Annals of the Cakchiquels

The Cakchiquels, whose traditions and early history are given in the present work from the pen of one of their own authors, were a nation of somewhat advanced culture, who occupied a portion of the area of the present State of Guatemala.

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Their territory is a table land about six thousand feet above the sea, seamed with numerous deep ravines, and supporting lofty mountains and active volcanoes. Though but fifteen degrees from the equator, its elevation assures it a temperate climate, while its soil is usually fertile and well watered.

They were one of a group of four closely related nations, adjacent in territory and speaking dialects so nearly alike as to be mutually intelligible. The remaining three were the Quiches, the Tzutuhils and the Akahals, who dwelt respectively to the west, the south and the east of the Cakchiquels.

These dialects are well marked members of the Maya linguistic stock, and differ from that language, as it is spoken in its purity in Yucatan, more in phonetic modifications than in grammatical structure or lexical roots. Such, however, is the fixedness of this linguistic family in its peculiarities, that a most competent student of the Cakchiquel has named the period of two thousand years as the shortest required to explain the difference between this tongue and the Maya.

About the same length of time was that assigned since the arrival of this nation in Guatemala, by the local historian, Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzman, who wrote in the seventeenth century, from an examination of their most ancient traditions, written and verbal.10-2 Indeed, none of these affined tribes claimed to be autochthonous. All pointed to some distant land as the home of their ancestors, and religiously preserved the legends, more or less mythical, of their early wanderings until they had reached their present seats. How strong the mythical element in them is, becomes evident when we find in them the story of the first four brothers as their four primitive rulers and leaders, a myth which I have elsewhere shown prevailed extensively over the American continent, and is distinctly traceable to the adoration of the four cardinal points, and the winds from them.

These four brothers were noble youths, born of one mother, who sallied forth from Tulan, the golden city of the sun, and divided between them all the land from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to the confines of Nicaragua, in other words, all the known world.

The occurrence of the Aztec name of the City of Light, Tulan (properly, Tonatlan), in these accounts, as they were rehearsed by the early converted natives, naturally misled historians to adopt the notion that these divine culture heroes were "Toltecs," and even in the modern writings of the Abbè Brasseur (de Bourbourg), of M. Dèsirè Charnay, and others, this unreal people continue to be set forth as the civilizers of Central America.

No supposition could have less support. The whole alleged story of the Toltecs is merely an euhemerized myth, and they are as pure creations of the fancy as the giants and fairies of mediæval romance. They have no business in the pages of sober history.