Umatilla

“ Mann. "He is trying to be good here," pointing to his heart. "The good in him will grow. I will help him."
The old chief and the boy walked away slowly out of the shadows of the great trees and up the cool trail. The tall master followed them with his eye. In the departing forms he saw a picture of the disappearing race. He knew history well, and how it would repeat itself on the great plateau and amid the giant forests of the Oregon. He felt that the old man was probably one of the last great chiefs of the Umatillas. ”

“ We were favoured with a breeze increasing in freshness as the night drew on, and our mules made good time over the plain, so that by 9 o'clock we had reached the river which runs within a mile of the town. Just at this moment the moon rose and in the half-light the stream looked black and formidable, and our men hesitated and began to discuss the situation, as none of them knew the depth of the water; but the ever-ready Gorgonio pulled off some of his clothes, and soon put our doubts at rest by wading across and shouting back to us that the water was no more than breast high. ”

“ We were destined to receive that night yet another shock, for while preparing supper and chatting with the Indians round the fire in the outhouse, we learnt that there was no road out of the village practicable for mules except that by which we had arrived. The road we had been told of as leading south across the river to Cubulco was a myth: it was a mere track hardly passable for Indians carrying loads, and altogether impossible for animals. ”

“ Senor, we would evade Satan himself, did he lay snares for us. We muleteers are cunning fellows!"
"You speak truly," observed Pedro. "A Spanish muleteer is a strange being, and one that is as wily and active as a serpent; but they are happy fellows, I assure you, senor, and like no other men that I know of. A muleteer makes his home every where, because he is for ever wandering over all wide Spain. ”

“ Live, and show by future deeds your sorrow for your past crime.”
His dusky face beaming with delight, Umatula bowed low till his forehead touched the ground before Metilulu—afterwards to us—then, starting up, proudly grasped his shield and assagais, exclaiming—
That, to show his gratitude for the Chief’s gracious pardon, no warrior in Metilulu’s regiments should ever outrival him in warlike deeds, while he reckoned his life to belong to the noble-hearted white faces. ”

“ We traveled about sixteen miles this day, which brought us to Umatillo river. Here is an Indian town, the residence of the principal chiefs of the Caäguas. [96] At this time they were mostly in the mountains hunting. The road has been good; the first twelve miles led us through a well timbered country, the last four miles over prairie; the country has a dry appearance; the banks of the streams are lined with cottonwood, balm of gilead, choke cherries and every variety of bushes. The Indians have a few cultivated fields along this stream ”

“ Then a turn in the track showed the main range in front of us covered with dark forest to the summit and dotted here and there with bright green patches where the Indians had made their plantations. Heavy clouds hung over the mountain-tops, marking the edge of the rainfall which deluges the country to the north up to the end of February. A short descent brought us to the bank of a brilliantly clear stream, an affluent of the Rio Negro, and half an hour later we rode into the straggling village of San Miguel Uspantan, lying at the foot of the forest-clad sierra. ”

“ I had noticed an anaemic-looking man accompanied by a woman loitering about the village in the morning, and later in the day saw the same man in earnest conversation with Gorgonio at the ruins; but as he did not come to speak to me, and as I knew he did not belong to Copan, I took him to be a traveller whose curiosity had prompted him to leave the road to see what we were doing at the ruins. ”

“ There was a seething mass of dark humanity at the entrance, through which we had almost to fight our way to the platform.
Our route was by way of Umballa, which we reached in the early morning. The country was wrapped in a thick white mist before the sun rose, when it gradually cleared. Beyond Umballa the country was very flat, the dry lands varied with green crops and yellow with charlock, as before, and dotted with acacia trees. Occasionally we crossed wide rivers, or river beds, and the usual flocks of white cranes and brown kites were seen. ”

“ A few miles more brought us at last to a halt on the Amatola Flats; where, after a continued march of above 250 miles, we pitched tents by the banks of the Quesana River, at the foot of the Great Amatolas. The sun sank behind the purple mountains in a flood of crimson; and as the darkness gathered around, and troops of wolves and jackals commenced their nightly howling, the flames of the burning village grew brighter and more distinct on the dark hill side. ”

“ If we turn to such descriptions of the buildings of the Itzáes as have come down to us, we can see that a comparison of Tayasal with Tikál would be much the same as a comparison of Utatlan with Copan. There are the statements of eye-witnesses that the temples on the island were built with low stone walls into which posts were fixed to support a thatch roof, and, as I shall show later on, Cortés unconsciously confirms this statement when describing the town of Chacujál in Guatemala. ”

“ The Indians seem to be in absolute servitude to the Alcalde, who orders them to go when and where he pleases, and in our better moments we had pangs of conscience at being accomplices in such slave-driving; but such is the force of custom, that we often found ourselves fretting and fuming because the mozos failed to make their appearance, and their dilatoriness even drew down denunciation on their heads from the mouth of the ever-patient Gorgonio. At length five or six sulky Indians arrived, shouldered our luggage, and started off on the road to Santa Cruz ”

“ I was constantly regretting my inability to speak with the Indians and learn more of their daily life. To an onlooker that of the women seems hopelessly monotonous and devoid of any recreation or pleasure, and one could only silently sympathize with them in the patient labour of grinding maize for tortillas, and the never-ending task of washing clothes at the fountain or at the river's edge.
Whilst we were at Panajachél a matter of especial interest presented itself to us in the curious ceremonies of the Indian pilgrims returning from Esquipulas. ”

“ All the tribes or nations whom the Spaniards encountered in the subjugation of Guatemala and its neighbourhood appear to have had as their headquarters such strongholds as Utatlan and Iximché, or towns built on rocky islands in the lakes. Such was the stronghold in the lake of the Lacandones and the island town of Puchutla, described in the pages of Remesal, which was conquered in the year 1559. ”

