Mayan Ethnohistory

Mayan history in the sense of a chronologically placeable text begins with a carved stone monument of 199 ce known as the Hauberg Stela. Its provenience is unknown. It is possible that it was anticipated by similar monuments of the Olmec culture, such as Stela 10 from Kaminaljuyú, Guatemala (147 bce) or even earlier Zapotec and Olmec inscriptions. None of these texts has been read, and in any case they are not Mayan. The Maya are generally confined to the territories of the states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Campeche, and Chiapas in Mexico, the republics of Belize and Guatemala, and the westernmost sections of Honduras and El Salvador.

By the end of the third century scholars begin to be able to piece together the fragmentary dynastic histories of particular Mayan cities, and after the sixth century these become relatively complete and continuous. The relevant texts are almost entirely inscribed on stone monuments and the surfaces of buildings, though they are supplemented by other "primary sources": hieroglyphic texts on murals or stone and ceramic objects. The latter are historical sources, but unlike the monumental inscriptions, they are not in themselves history. Though the dynastic histories came to an end in the tenth century, when they ceased to be carved in stone, the tradition of hieroglyphic writing continued on less permanent objects of wood and paper, virtually all of which have been destroyed. The sole surviving pre-Conquest paper manuscript is the Dresden Codex, the dating of which is still debated. Three other codices survive from the sixteenth century (Madrid, Paris, and Grolier), and may be copies of pre-Conquest originals. Though they reveal a great deal about Mayan culture, the codices were not intended as history but rather as mythical, ritual, astrological, and astronomical almanacs.

The decipherment and reading of the pre-Spanish history of the Maya is proceeding rapidly and demonstrates that the Maya may have been the only truly historical people of the Americas from the third to the sixteenth century, although much work remains in deciphering the Andean quipu (or khipu). The conversion of these thirteen centuries from prehistory into history is the most remarkable recent development in the study of the Maya. This historical tradition was confined to only two of the score or so of the Mayan languages of the time: Yucatec and Chol.

To some extent, the historical gap between the tenth century and the sixteenth can be filled, not by the codices but by histories written by the Maya after the Spanish arrived. Although the Mayan alphabet was adequate for writing two of the Mayan languages, and could even have been used to write Spanish (it was used to write Nahuatl), many of the Mayan peoples, particularly the Chontal and Yucatec of Mexico and the Quiche (K'iche') and Cakchiquel (Kaqchikel) of Guatemala, rapidly adopted the Latin-based alphabets designed by the Franciscan missionaries. Much of what they wrote was their own history.

Some of the sources for this history may have been hieroglyphic manuscripts since lost, but it is likely that the more important source was oral tradition. Nonetheless, the rigor of the Mayan calendar was such that people may very well accept as historical some rather fragmentarily reported events as early as the ninth century (the occupation of Chichén Itzá by the Itzá Maya in 869–880 and their rule of the city until 1009).

Historiographically the Mayan histories present a number of distinctive problems. In their present form, none of them are sixteenth-century manuscripts. The dates given below are termini ante quem, indicating the probable dates of the extant copies. All of them were composed over a period of time, sometimes centuries, and by different authors. (The Popol Vuh may be an exception.)

The six fullest and most important of these sixteenth-century Mayan histories are the Books of Chilam Balam of Tizimin (1837), Chumayel (1837), and Mani (1837) in Yucatec; the Chronicles of Acalan-Tixchel (1604) in Chontal; the Popol Vuh (1704) in Quiche; and the Annals of the Cakquiquels (1604) in Cakchiquel. Like the histories of the Classic period (third to tenth century), these works are primarily dynastic. They trace the ruling lineages of their respective areas with varying degrees of historicity and time depth: the Itzá (ninth-eighteenth century) in eastern Yucatán, the Xiu (thirteenth-seventeenth century) in western Yucatán, the Paxbolon (fourteenth-seventeenth century) in western Campeche, the Cavek (thirteenth-sixteenth century) in west-central Guatemala, and the Zotzil (fifteenth-seventeenth century) in east-central Guatemala. In the main they are highly local in reference, though they overlap geographically in some degree, and they refer to places as far afield as southern Veracruz, Cozumel, southeast Chiapas, and the Guatemalan Peten. All of them describe the coming of the Spaniards.

