Page:The Katunes of Maya History.djvu/22

14 the district, enabled him to obtain many small manuscript documents known to have been written by the natives in their vernacular language, the Maya, soon after the time of the conquest, which, for the most part, contained historical reminiscences of the time of the supremacy of their ancestors. Among these manuscripts there was a so-called Chilain Balam Calendar, which, in the form of an appendix, contained, besides, the outlines of the primitive history of Yucatan. It was, indeed, but a brief epitome of historical events, accompanied by the corresponding dates. But its value consisted in the circumstance that these dates were catalogued according to successive epochs; and it required only slight inspection to disclose the fact that they extended back to a period not very distant from our Christian Era.

This was a discovery to the learned world as welcome as any that could be made. It was unique in its kind. All attempts, thus far, had vainly sought to learn something about the history of the builders of those palaces and temples with whose ruins the peninsula was covered at the date of the arrival of the Spaniards, and which pointed to a long past and to the unceasing activity of a numberless population, which, while it was skilled in the most important branches of art and industry, and familiar with a luxury such as only ancient Asia and India had displayed, was yet governed by a despotic and hierarchical power. The native, when asked whose work the ruins were, would answer nothing but that they owed their origin, to men who, in ancient times, had immigrated from far distant countries.

The Manuscript disclosed at once the history of these strange immigrants, showed the progressive march of the conquest, and the contemporaneous foundation of the largest cities then in ruins, and furnished in the Maya language the chronology of each event and its corresponding epoch. By means of his extensive antiquarian knowledge Señor Perez made an exact translation of this Manuscript into Spanish, and afterwards undertook a critical interpretation