Thomas William Francis Gann

“ The manners, customs, religious conceptions, and daily life of all these Indians are very similar, though among the Indians of British Honduras, who come more closely in contact with outside influences, old customs are dying out, and old ideas and methods are being superseded by new. The language of the tribes here considered, with slight local dialectical variations, is the same; all are of the same physical type; in fact, there can be little doubt that they are the direct descendants of those Maya who occupied the peninsula of Yucatan at the time of the conquest. ”

“ Vague reports had been in circulation for some years as to the existence of a mound close to the headwaters of the Rio Hondo, where the Indians still practiced to some extent their ancient religion. It was said that the mound contained a stone chamber in which stood on a stone pedestal a life-sized image, painted in various colors, and that around the walls of the chamber were niches in which rested life-sized stone turtles, also painted; furthermore, that the bush Indians of the neighborhood were in the habit of coming to the mound for the purpose of burning incense before the idol. ”

“ The natives will whisper a message into the ear of a corpse with the certainty of having it conveyed to a friend or relative in the next world. They firmly believe that the clay images of the gods upon incense burners, at one time found in considerable numbers in forests which had been uncut since the days of their ancestors, live, walk about, and dance at certain seasons. Another belief held by the Indians is that the images of Christian saints are endowed at times with life and perform acts desired by their devotees. ”

“ When quarreling among themselves both women and girls use the most disgusting and obscene language, improvising as they go along, with remarkable quick-wittedness, not binding themselves down to any conventional oaths or forms of invective, but pouring out a stream of vituperation and obscenity to meet each case, which strikes with unerring fidelity the weak points in the habits, morals, ancestry, and personal appearance of their opponents. The young girls are as bad as, if not worse than, the older women, for whom they seem to have no respect. ”

“ The Indians are undoubtedly cruel, but not wantonly so, as the shocking acts of cruelty reported as being perpetrated by them from time to time are usually by way of reprisal for similar or worse acts on the part of the Mexicans. Before the rising of the Indians in 1848, they were throughout this part of Yucatan practically in a state of slavery, and were often treated by their Spanish masters with the utmost barbarity. ”

“ The feathered serpent appears to permeate all Maya art in this section of the Maya area; whether painted on pottery or stucco, or incised on bone, pottery, or other material, one encounters him at every step. The serpent rests upon a row of glyphs, very much defaced, and below this is a mass of bows, knots, plumes, and glyphs. Farther along is a fierce-faced human figure, probably a warrior, with lofty and elaborate headdress, ornamented with many long feather plumes. ”

“ It happens occasionally that an individual does perforce acquire wealth, as in the case of the head chief of the Icaichè Indians, who was paid a salary by the Mexican Government to keep his people quiet, and royalties on chicle cut on his lands by various contractors. ”

“ Excavations were consequently made all around the mound, for a distance of 10 to 15 yards from its base, through the alluvial soil, down to the limestone rock, a distance of 6 inches to 2 feet. These excavations brought to light enormous quantities of fragments of crude, coarse pottery vessels, for the greater part the remains of large hourglass-shaped incense burners, which had been decorated on their outer surfaces with either a human head or an entire human figure. ”

“ Till late at night the women may be seen spinning, embroidering, and hammock-making by the light of a native candle or a small earthenware cuhoon-nut oil lamp, meanwhile laughing and chatting gayly over the latest village scandal, the older ones smoking cigarettes, while the men squat about on their low wooden stools outside the house gravely discussing the weather, the milpas, the hunting, or the iniquities of the Alcalde. Among the Indian women of British Honduras the old customs are rapidly dying out ”

“ Among the modern Maya Indians of this area food is no longer placed with the dead, but every Hanal pishan, or All Souls' Day, tortillas, posol, meat, and other foods are placed upon the graves, on the odor of which the soul of the departed is supposed to regale itself. ”

“ Nominally they are Christians, but the longer one lives among them, and the better one gets to know them, the more he realizes that their Christianity is to a great extent merely a thin veneer, and that fundamentally their religious conceptions and even their ritual and ceremonies are survivals—degenerate, much changed, and with most of their significance lost—but still survivals of those of their ancestors of pre-Columbian days. ”

“ Marked attrition of the incisors seems to be present in nearly all the teeth of individuals past middle life found in sepulchral mounds throughout this area, which is rather remarkable, as the staple diet of the ancient inhabitants must have been nearly identical with that of the Indians of the present day; that is, maize ground to a fine paste on a stone metate, which of necessity contains a good deal of grit from the metate, so much so that the modern Maya say that an old man eats two rubbing stones and six rubbers during his life. ”

“ When thwarted while in this condition his temper is likely to flare up at the slightest provocation, whereupon the thin veneer of civilization and restraint is sloughed in a moment, and he becomes savage, impudent, overbearing, and contemptuous toward the stranger, and ready to draw his machete and fight to kill, with friend or foe alike. ”

“ These people have a peculiar and indescribable odor, rather pleasant than otherwise; it is not affected by washing or exercise, is much stronger in some individuals than in others, and is perceptible in both sexes and at all ages. The women are, on the whole, both physically and mentally superior to the men, and when dressed in gala costume for a "baile" with spotlessly clean, beautifully embroidered garments, all the gold ornaments they possess or can borrow, and often a coronet of fire beetles, looking like small electric lamps in their hair, they present a very attractive picture. ”

