Page:History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/34

Rh which they are called in that tongue to all the Ports of the Sea, points of land, estuaries, coasts, and all the regions, sites, mountains (forests), and all the places of this entire land; and certain it is that it is a thing worthy of admiration if it was so, for such a division did he make of everything in order that each spot might be known by its own name that there is scarcely a palm of land which has not a name in their tongue. The opinion that the settlers came to this land from the Occident (although they do not know who they were nor how they came) is in accord with what Padre Torquemada says in his Monarquia Indiana. (Lib. iii, cap. 13.) This is, That the Teochichimecas, after that terrible battle with the Huexotzincas, remained lords of the territory of Tlaxcalan, and made peace with the other nations on account of the fame of that victory of theirs. These Teochichimecas must needs found their towns and distribute their lands in such a manner that they were constantly increasing their power and gradually occupying the country in such a way that in a little more than 300 years they had spread through the greater part of New Spain from one coast on the North to the other on the South, a territory which includes all the inland regions which are to the East, and especially those of this province of Yucathan as far as the province of Hibueras or Honduras. From this it seems that the Yucatecs are descended from Chichimec and Aculhua families which, coming from the West by way of the stopping-places told of by Father Torquemada in his first books, settled New Spain.

“If from the Orient came other peoples who settled in this land, there is among the people now there neither tradition nor writing, telling with certainty from whence they came nor what people they were, although, however, it is said (by some) that they came from the Island of Cuba. Difficulty arises now, for some came from some regions and others from very different ones, yet all speak a very ancient tongue, nor has there been any information saying that any other has existed in the land. But this might have been occasioned by some tribes being more numerous than others, or by reason of war, or by trade and communication which, by strengthening the relations of the one race with the other, may have caused the idiom, usages, and customs of those who were of the greatest number to prevail over and obliterate those of the less numerous people. From the very differences which exist between the Yucatec tongue and the Mexican, it seems that the Settlers of this land must have been they who came from the East; and they may even have been the most ancient people since the Indian Zamna who came with them was he who first gave names to the places and lands, as has been told already, for if the others had been the first, they would have done so. Padre Lizana says the opposite because, first calling attention to the fact that these Indians call the East Cenial, and the West, Nohnial, the first of which signifies Small Descent and the second Large Descent, he says: 'And it is a fact that they relate that from the East descended upon this land a small race and from the West a large one; and by that phrase do they understand little and much. East and West, few from the one, many from the other.' The Reader will judge which seems to him the better.

“This land of Yucathan, which the natives of it call Maya, was governed for a long time by a Supreme Lord, and the last descendant of these Lords was Tutul Xiu, he who was Lord of Mani and its neighborhood when, voluntarily, he came to do homage, making himself a friend of the Spaniards on the day of San Ildefonso, 1541, as has been told. Thus it appears that there has ever