The Map, and the Meeting at Maní

Yucatan Before and After the Conquest, by Diego de Landa, tr. William Gates, [1937], at sacred-texts.com

The Map, and the Meeting at Maní.

In 1842, after Stephens and his party had finished at Uxmal, they went as the Xius had done over 400 years before, to Maní. Being there permitted to hunt in the archives for some records to throw light on the past, he found not only the drawing reproduced in Cogolludo and later in Morley's Copan, of what was supposed to be the massacre at Otzmal in 1536 (really a semi-prophetic katun-wheel), but also a map and two papers dated 1556 and 1557, all three bearing the word Uxmal. The full story should be read in his Travels in Yucatan, in volume two; but in substance the earlier paper related, in Maya, how a commission appointed by the governor, under the judge Felipe Manrique, and accompanied by the interpreter Gaspar Antonio (our Chi), arrived from Uxmal at Maní with an assemblage of the leading men, Xius and others, to delimit and fix the boundaries of Xius, Cocoms and other clans, in 1516. The other paper, also in Maya, tells of the

p. 133

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p. 134

gathering at Maní in 1557 at the house of the Xiu chief man, Francisco Montejo Xiu, governor of Maní, "and of the jurisdiction of Tutul Xiu," and how they settled the limits and erected crosses, at twenty-two places.

By the aid of Cura Carrillo (later Bishop), they with much trouble got a translation, of which the essential parts are printed by Stephens; and also an engraving of the accompanying map. These papers he tells us were in a thick volume, of which the 1557 document was on the 157th page, and the other a few pages further on. To make our own story short, however, these papers are certainly not the identical leaves in our volume, but equally certainly our pages are contemporary transcripts. The map is the same, with Maní in the center, and Uxmal showing, just as given by Stephens. Practically the same roads lead out from Maní in each, but a number of outlying town names are omitted in our copy, while several personal names are inserted. Also a comparison of the text of the 1557 document here with Carrillo's translation shows that the originals must have been substantially but not identically the same. Our copy omits mention of the judge Manrique and the visit to Uxmal, but also it is considerably longer, listing various towns not given in Stephens, ending with the final statement that after all the proper inspections and agreements of the various almehenob, the ubatabil cahob or town governors, this certified 'transcript' had been made, on August 15, 1557, that all might see and know it as true.

Furthermore, similar independent references to this assemblage and its work are to be found in the still unpublished Maya text of the Calkiní Chronicle, ^* seeming to show that various certified copies of this great settlement were made for the different regions involved, of the Xius, the Canuls beyond Maxcanú, the Cocoms of Sotuta, those of Calotmul, etc.; and here we have the original Oxkutzcab copies, those seen by Stephens having disappeared.

Footnotes

134:* A photographic facsimile of the Calkins has however been published by the Maya Society, in its Publ. No. 8.