrès des Américanistes (Copenhagen, 1883), p. 125; and “Supposed vestiges of early Christian teaching in America,” in the Catholic Historical Researches (vol. i., Oct., 1885). The symbolism is variously conceived. Bandelier (Archæol. Jour.) holds it to be the emblem of fire, indeed an ornamented fire-drill, which later got mixed up with the Spanish crucifix. Brinton (Myths of the New World, 95) sees in it the four cardinal points, the rain-bringers, the symbol of life and health, and cites (p. 96) various of the early writers in proof. Brinton (Am. Hero Myths, 155) claims to have been the first to connect the Palenqué cross with the four cardinal points. The bird and serpent—the last shown better in Charnay’s photograph than in Stephens’s cut—is (Myths, 119) simply a rebus of the air-god, the ruler of the winds. Brinton says that Waldeck, in a paper on the tablet in the Revue Américaine (ii. 69), came to a similar conclusion. Squier (Nicaragua, ii. 337) speaks of the common error of mistaking the tree of life of the Mexicans for the Christian symbol. Cf. Powell’s Second Rept., Bur. of Ethnol., p. 208; the Fourth Rept., p. 252, where discredit is thrown upon Gabriel de Mortillet’s Le Signe de la cross avant le Christianisme (Paris, 1866); Joly’s Man before Metals, 339; and Charnay’s Les Anciens Villes (or Eng. transl. p. 85). Cf. for various applications the references in Bancroft’s index (v. p. 671).

[1063] Both were alike, and one was broken in two. There are engravings in Waldeck, pl. 25; Stephens, ii. 344, 349; Squier’s Nicaragua, 1856, ii. 337; Bancroft, iv. 337.

[1064] These have been the subject of an elaborate folio, thought, however, to be of questionable value, Die Steinbildwerke von Copân und Quiriguâ, aufgenommen von Heinrich Meye; historisch erläutert und beschrieben von Dr. Julius Schmidt (Berlin, 1883), of which there is an English translation, The stone sculptures of Copán and Quiriguá; translated from the German by a.d. Savage (New York, 1883). It gives twenty plates, Catherwood’s plates, and the cuts in Stephens, with reproductions in accessible books (Bancroft, iv. ch. 3; Powell’s First Rept. Bur. Ethn. 224; Ruge’s Gesch. des Zeitalters; Amer. Antiquarian, viii. 204-6), will serve, however, all purposes.

[1065] Squier says: “There are various reasons for believing that both Copan and Quirigua antedate Olosingo and Palenqué, precisely as the latter antedate the ruins of Quiché, Chichen-Itza, and Uxmal, and that all of them were the work of the same people, or of nations of the same race, dating from a high antiquity, and in blood and language precisely the same that was found in occupation of the country by the Spaniards.”

[1066] Named apparently from a neighboring village.

[1067] Ref. in Bancroft, iv. 79.

[1068] This account can be found in Pacheco’s Col. Doc. inéd. vi. 37, in Spanish; in Ternaux’s Coll. (1840), imperfect, and in the Nouv. Annales des Voyages, 1843, v. xcvii. p. 18, in French; in Squier’s Cent. America, 242, and in his ed. of Palacio (N. Y. 1860), in English; and in Alexander von Frantzius’s San Salvador und Honduras im Jahre 1576, with notes by the translator and by C. H. Berendt.

[1069] Stephens, Cent. Am., i. 131, 144; Warden, 71; Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, xxxv. 329; Bancroft, iv. 82; Bull. de la Soc. de Géog. de Paris, 1836, v. 267; Short, 56, 82,—not to name others.

[1070] His account is in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Trans., ii.; Bull. Soc. de Géog. 1835; Dupaix, a summary, i. div. 2, p. 73; Bradford’s Amer. Antiq., in part. Galindo’s drawings are unknown. Stephens calls his account “unsatisfactory and imperfect.”

