Page:A Glimpse at Guatemala.pdf/385

Rh crowds of natives who lined the shores of the island and swarmed about the buildings followed the example set them, so that within a few minutes the Spaniards were in possession of a deserted town and the lake was black with Indian heads.

If we turn to such descriptions of the buildings of the Itzács as have come down to us, we can see that a comparison of Tayasal with Tikál would be much the same as a comparison of Utatlan with Copan. There are the statements of eye-witnesses that the temples on the island were built with low stone walls into which posts were fixed to support a thatch roof, and, as I shall show later on, Cortés unconsciously confirms this statement when describing the town of Chacujál in Guatemala. There are no remains of pyramidal foundation-mounds now to be seen on the island such as support all the well-known Maya temples; and although the statement, attributed to the missionary fathers, that the temples would each have held a thousand persons was probably a gross exaggeration, it is hardly possible to imagine such a statement could have been made about any stone-roofed building erected by American Indians. To me it appears probable that Tayasal was a stronghold of much the same character as Utatlan and Uspantan, and that it was in no way comparable to the great centres of Maya civilization; moreover, that it could never have become, as it undoubtedly had become, the most important town in that part of the country as long as Tikál was in existence.

The later history of the island is uneventful. Notwithstanding the efforts of the Spanish authorities the Itzács could never be persuaded to return in any numbers to their old home, and they probably scattered in small settlements in the forest and on the borders of the numerous smaller lakes, where they must have rapidly diminished in numbers and importance, for little more is heard of them. Tayasal sank to the position of an insignificant village, and a few years after its conquest it passed from the rule of Yucatan to that of Guatemala.

It is only fair to assume that the missionaries who faced such great perils and suffered such hardships in their efforts to convert the Itzács, the soldiers who led the expeditions from Yucatan and Guatemala, and the officials who subsequently took over the government of the country must all have been keenly alive to the necessity of collecting trustworthy information regarding the Itzács and their neighbours. We know that the missionaries must have passed within twenty miles to the east of Tikál on their journeys between Tipu and Tayasal, that the Yucatan road on nearing the lake must have approached within the same distance to the south-west, and that Fray Antonio de Avendaño must have passed close by the site of the ruins