Yucatan before Lindbergh
Dawley, Thomas R. Jr.
YUCATAN BEFORE LINDBERGH By THOMAS R. DAWLEY, jr. TO THE writer, who knows the region, according to the Spanish adage, "as the palm of his hand," Colonel Lindbergh's recent aerial exploration of...
...The natives of the Peten country, whose navigation was limited to paddling around the lake in canoes or dugouts, did not believe that a boat could be made to sail around their island...
...They were Franciscan monks who had made their way down from Merida, the seat of the bishopric, in search of lost souls...
...On the west are the barracks, the commandant's quarters, the town hall and jail...
...Fronds of palms and the long leaves of banana plants decorated the place, and good old Don Pedro, laughing and smiling, made me the hero of the occasion...
...TO THE writer, who knows the region, according to the Spanish adage, "as the palm of his hand," Colonel Lindbergh's recent aerial exploration of Yucatan and a part of Guatemala was a splendid adventure...
...One of the stories was of a wicked old governor who came later, and whose liver was as black as night...
...My dreams were haunted at times by odd visions of the ruins buried in the forests on the other side of the lake...
...The east and south sides are hedged by retaining walls, above which flourished, when last I saw the city, a row of cocoanut trees...
...He would not listen to their plea for a home and a chance to earn their daily bread...
...When the horse died, they were overcome with fear that the great white chief would return and demand an accounting for his god...
...To make amends, an image of the horse was made of stone and placed in the temple...
...The group of Mayas at the lake, the remnant of a people at one time the most advanced and powerful of all the native races on the American continent, were an inhospitable lot...
...A gigantic tree on the slope of a hillside, buttressed by immense growths at its base, merging into sprawling roots like the arms of an octopus burrowing into the ground, threw its great branches overhead...
...Its plaza crowns the truncated rock, the north side of which is flanked by the quaint church of the Franciscans, and the governor's house adjoining...
...They were clad in brown woolen gowns, with a piece of rope for a girdle...
...He told them that they were free and independent...
...The name of the place where you take the trail to Belize is called 'El Ahor-cado-The Gallows.' " One of my achievements was the building of a sailboat...
...or at least it had in my time...
...It is with no desire to detract from Colonel Lindbergh's fine achievement that I point out the fact that the ruins which he saw have been seen and explored many times since the conquest of Yucatan nearly four hundred years ago...
...Their doors were always open to me, and I was treated as a guest who honored them with my presence...
...It is on a pyramidal rock rising out of the water about midway between the peninsula of Tayasal, which separates the lower lake from the upper, and the mainland, a distance of about seven hundred meters...
...The Colonel is an aviator and not a specialist on Maya ruins or Maya history...
...They thought they recognized in the monks the return of their messiah...
...The poor fellows saw no reason why they should be hanged, and as they were being conveyed in a canoe across the lake, they threw themselves on their knees begging the corporal not to hang them, for they had done no wrong...
...This sickness, incidentally, usually yielded to my empiric knowledge, the practice of which was not always, by any means, of my own volition...
...They told of the good old days of the king, who sent the big silver dollars to pay the soldiers...
...It was rightly named by the Mayas, "yax" in their language (pronounced "yash") in this instance meaning "blue," and "ha," "water...
...put some of their best citizens in jail, flogged others, and even dictated to them the kind of clothes they should, wear...
...There was something grand, something ennobling in being in them all alone and not afraid...
...It was a melancholy, mournful sound...
...They conveyed it to their island city, and placed it in their great temple along with their own gods, burned incense before it and tried to feed it on their choicest viands...
...In my time there was a cluster of five or six Maya huts on the edge of the lake that sheltered the only human inhabitants in all that forest from British Honduras to Lake Peten and the city of Flores...
...Lake Yaxha, mentioned in the despatch as being in British Honduras, is actually in Guatemala...
...It was dark on my return to the government house where I was a guest of the governor, and to my surprise I found preparations had been made to give me a reception...