[1071] Central America, i. ch. 5-7; Views of Anc. Mts. It is Stephens’s account which has furnished the basis of those given by Bancroft (iv. ch. 3); Baldwin, p. 111; Short, 356; Nadaillac, 328, and all others. Bancroft in his bibliog. note (iv. pp. 79-81), which has been collated with my own notes, mentions others of less importance, particularly the report of Center and Hardcastle to the Amer. Ethnol. Soc. in 1860 and 1862, and the photographs made by Ellerley, which Brasseur (Hist. Nat. Civ. i. 96; ii. 493; Palenqué, 8, 17) found to confirm the drawings and descriptions of Catherwood and Stephens.

Stephens (Cent. Am., i. 133) made a plan of the ruins reproduced in Annales des Voyages (1841, p. 57), which is the basis of that given by Bancroft (iv. 85). Dr. Julius Schmidt, who was a member of the Squier expedition in 1852-53, furnished the historical and descriptive text to a work which in the English translation by a.d. Savage is known as Stone Sculptures of Copán and Quiriguá, drawn by Heinrich Meye (N. Y., 1883). What Stephens calls the Copan idols and altars are considered by Morgan (Houses and House Life, 257), following the analogy of the customs of the northern Indians, to be the grave-posts and graves of Copan chiefs. Bancroft (iv. ch. 3) covers the other ruins of Honduras and San Salvador; and Squier has a paper on those of Tenampua in the N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1853.

[1072] Stephens’s Central America, ii. ch. 7; and Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, vol. lxxxviii. 376, derived from Catherwood.

[1073] Other travellers who have visited them are John Baily, Central America (Lond. 1850); A. P. Maudsley, Explorations in Guatemala (Lond. 1883), with map and plans of ruins, in the Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc. p. 185; W. T. Brigham’s Guatemala (N. Y., 1886). Bancroft (iv. 109) epitomizes the existing knowledge; but the remains seem to be less known than any other of the considerable ruins. There are a few later papers: G. Williams on the Antiquities of Guatemala, in the Smithsonian Report, 1876; Simeon Habel’s “Sculptures of Santa Lucia Cosumalhuapa in Guatemala” in the Smithson. Contrib. xxii. (Washington, 1878), or “Sculptures de Santa (Lucia) Cosumalwhuapa dans le Guatémala, avec une rélation de voyages dans l’Amérique Centrale et sur les cótes occidentales de l’Amérique du Sud, par S. Habel. Traduit de l’anglais, par J. Pointet,” with eight plates, in the Annales du Musée Guimet, vol. x. pp. 119-259 (Paris, 1887); Philipp Wilhelm Adolf Bastian’s “Stein Sculpturen aus Guatemala,” in the Jahrbuch der k. Museen zu Berlin, 1882, or “Notice sur les pierres sculptées du Guatémala récemment acquises par le Musée royal d’ethnographie de Berlin. Traduit avec autorisation de l’auteur par J. Pointet,” in the Annales du Musée Guimet, vol. x. pp. 261-305 (Paris, 1887); and C. E. Vreeland and J. F. Bransford, on the Antiquities at Pantaleon, Guatemala (Washington, 1885), from the Smithsonian Report for 1884.

[1074] Nicaragua; its people, scenery, monuments, and the proposed interoceanic canal (N. Y., 1856; revised 1860), a portion (pp. 303-362) referring to the modern Indian occupants. Squier was helped by his official station as U. S. chargé d’affaires; and the archæological objects brought away by him are now in the National Museum at Washington. He published separate papers in the Amer. Ethnol. Soc. Trans. ii.; Smithsonian Ann. Rept. v. (1850); Harper’s Monthly, x. and xi. Cf. list in Pilling, nos. 3717, etc.

[1075] His explorations were in 1865-66. He carried off what he could to the British Museum.

[1076] Like Bedford Pim and Berthold Seemann’s Dottings on the Roadside in Panama, Nicaragua, and Mosquito (Lond., 1869).