“ He privately instructed the youth to seize every opportunity to learn if it were really true that the padres possessed neither gold nor silver, and did not beg for it nor hunt for it, as all other Christians did, and whether it were true that they neither had women in their houses nor treated with them elsewhere. It is needless to say that the young Indian chieftain was well received at Guatemala by Las Casas and his companions, and that he returned to his country well pleased, in company with Luis Cancer, who successfully commenced the conversion of the people. ”

“ THE PLAZA ATITLAN. Map of Utatlan, the ancient capital of the Quichés
entering it, one over thirty steep stone steps, and the other by a causeway made by hand, some part of which was already cut away, so that that night they might finish cutting it, and no horse could then have escaped into the country. As the city is very closely built and the streets very narrow we could not have escaped suffocation or falling down headlong in fleeing from the fire. ”

“ No; if only for the reason that the cave the Umlimo is supposed to speak from is one that no man could get into or out of—at least, so the Matabele say. No; the thing is a mere abstraction; an idea cleverly fostered by Messrs Shiminya and Co. ”

“ After having fasted for sixty days without raising their eyes during that time even to look at their wives, nor at those who brought them food, they came to the mouth of this zenote and, at the break of day, they threw into it some Indian women, some belonging to each of the Lords, and they told the women that they should beg for a good year in all those things which they thought fit, and thus they cast them in unbound, but as they were thrown headlong they fell into the water, giving a great blow on it ”

“ The Jefe was for instant dismissal, but the Indian parents begged that the schoolmaster might be allowed to retain his office, because he kept the children so quiet all the morning, and their mothers could make the tortillas in peace.
The women of the town are very clean and tidy in their dress, and take especial care of their hair: we saw numbers of them almost standing on their heads in the shallow edge of the lake in their efforts to give their hair a good washing, after which they dried and combed and oiled it and braided it into long tails. ”

“ The land was still low and there was not a hill in sight, but gradually the banks grew firmer and lost their swampy appearance. A short distance above the village of Palisada, which we passed before dark, the river divides in its downward course, the other half of the stream flowing to the west and reaching the sea below Frontera. Above this fork the Usumacinta is a fine broad stream, sometimes more than half a mile from bank to bank. On the third day we reached the little village of Monte Cristo, which was to be our starting-place for the ruins of Palenque ”

“ That many excellent and kind-hearted mulattos have existed no one will dispute; and a more mild and gentle set of men could hardly be found than the inhabitants of the island of Chiloe, who consist of Indians commingled with Spaniards in various proportions. ”

“ How was it possible with such a small staff of missionaries to teach the people and keep control of them when not more than three or four households could be got together at a time and these could only be revisited at long intervals? To meet this difficulty Las Casas sought to induce the Indians to dwell together in towns, and the township of Rabinal was founded about a league distant from its present site. ”

“ We sent on our pack-mules and luggage to the town of Panajachél to await our arrival, and set out ourselves to visit the small village of San Antonio, which lay three thousand feet below us on the border of the lake. The shortest way to the village is by a precipitous path down the cliff, used daily by the Indians, but altogether impossible for mules; so we packed what we needed for the night on the backs of some Indians and sent them off by this route. We rode back ourselves through Godines, and then took the road which leads through the great gap towards the sea-coast. ”

“ I had already spent some days taking angles and counting my steps in the direction of Cajabon when we met Carlos Lopez returning to Coban in company with a deputation of Cajabon Indians who were going to the Jefe Político to protest against the orders they had received from him to accompany me into the forests. Carlos told me that he had met with no success whatever in his mission, and that the reason most frequently given for not accepting service with the expedition was that it was unsafe to go with me, as “Los Ingleses comen gente” (the English were cannibals!) ”

“ Each house in the village had its saint, and every now and then the villagers would form a small procession to escort a saint on a round of visits to his neighbours. Niña Chica's saint was San Antonio, and all the gaudy labels on my tins of food, and all the shreds of coloured paper in which the things had been packed, were carefully preserved by the old lady for the decoration of the corner of her hut, where stood a very dilapidated image enshrined in a cracked glass cupboard. ”

“ When in order to examine the surface of the mounds Gorgonio used his machete to cut away some of the scrubby bushes growing on the summits the Indians were almost ready to go for him—so valuable has anything which can be used as firewood become in this dried-up neighbourhood.
The village itself is an uninteresting collection of houses built of adobes and roofed with tiles. The cabildo was under repair and roofless, and there was no school-house ”

“ We stacked our baggage as well as we could on logs and stones, then I set up my camp-cot, Gorgonio slung his hammock between the posts, and the Indians, who for some unknown reason had brought no hammocks with them, rolled themselves up in their blankets, and fitted their bodies into the depressions in the uneven mud floor, through which protruded knobs of limestone rock, and were soon snoring. ”

“ In October 1537 Las Casas himself set out for Sacapulas, and was soon to have proof given him of the influence of the missionary teaching. The cacique, who was known to the Spaniards by the name of Don Juan, had made arrangements for the marriage of his brother, the youth who had accompanied the traders to Guatemala, to the daughter of the Cacique of Coban, and had prepared great festivities wherewith to celebrate the wedding. On such occasions it was an old custom to perform certain ceremonies when visitors from Coban crossed the river which divided the two jurisdictions ”

“ To judge from the size of the churches, these two villages must at one time have been important towns: now they are squalid, half-deserted places, where pigs and goats alone seem to flourish, and the huge dilapidated churches would be capable of holding not only the whole of the sallow-faced, dyspeptic-looking population, but nearly all the houses as well. At Comitan, the last village before reaching the Honduras frontier, the Alcalde stopped us and demanded Gorgonio’s passport. ”