...Another time their cow, evidently a new acquisition, dropped a calf...
...He had been a soldier, was more Indian than white, and what he didn't know about woodcraft wasn't worth knowing...
...Likewise in the further explorations over the jungles of Yucatan, both the Colonel and his radio operator believed that the crumbling monuments of a forgotten past that peered forth were then seen for the first time by white men...
...The crosses were all that was left of their religion, for many years had passed since they had had the rites of their Church...
...Indeed it is a miniature city, having all that goes to make up a city...
...They were fond of music, feasting and dancing, story-telling and traditions...
...They were taken before the heartless governor...
...Now the governor, Don Pedro, was a good man, sent to replace a very bad one (whom I had been instrumental in arresting and dispatching with an escort of soldiers to the capital...
...The hammock is the Maya's bed in which he is born, in which he is rocked to sleep, which is his connubial couch, and in which he dies...
...It is said that it can be seen at low water, resting on the bottom of the lake...
...Later, the starlit sky was my canopy...
...They feasted them and danced before them, and escorting them to the temple, they exhibited the stone image of the horse...
...Whether or not the Mayas were color blind I am unable to say, for they used the same word to designate green as they used for blue...
...There was not room for many more...
...Save for sandals their feet were bare, and they were without weapons of any sort...
...I traveled from Flores to the frontier and back many times, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied...
...It was usually a day's journey from the frontier to the lake, and Flores was two or three days beyond, or perhaps a week...
...It was discovered by Cor-tez, the conqueror of Mexico, on his memorable march to Honduras to punish his rebellious captain, Cristobal de Olid...
...Why you darned fools," said the corporal, "we are not going to hang you...
...I wanted it christened in good old orthodox style, but Don Pedro interposed, not because he was not a good Christian, but because-he being the appointee of a "liberal" government-it was not good policy...
...The dollars were cut into pieces to make change, and were still in circulation, but fast disappearing to be used for cuff buttons and studs...
...Through their tales there usually ran a vein of humor as well as tragedy...
...The population was kept down partly by misrule, partly by the misuse of strong drink, and partly by periodical epidemics called by the natives "the plague," a form of dysentery or cholera...
...But they did return and converted the Itzas to Christianity...
...I often camped at the lake-side a short distance from the huts...
...On another occasion I was ten days traversing the forest from Tenosique on the Mexican frontier...
...He did not openly object, but managed in some way not to have Father Pineda turn up at my proposed christening...
...The story of the white man's god, the god of thunder and lightning, became a legend...
...When my boat was ready to be launched, there was a great gathering at the water's edge...
...The monks were seized, conveyed across the lake, set ashore and told never to return again...
...I was fifteen days getting there with my equipment and Indian carriers from Coban, the last centre of population of northern Guatemala, at the edge of the forest which separates it from the island city...
...High priest followed high priest to the graves of their ancestors...
...The army, consisting of twenty-four soldiers, turned out to assist, and to the cheers of the populace the bugler and the drumer sounded the "diana...
...It was during the "war of the races," when the Mayas rose in rebellion massacring the inhabitants and destroying half of Yucatan...
...There was dancing which continued until the early hours of morning and, believe it or not, the festive board in the banquet hall, was loaded with viands among which shone conspicuously roasted suckling pigs and capons nearly as large as turkeys...
...It was the signal to be up and doing...
...Don Pedro's name is graven upon the hearts of all who knew him...
...On this occasion a group gathered around the baby calf chattering like a flock of turkeys around a reptile which one of them has discovered...
...It is a beautiful sheet of water glimmering amid the verdure of the tropical forest like a sheet of polished glass reflecting a tinge of blue...
...it has its garrison of soldiers, its municipality, its governor, and its vicar, good old Father Pineda...
...The watch fires always burned on Tayasal, and an outlook was kept for the return of the white chief, who became a sort of messiah...
...I found the people kind, gentle and hospitable, but not remarkable for their courage, which was one of the causes of their persecutions and sufferings...