[1077] J. F. Bransford’s “Archæological Researches in Nicaragua,” in the Smithsonian Contrib. (Washington, 1881). Karl Bovallius’s Nicaraguan Antiquities, with plates (Stockholm, 1886), published by the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography, figures various statues and other relics found by the author in Nicaragua, and he says that his drawings are in some instances more exact than those given by Squier before the days of photography. In his introduction he describes the different Indian stocks of Nicaragua, and disagrees with Squier. He gives a useful map of Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

[1078] It is only of late years that they have been kept apart, for the elder writers like Kingsborough, Stephens, and Brantz Mayer, confounded them.

[1079] The Father Alonzo Ponce, who travelled through Yucatan in 1586, is the only writer, according to Brinton (Books of Chilan Balam, p. 5), who tells us distinctly that the early missionaries made use of aboriginal characters in giving religious instruction to the natives (Relacion Breve y Verdadera).

[1080] Leon y Gama tells us that color as well as form seems to have been representative.

[1081] See references on the accepted difficulties in Native Races, ii. 551. Mrs. Nuttall claims to have observed certain complemental signs in the Mexican graphic system, “which renders a misinterpretation of the Nahuatl picture-writings impossible” (Am. Asso. Adv. Science, Proc., xxxv. Aug., 1886); Peabody Mus. Papers, i. App.

[1082] Prehist. Man, ii. 57, 64, for his views

[1083] Bancroft, Native Races, ii. ch. 17 (pp. 542, 552) gives a good description of the Aztec system, with numerous references; but on this system, and on the hieroglyphic element in general, see Gomara; Bernal Diaz; Motolinia in Icazbalceta’s Collection, i. 186, 209; Ternaux’s Collection, x. 250; Kingsborough, vi. 87; viii. 190; ix. 201, 235, 287, 325; Acosta, lib. vi. cap. 7; Sahagún, i. p. iv.; Torquemada, i. 29, 30, 36, 149, 253; ii. 263, 544; Las Casas’s Hist. Apologética; Purchas’s Pilgrimes, iii. 1069; iv. 1135; Clavigero, ii. 187; Robertson’s America; Boturini’s Idea, pp. 5, 77, 87, 96, 112, 116; Humboldt’s Vues, i. 177, 192; Veytia, i. 6, 250; Gallatin in Am. Ethn. Soc. Trans. i. 126, 165; Prescott’s Mexico, i. ch. 4; Brasseur’s Nat. Civ., i. pp. xv, xvii; Domenech’s Manuscrit pictographique, introd.; Mendoza, in the Boletin Soc. Mex. Geog., 2^de ed. i. 896; Madier de Montjau’s Chronologie hiéroglyphico-phonetic des rois Aztèques, de 1322 à 1522, with an introduction “sur l’Ecriture Méxicaine;” Lubbock’s Prehistoric Times, 279, and his Origin of Civilization, ch. 2; E. B. Tylor’s Researches into the Early Hist. of Mankind, 89; Short’s No. Amer. of Antiq., ch. 8; Müller’s Chips, i. 317; The Abbé Jules Pipart in Compte-rendu, Congrès des Amér. 1877, ii. 346; Isaac Taylor’s Alphabets; Foster’s Prehistoric Races, 322; Nadaillac, 376, not to cite others. Bandelier has discussed the Mexican paintings in his paper “On the sources for aboriginal history of Spanish America” in Am. Asso. Adv. Science, Proc., xxvii. (1878). See also Peabody Mus. Reports, ii. 631; and Orozco y Berra’s “Códice Mendozino” in the Anales del Museo Nacional, vol. i. Mrs. Nuttall’s views are in the Peabody Mus., Twentieth Report, p. 567. Quaritch (Catal. 1885, nos. 29040, etc.) advertised some original Mexican pictures; a native MS. pictorial record of a part of the Tezcuco domain (supposed a.d. 1530), and perhaps one of the “pinturas” mentioned by Ixtlilxochitl; a colored Mexican calendar on a single leaf of the same supposed date and origin; with other MSS. of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. (Cf. also his Catal., Jan., Feb., 1888.)

