Eastern Yucatan is a coast of adventure where the trade winds of the tropics pile surf on coral reefs and where white temples of the ancient Mayas serve as landmarks for ships that wisely stand off. There is memorable beauty in the outer islands with slender palms leaning out from dunes of wave-broken coral. The shore line of the mainland appears low and monotonous but on closer inspection vast shallow bays are revealed with mangrove mazes which once offered hidden harbors to the buccaneers. The level unbroken forests of the Mexican territory of Quintana Roo are guarded by vigilant Mayas who still cherish in these wilds crumbling buildings of their ancestors. For generations these Indians have fought to stave off modern commercial civilization that on the raw edges of its expanding front shows anything but a pleasing parade of virtues.
There is glamour and mystery enough in a quest of ancient cities in Central America, yet the finest part of the adventure is intellectual rather than physical. The thrill of breaking through the frontiers of history into an unknown age is much deeper and more satisfying than that of merely entering closed territory at a slight risk of life and limb. After all, the chances of violent death are probably greater in modern cities than in the most backward lands. Eastern Yucatan will remain in my memory, not as a region where thorns scratch, insects bite, and boats capsize, but as a region where crumbling temples bear the unmistakable stamp of one of the New World’s greatest personalities.
Quetzalcoatl, emperor of the Toltecs, and conqueror of the Mayas—priest, scientist and architect in one commanding individual—was a contemporary of Henry II and Richard the Lion Hearted. He died in far off days before a reluctant King John signed the Magna Charta of English liberties. His holdings in Mexico and Central America were several times more extensive than the holdings of those puissant monarchs of the Angevin line in France and the British Isles, his philosophy of life was richer and his contributions to the general history of civilization were greater than theirs. Old stone walls in eastern Yucatan are mute evidence of the commerce, religion and art that Quetzalcoatl built up as the expression of his practical and ideal State. He encouraged trade that reached from Colombia to New Mexico, he preached a faith of abnegation and high ethics which later led speculative churchmen to identify him with St. Thomas, and in sculpture and architecture he formed a new and vital compound of the previous achievements of two distinct peoples, the Toltecs of the arid Mexican highlands and the Mayas of the humid lowlands. We can restate three of Quetzalcoatl’s personal triumphs in astronomical science corresponding to the years 1168, 1195 and 1208. We know that he conquered the great city of Chichen Itza in 1191 and erected therein a lofty temple which still bears his name and a round tower which is still an instrument for exact observation of the sun and moon. We know that Quetzalcoatl set up a benign system of local self government among conquered tribes of Guatemala which made those peoples relate his praises in song and story. We know that after his death he was made a god because during his life he had been “a great republican.”
The archæology of eastern Yucatan belongs for the most part to the three centuries which intervened between the reign of Quetzalcoatl and the coming of the Spaniards. The buildings of Chichen Itza are copied at Paalmul and Muyil, settlements which pretty clearly grew up along one of the important trade routes from Chichen Itza to the far south. To be sure there are some vestiges in the region of the much older First Empire of the Mayas, several monuments having been discovered in recent years which bear dates in the fourth and fifth centuries after Christ. But the cultural facts of the splendid First Empire are already known from a score of magnificent ruins on the plains of Peten, and in the valleys of the Usumacinta and Motagua rivers. Science was really in greater need of evidence on the last phases of Mayan civilization and this evidence we found in the territory we visited.
There is a more tragic story not without interest to the student of the rise and fall of civilizations, namely, the narrative of a clash between two races, the American Indian and the white man of Europe. In eastern Yucatan the unequal contest of brown breasts against bullets has waged since 1519. Some persons may see in the broken men who survive in little independent communities of rebellious Mayas only degradation and inferiority. Yet over and over again the Spanish colonists, for all their coercive engines, were driven out of this territory which was the first part of Mexico on which they set foot.
The terrible War of the Castes devastated Yucatan some eighty years ago, one of the causes, according to a scholarly work recently published in Merida, being the exportation of Maya Indians to Cuba as slaves. The eastern portion of the peninsula has not been reconquered since that time. One encounters in the darkening forest Christian churches which are no less ruinous than the more ancient temples of the Indians. It seems that Father Time is impartial when the figures of European saints and the grotesque faces of pagan gods fall beneath the weight of his hand.
Although the Indios sublevados of Quintana Roo have managed to maintain their independent status their numbers have pitifully diminished. Under President Díaz a vigorous campaign was waged against them for twenty years but the recalcitrant natives allowed the Mexican generals to hold precariously only the town of Santa Cruz and a few lines of communication. Then, as political strife developed in the Mexican capital itself, the garrisons were withdrawn. In 1918, the aboriginal population found a still more deadly enemy in the world epidemic of influenza. Recently American silver has been more successful over this renegade people than Mexican lead. The insistent demand for chewing gum among the children and salesladies of the United States has brought about a benevolent penetration into Quintana Roo of hand mirrors, glass pearls and alcohol flavored with anis seeds.
When offered the opportunity of joining with Mr. Gregory Mason and several others in an exploring expedition to Cozumel Island and the adjacent mainland, I gladly accepted, first because the region was difficult of access and offered great promise of finding unknown ruins of the ancient civilization, secondly, because the narrative of adventures and discoveries would direct public attention to the grandiose archæology of the Mayas. I shall let Mr. Mason tell what we found.
In preparing the book that is before us—which is directed to the general public whose support archæology needs—Mr. Mason has had the coöperation and good wishes of his fellow adventurers.
Herbert J. Spinden.
Peabody Museum,
Cambridge, Mass.,
January 27, 1927.