An additional, if problematic, native source is the Rabinal Achí (1855), a Quiche drama that appears to refer to fifteenth-century events, preserved in oral and eventually written form, and discovered in the nineteenth century.

The manuscripts have not always been copied in their original order (particularly the Books of Chilam Balam), and copyists' errors are frequent. The problems can often be overcome because of the Mayan passion for chronology and accuracy, but it is not always easy. The Mayan cyclical view of time also gets in the way: sometimes the material is both history and prophecy at the same time, on the theory that what happens on a given date will recur on the same date in the next cycle. Dynastic lists are often distorted because of lineage rivalries, and generations may have been added or deleted even in ancient times for political reasons. Mayan history must be attentively and critically read and interpreted.

The historical preoccupations of the Maya that emerge from these sources are unique. Not only are the pre-Conquest histories dynastic, they are also ritualized history. The present owes the past the duty of emulation. Thus the Mayan historian describes the past in terms of its ritual achievements, generalizing it in mythological terms as a basis for the prediction of the future. For the Maya, furthermore, such prophecy was a positive guide to action. Having predicted their future on the basis of the past, they made every effort to make the prediction come true. A famous example is the cycle of 260 tuns (approximately 256 years), the end of which was supposed to occur on a day named 8 Ahau. In Classic times this date was supposed to end dynasties, and it often did. It was a great political advantage to potential usurpers to argue that they had the sun on their side. In colonial times, it was on 8 Ahau 1697 that the Itzá Maya of the Peten surrendered and converted to Christianity, having sent to Mérida for missionaries for the purpose. In social terms, Mayan history is strongly hierarchical; in philosophical terms it is profoundly fatalistic. Always it is religious.

Even after the Spanish Conquest, the Maya wrote their own history in a continuous tradition of colonial literacy that lasted in some areas (notably in Yucatec and Quiche) until the nineteenth century. Apart from adding to the early chronicles, they provided the written records, all in Mayan, that are the stuff of history: land documents; wills, cofradía ordinances; letters; medical, astrological, and astronomical handbooks; government reports; ritual poetry and drama. These are paralleled by an increasing volume of Catholic materials: catechisms, sermons, missals, church calendars, even occasional translations of secular European narratives.

From many of the Mayan historical sources one may almost gain the impression that the Spanish conquest did not take place. The event itself is described, to be sure, but thereafter the Spanish largely disappear, being fundamentally irrelevant to Mayan history. Mayan resistance to the Europeans was prolonged and stubborn, both overtly and covertly.

Something similar is true for the vast majority of the Spanish chronicles. The Indians existed only as the passive objects of conquest and conversion. In fact, it took the combined efforts of four Franciscans and three Dominicans over a period of three centuries to come close to describing the Maya as well as Bernardino de Sahagún and Alfonso Molina had depicted the Aztecs in central Mexico. The Franciscans are Diego de Landa, Antonio de Ciudad Real, Diego López De Cogolludo, and Domingo de Vico, all of the sixteenth century. The Dominicans are Bartolomé de Las Casas (sixteenth century), Antonio de Remesal (seventeenth century), and Francisco Ximénez (eighteenth century). In varying ways and to varying degrees these authors were interested in the Maya and endeavored to understand them.

The most important Spanish works relevant to Mayan ethnohistory are Landa's Relacíon de las cosas de Yucatán, Ciudad Real's Diccionario de Motul, Cogolludo's Historia de Yucatán, Vico's Theologia Indorum, Las Casas's Apologética historia, Remesal's Historia general de las Indias occidentales and Ximénez's Historia de la provincia de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala de la orden de Predicadores. To these may be added the seventeeth-century secular work of Francisco Antonio Fuentes y Guzmán, Recordación florida. Landa, Cogolludo, and Ciudad Real deal with Yucatán; Vico, Las Casas, Remesal, and Fuentes y Guzmán treat Guatemala; Ximénez covers Guatemala and Chiapas. Together they come close to blanketing the territory of the Maya, and they are backed up by an enormous archive of secondary sources and historical materials of all kinds, the most significant of which are the sixteenth-century Relaciones Geográficas.