The most important studies upon the Aztec system have been those of Aubin. Cf. his Mémoire sur la peinture didactique et l’écriture figurative des Anciens Méxicains, in the Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France, iii. 225 (Revue Orient. et Amér.), in which he contended for the rebus-like character of the writings. He made further contributions to vols. iv. and v. (1859-1861). Cf. his “Examen des anciennes peintures figuratives de l’ancien Méxique,” in the new series of Archives, etc., vol. i.; and the introd. to Brasseur’s Nations Civilisées, p. xliv.

[1084] Bancroft (Nat. Races, ii. ch. 24) translates these from Landa, Peter Martyr, Cogulludo, Villagutierre, Mendieta, Acosta, Benzoni, and Herrera, and thinks all the modern writers (whom he names, p. 770) have drawn from these earlier ones, except, perhaps, Medel in Nouv. Annales des Voyages, xcvii. 49. Cf. Wilson, Prehistoric Man, ii. 61. It will be seen later that Holden discredits the belief in any phonetic value of the Maya system. But compare on the phonetic value of the Mexican and Maya systems, Brinton in Amer. Antiquarian (Nov. 1886); Lazarus Geiger’s Contrib. to the Hist. of the Development of the Human Race (Eng. tr. by David Asher). London, 1880, p. 75; and Zelia Nuttall in Am. Ass. Adv. Sci. Proc., Aug. 1886.

[1085] Dr. Bernoulli, who died at San Francisco, in California, in 1878, and whose labors are commemorated in a notice in the Verhandlungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft (vi. 710) at Basle, found at Tikal, in Guatemala, some fragments of sculptured panels of wood, bearing hieroglyphics as well as designs, which he succeeded in purchasing, and they were finally deposited in 1879 in the Ethnological Museum in Basle, where Rosny saw them, and describes them, with excellent photographic representations, in his Doc. Ecrits de l’Antiq. Amér. (p. 97). These tablets are the latest additions to be made to the store already possessed from Palenqué, as given by Stephens in his Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan; those of the Temple of the Cross at Palenqué, after Waldeck’s drawings in the Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France (ii., 1864); that from Kabah in Yucatan, given by Rosny in his Archives Paléographiques (i. p. 178; Atlas, pl. xx.), and one from Chichen-Itza, figured by Le Plongeon in L’Illustration, Feb. 10, 1882; not to name other engravings. Rosny holds that Rau’s Palenqué Tablet (Washington, 1879) gives the first really serviceably accurate reproduction of that inscription. Cf. on Maya inscriptions, Bancroft, ii. 775; iv. 91, 97, 234; Morelet’s Travels; and Le Plongeon in Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 246. This last writer has been thought to let his enthusiasm—not to say dogmatism—turn his head, under which imputation he is not content, naturally (Ibid. p. 282).

[1086] “Landa’s alphabet a Spanish fabrication,” appeared in the Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., April, 1880. In this, Philipp J. J. Valentini interprets all that the old writers say of the ancient writings to mean that they were pictorial and not phonetic; and that Landa’s purpose was to devise a vehicle which seemed familiar to the natives, through which he could communicate religious instruction. His views have been controverted by Léon de Rosny (Doc. Ecrits de la Antiq. Amér. p. 91); and Brinton (Maya Chronicles, 61), calls them an entire misconception of Landa’s purpose.

[1087] Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 251.

[1088] Troano MS., p. viii.

[1089] Relation, Brasseur’s ed., section xli.

[1090] This is given in the Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France, ii. pl. iv.; in Brasseur’s ed. of Landa; in Bancroft’s Nat. Races, ii. 779; in Short, 425; Rosny (Essai sur le déchiff. etc., pl. xiii.) gives a “Tableau des caractères phonétique Mayas d’après Diégo de Landa et Brasseur de Bourbourg.”