“ Great quantities of fragments of painted stucco, of all shapes and sizes, were dug out of the mound, but the human figures, with the pillars which separated them, were the only objects the original positions of which on the wall it was possible to determine with certainty. Resting upon the layer of hard cement in which the wall terminated below, between 5 and 6 feet from the eastern end and close to the wall itself, was found an adult human skeleton, the bones of which were huddled together within a very small compass, in a manner suggesting secondary burial. ”

“ The snakes, each represented with a double curve in the body, are about 51/2 inches in length and one-half inch in diameter; they are made of rough clay, painted red. The effigies of the quashes, though rough and crudely made, are rather vigorous and lifelike in execution. Each is about 3 inches long. This small arboreal animal, which abounds in the district, is represented in a variety of comical positions; so well indeed has the artist studied his model that one can not help thinking that he must have kept some of the little animals as pets, as many of the Maya Indians do at the present day. ”

“ There can be no doubt that these bowls and hourglass-shaped vessels, each decorated externally with a human figure or face, usually that of a god, were used as incense burners, since a number of them, as already stated, were found in a mound at Santa Rita with half burnt out incense still contained in them. Moreover, their use for this purpose persists to the present day among the Lacandones [50] and even among the Santa Cruz Indians. These incense burners occur most frequently in the central part of the Maya area and are not common in northern Yucatan or southern Guatemala. ”

“ The marriage tie is a somewhat loose one, and the more the Indians come in contact with civilization the looser it seems to become. In British Honduras, where the Indians are closely associated with Spaniards, Mestizos, Negroes, and other races, the women change their partners with the utmost facility. The Negroes are called kisinbosh, "black devils," by the Indians, a term which, however it originated, is now employed without any particularly opprobrious significance, as many of the Maya women show no repugnance to a Negro husband. ”

“ The Maya probably kept small domestic animals and birds, [17] as great numbers of rough stone troughs are found in the mounds, precisely similar to those manufactured and used by the modern Maya Indians for watering their fowls, while eggs, with turkeys and other birds, have been found, held in the hands of figurines upon the incense burners, as offerings to the gods. They seem to have made periodical expeditions to the cays and islands off the coast to fish and collect shellfish, as quantities of net-sinkers, flint chips, potsherds, and broken javelin heads are found on many of the cays. ”

“ As the tide of Maya migration was undoubtedly from south to north, and as British Honduras stands midway between Guatemala and Yucatan, it is only reasonable to suppose that the colonization of the greater part of it by the Maya took place at some period between the abandonment of the cities of Quirigua and Coban, and the rise of Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and other Yucatan cities. ”

“ The Indians are very jealous of outside interference in their affairs and do not permit foreigners to reside in their villages. An exception was made in the case of a number of Chinese coolies imported into British Honduras many years ago, most of whom ran away to the Santa Cruz country, where they were well received and married Indian wives. Among their offspring, it is interesting to note, are found a very unusual proportion of defectives. On one occasion the Mexican Government commenced to cut a road through from Peto to Santa Cruz, the Indian capital. ”

“ During the early years of the Spanish occupancy it is probable that the Indians, even in this remote and little visited region, living in a constant state of semiwarfare and rebellion, robbed, enslaved, driven from their villages, with little time to cultivate their milpas, gradually lost their ancient traditions and arts, and, long neglecting, ultimately almost entirely forgot, the elaborate ritual connected with their former religion. Such a decadence may be observed in comparing the incense burners illustrated in plate 20 and figure 68. ”

“ Rude specimens, with the face of the god only decorating the outside of the vessel, were found by Sapper and Charnay in use among the Lacandon Indians a few years ago. The dress and ornaments of these clay figurines, which vary from 1 to 2 feet in height, are those found almost universally throughout the Maya area. The large circular ear ornaments, with a tassel or twisted pendant hanging from the center, the curious projecting curved ornament above the nose, the small button-like labrets at each corner of the mouth, are present in all, and are highly characteristic. ”

“ Sometimes the whole unaffected population depart en masse, leaving the dead unburied and the stricken lying in their hammocks, with a supply of food and water, to do the best they can for themselves. The Indians employ the same mode of treatment for this disease as for malarial fever—sweating followed by immersion in cold water, treatment which, it need hardly be said, is not infrequently followed by disastrous results.
Venereal diseases of all kinds are remarkably rare among all the Indian tribes. Among the Santa Cruz and Icaichè such diseases were practically unknown. ”

“ Indian men and women of all ages and classes, when attacked by any serious malady, are found to be lacking in vitality and stamina; they relinquish hope, and relax their grip on life very easily, seeming to hold it lightly and as not worth a fight to retain. An elderly man or woman will sometimes take to the hammock without apparent physical symptoms of disease beyond the anemia and splenitis from which nearly all suffer, and merely announce Ile in cimli, "I am going to die." ”

“ The hair of both sexes is long, straight, coarse, black, and luxuriant on the head, where it extends very low over the forehead, but is almost entirely absent from other parts of the body. The women usually wear their hair hanging down the back in two plaits. Their faces are round and full, with rather high cheek bones; the skull is highly brachicephalic in type. The following indices were taken from a small number of Santa Cruz Indians, mostly males of middle age:
The eyes are large and dark brown, the ears small and closely applied to the head, the nose rather broad, and the jaw prognathous. ”

“ Year by year the mound becomes flatter and less well defined, till at length most of these mounds will be hardly distinguishable from the surrounding earth. In the north, on the contrary, the mounds are built of large blocks of limestone, with only a small admixture of earth and limestone dust. In many cases the blocks are mortared together, and in nearly all cases layers of cement are alternated with layers of stone. The whole forms a practically solid block of masonry, capable of withstanding for all time the less heavy rainfall of this part of British Honduras and Yucatan. ”