The autistic historical traditions of the Maya and the Spanish meet and begin to merge in these early chronicles. Like the Mayan histories, the Spanish ones show a deepening comprehension of the other tradition over time, though only Ciudad Real (Yucatec) and Vico (Quiche) may be said to have had a firm comprehension of a Mayan language. The only Mayan author with a comparably sophisticated command of Spanish was Gaspar Antonio Xiu, credited with the compilation of many of the Relaciones geográficas in Yucatán.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the colonial historical tradition had ended in both Yucatec and Quiche. The Latin-based alphabets were replaced by new ones, and although native language historical materials were produced in them, they are relatively minor. Explicit history was not written.

There has been an enormous growth of interest in Mayan ethnohistory, though this is primarily among "foreign" scholars not resident in Mayan territory. There are, however, some notable exceptions: Alfredo Barrera Vásquez and Alfonso Villa Rojas in Yucatán, and Adrián Recinos and José Antonio Villacorta y Rodas in Guatemala. Nonetheless, the gulf in historical awareness between the Maya and the non-Maya remains almost as formidable as when Landa sat down to write his Relación after burning the most valuable sources.

The most significant development in Yucatán, Chiapas, and Guatemala in the modern period may turn out to be the renascent historical consciousness among the Mayan people themselves. This is particularly evident among the Tzotzil, Yucatecans, Quiche, and Cakchiquel, but is also shared by many of their Mayan neighbors. The modern Maya are increasingly interested in their history and more and more knowledgeable about it. They may even take a hand in shaping their future by writing their past again in their own language.

See alsoAnnals of the Cakchiquels; Chilam Balam; Mayan Alphabet and Orthography; Mayan Epigraphy; Popol Vuh.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charles Étienne Brasseur De Bourbourg, Dictionnaire, grammaire et chrestomathie de la langue maya (1862), which includes Rabinal Achí; Francisco Ximénez, Historia de la provincia de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala de la Orden de Predicadores, 3 vols. (1929–1931).

Antonio De Remesal, Historia general de las India Occidentales, 2d ed., 2 vols. (1932).

José Antonio Villacorta C., Memorial de Tecpán-Atitlán (1932).

Francisco Antonio De Fuentes y Guzmán, Recordación florida, vols. 6-8 (1932–1933).

Alfred M. Tozzer, Landa's Relación de las Cosas de Yucatán, Papers of the Peabody Museum of Anthropology, Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 18 (1941).

Ralph L. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatán (1943).

Alfonso Villa Rojas, The Maya of East Central Quintana Roo (1945).

Adrián Recinos, Memorial de Sololá: Anales de los Cakchiqueles (1950).

Diego López De Cogolludo, Historia de Yucatán, 5th ed., 2 vols. (1957).

Nelson Reed, The Caste War of Yucatán (1964).

France Vinto Scholes and Ralph L. Roys, The Maya Chontal Indians of Acalan Tixchel (1968).

Munro S. Edmonson, The Book of Counsel: The Popol Vuh of the Guatemalan Quiche (1971).

Howard F. Cline, "The Relaciones Geográficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577–1648," in Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 12 (1972), pp. 183-242.

Robert M. Carmack, Quichean Civilization (1973).

Eugene R. Craine and Reginald Reindorp, trans. and eds., The Codex Pérez and the Book of Chilam Balam of Mani (1979).

Alfredo Barrera Vásquez, ed., Diccionario maya cordemex (1980), which includes Ciudad Real's Diccionario; Victoria R. Bricker, The Indian Christ, the Indian King (1981).

Frauke Riese, Indianische Landrechte in Yukatan um die Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts (1981).

Munro S. Edmonson, The Ancient Future of the Itza: The Book of Chilam Balam of Tizimin (1982).

René Acuña, "El Popol Vuh, Vico y la Theologia indorum," in Nuevas perspectivas sobre el Popol Vuh, edited by Robert M. Carmack and Francisco Morales Santos, (1973).

Robert M. Carmack and Francisco Morales Santos, eds., Nuevas perspectivas sobre el Popol Vuh (1973).

Munro S. Edmonson, Heaven Born Merida and Its Destiny: The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel (1986).

Grant D. Jones, Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule: Time and History on a Colonial Frontier (1989).

Additional Bibliography

Castañeda, Quetzil. "We Are Not Indigenous: An Introduction to the Mayan Identity of Yucatan" in Journal of Latin American Anthropology vol. 9, no. 1 (June 2004): 36-63.

Hanks, William F. and Don S. Rice, eds., Word and Image in Maya Culture: Explorations in Language, Writing, and Representation. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989.

                                   Munro S. Edmonson