[1091] Manuscrit Troano Etudes sur le système graphique et la langue des Mayas (Paris, 1869-70)—the first volume containing a fac-simile of the Codex in seventy plates, with Brasseur’s explications and partial interpretation. In the second volume there is a translation of Gabriél de Saint Bonaventure’s Grammaire Maya, a “Chrestomathie” of Maya extracts, and a Maya lexicon of more than 10,000 words. Brasseur published at the same time (1869) in the Mémoires de la Soc. d’Ethnographie a Lettre à M. Léon de Rosny sur la découverte de documents relatifs à la haute antiquité américaine, et sur le déchiffrement et l’interprétation de l’écriture phonétique et figurative de la langue Maya (Paris, 1869). He explained his application of Landa’s alphabet in the introduction to the MS. Troano, i. p. 36. Brasseur later confessed he had begun at the wrong end of the MS. (Bib. Mex.-Guat., introd.). The pebble-shape form of the characters induced Brasseur to call them calculiform; and Julien Duchateau adopted the term in his paper “Sur l’écriture calculiforme des Mayas” in the Annuaire de la Soc. Amér. (Paris, 1874), iii. p. 31.

[1092] L’écriture hiératique, and Archives de la Soc. Am. de France, n. s., ii. 35.

[1093] Ancient Phonetic Alphabets of Yucatan (N. Y., 1870), p. 7.

[1094] It is the development of a paper given at the Nancy session of the Congrès des Américanistes (1875). Landa’s alphabet with the variations make 262 of the 700 signs which Rosny catalogues. He printed his “Nouvelles Recherches pour l’interpretation des caractères de l’Amérique Centrale” in the Archives, etc., iii. 118. There is a paper on Rosny’s studies by De la Rada in the Compte-rendu of the Copenhagen session (p. 355) of the Congrès des Américanistes. Rosny’s Documents écrits de l’antiquité Américaine (Paris, 1882), from the Mémoires de la Société d’Ethnographie (1881), covers his researches in Spain and Portugal for material illustrative of the pre-Columbian history of America. Cf. also his “Les sources de l’histoire anté columbienne du nouveau monde,” in the Mémoires de la Soc. d’Ethnographie (1877). For the titles in full of Rosny’s linguistic studies, see Pilling’s Proof-sheets, p. 663.

[1095] Anthropol. Review, May, 1864; Memoirs of the Anthropol. Soc., i.

[1096] Memoirs, etc., ii. 298.

[1097] Memoirs, etc., 1870, iii. 288; Trans. Anthrop. Inst. Gt. Britain.

[1098] Introd. to Cyrus Thomas’s MS. Troano.

[1099] Am. Antiq. Soc. Proc., n. s., i. 250.

[1100] Actes de la Soc. philologique, March, 1870. Cf. Revue de Philologie, i. 380; Recherches sur le Codex Troano (Paris, 1876); Actes, etc., March, 1878; Baldwin’s Anc. America, App.

[1101] Cf. Sabin’s Amer. Bibliopolist, ii. 143.

[1102] Contributions to N. A. Ethnology, Powell’s Survey, vol. v. Cf. also his Phonetic elements in the graphic system of the Mayas and Mexicans in the Amer. Antiquarian (Nov., 1886), and separately (Chicago, 1886), and his Ikonomic method of phonetic writing (Phila., 1886). Thomas in The Amer. Antiquarian (March, 1886) points out the course of his own studies in this direction.

[1103] Cf. Short, p. 425. Dr. Harrison Allen in 1875, in the Amer. Philosophical Society’s Transactions, made an analysis of Landa’s alphabet and the published codices. Rau, in his Palenqué Tablet of the U. S. Nat. Museum (ch. 5), examines what had been done up to 1879. In the same year Dr. Carl Schultz-Sellack wrote on “Die Amerikanischen Götter der vier Weltgegenden und ihre Tempel in Palenqué,” touching also the question of interpretation (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, vol. xi.); and in 1880 Dr. Förstemann examined the matter in his introduction to his reproduction of the Dresden Codex.