...Nor could I blame them, considering the persecutions and ill treatment they had received at the hands of their more or less white brethren...
...I was reputed to be omniscient...
...Flores was originally a city of the Itzas, a branch of the great Maya family...
...My companion then was a native boy of my own age, a most loyal and devoted servant...
...With the first streak of dawn a tremendous din was raised by the cackling of Montezuma's hens, the cries of chachalacas, and the calls of turkeys and other wild fowl of the forest...
...They were confronted with a problem which was solved by one of the Maya women fetching a blanket into which the calf was rolled, wrapped up and put to bed in a hammock in one of the houses...
...Many years passed...
...Now the Mayas never were much versed in cowology, the native races having had no domestic animals of consequence before the coming of the Spaniard...
...Flores is rated as a city by the Guatemala government...
...I loved the forests...
...Tical, much farther on to the northwest, consisted of a high pyramid crowned with the ruins of a Maya temple...
...It was the romance of Peten that took me to Flores, the city in the lake...
...To their horror the monks declared it, as well as the other images, to be the work of the devil, and fell to breaking them to pieces...
...He went to his grave owning only the shroud in which he was wrapped...
...They called it the god of thunder and lightning because they had seen the Spaniards shoot deer from its back on the savannas that surround the lake...
...The people in the lake were filled with joy...
...he exclaimed and called the corporal's guard...
...it depended upon the weather and the condition of the travelers, for sometimes on their journey from Flores they were so full of liquid exhilaration that they were unable to make very rapid progress...
...A ray of sunlight shot down through the leaves as if it were aslant under a cathedral dome across the channel...
...On one occasion, presenting myself at the door of a hut, I asked the woman within for water...
...The image of the horse of Flores was thrown into the lake, the pagan temple destroyed and a church erected in its stead...
...It housed about twelve hundred souls...
...Yax die" they translated as meaning "green tree," and when I asked why in the one instance "yax" was blue and in the other it was green, I could get no further than that it was so...
...I would lie suspended in my hammock as the sun disappeared behind the dark rim of forest that encircled the blue water beyond, tinging the sky above a glorious crimson...
...On his departure he left with them an injured horse, which they confused in some way with the white man's religion...
...The launching was a success, and I demonstrated my ability as a sailor by circumnavigating the island city...
...We often discussed in Flores the problem of how its builders had obtained their supply of water, for there was no flowing stream, lake, "cenote" or water hole anywhere for miles around...
...The lake touches the trail from British Honduras at a point about two-thirds of the distance from Belize to Flores, the capital of the Department of Peten, Guatemala...
...In a small clearing a short distance beyond their cluster of huts were mounds of mellow earth with rude crosses on them designating the graves of their dead...
...At least I told the governor that if he would supply the material and the workmen, I would direct the building of the boat...
...At last two white men appeared...
...We were informed by the Colonel's radio operator that after the take-off from Belize on the third expedition, ruins were discovered in the vicinity of Lake Yaxha, British Honduras, "believed never to have been seen before by any white man...
...He was an honest man and a just man...
...To the gallows with them...
...She answered in effect, "There is plenty of water in the lake...
...They would give the traveler neither food nor drink unless he asked for them in Maya, and he might not get them even then...
...However, as the saying goes, I was "the one-eyed man in the blind man's country...
...Two refugees from the war-stricken land turned up...
...However, the legend of the horse still remains...
...It was a delightful spot for me to throw myself down to rest and contemplate the grandeur of nature...
...The conqueror was well received by the simple natives, who entertained him and gave him food...
...In the night the silence was sometimes broken by the distant cry of a puma...
...I recall an open space on the trail to the frontier, devoid of tangled underbrush and overhanging lianas...
...There was not a rod of ground in the whole of Yucatan that these barefooted missionaries did not cover and win over, as the ruins of their churches scattered throughout the land attest...
Vol. 11 • December 1929 • No. 6