[1104] Studies in Central American picture-writing (Washington, 1881), extracted from the First Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. His method is epitomized in The Century, Dec., 1881. He finds Stephens’s drawings the most trustworthy of all, Waldeck’s being beautiful, but they embody “singular liberties.” His examination was confined to the 1500 separate hieroglyphs in Stephens’s Central America. Some of Holden’s conclusions are worth noting: “The Maya manuscripts do not possess to me the same interest as the stones, and I think it may be certainly said that all of them are younger than the Palenqué tablets, far younger than the inscriptions at Copan.” “I distrust the methods of Brasseur and others who start from the misleading and unlucky alphabet handed down by Landa,” by forming variants, which are made “to satisfy the necessities of the interpreter in carrying out some preconceived idea.” He finds a rigid adherence to the standard form of a character prevailing throughout the same inscription. At Palenqué the inscriptions read as an English inscription would read, beginning at the left and proceeding line by line downward. “The system employed at Palenqué and Copan was the same in its general character, and almost identical even in details.” He deciphers three proper names: “all of them have been pure picture-writing, except in so far as their rebus character may make them in a sense phonetic.” Referring to Valentini’s Landa Alphabet a Spanish Fabrication, he agrees in that critic’s conclusions. “While my own,” he adds, “were reached by a study of the stones and in the course of a general examination, Dr. Valentini has addressed himself successfully to the solution of a special problem.” Holden thinks his own solution of the three proper names points of departure for subsequent decipherers. The Maya method was “pure picture-writing. At Copan this is found in its earliest state; at Palenqué it was already highly conventionalized.”

[1105] See references in Bancroft’s Nat. Races, ii. 576.

[1106] Cogulludo’s Hist. de Yucatan, 3d ed., i. 604.

[1107] Prescott, i. 104, and references.

[1108] Dec. iv., lib. 8.

[1109] Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Troano MS., i. 9. Cf. on the Aztec books Kirk’s Prescott, i. 103; Brinton’s Myths, 10; his Aborig. Amer. Authors, 17; and on the Mexican Paper, Valentini in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., 2d s., i. 58.

[1110] Cf. Icazbalceta’s Don Fray Juan de Zumárraga, primer Obispo y Arzobispo de México (1529-48). Estudio biográfico y bibligráfico. Con un apéndice de documentos inéditos ó raros (Mexico, 1881). A part of this work was also printed separately (fifty copies) under the title of De la destruction de antigüedades méxicanas atribuida á los misioneros en general, y particularmente al Illmo. Sr. D. Fr. Juan de Zumárraga, primer Obispo y Arzobispo de México (Mexico, 1881). In this he exhausts pretty much all that has been said on the subject by the bishop himself, by Pedro de Gante, Motolinía, Sahagún, Duran, Acosta, Davila Padilla, Herrera, Torquemada, Ixtlilxochitl, Robertson, Clavigero, Humboldt, Bustamante, Ternaux, Prescott, Alaman, etc. Brasseur (Nat. Civil., ii. 4) says of Landa that we must not forget that he was oftener the agent of the council for the Indies than of the Church. Helps (iii. 374) is inclined to be charitable towards a man in a skeptical age, so intensely believing as Zumárraga was. Sahagún relates that earlier than Zumárraga, the fourth ruler of his race, Itzcohuatl, had caused a large destruction of native writings, in order to remove souvenirs of the national humiliation.

[1111] Humboldt was one of the earliest to describe some of these manuscripts in connection with his Atlas, pl. xiii.

[1112] Cf. Catal. of the Phillipps Coll., no. 404. An original colored copy of the Antiquities of Mexico, given by Kingsborough to Phillipps, was offered of late years by Quaritch at £70-£100; it was published at £175. The usual colored copies sell now for about £40-£60; the uncolored for about £30-£35. It is usually stated that two copies were printed on vellum (British Museum, Bodleian), and ten on large paper, which were given to crowned heads, except one, which was given to Obadiah Rich. Squier, in the London Athenæum, Dec. 13, 1856 (Allibone, p. 1033), drew attention to the omission of the last signature of the Hist. Chichimeca in vol. ix.

[1113] Rich, Bibl. Amer. Nova, ii. 233; Gentleman’s Mag., May, 1837, which varies in some particulars. Cf. for other details Sabin’s Dictionary, ix. 485; De Rosny in the Rev. Orient et Amér., xii. 387. R. A. Wilson (New Conquest of Mexico, p. 68) gives the violent skeptical view of the material.