History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/31

Exported from Wikisource on September 4, 2024

8

SPANISH CONQUEST OF YUCATAN AND THE ITZAS

The political features of the League of Mayapan are difficult to describe with accuracy. Each of the three great cities had its ruling family. Below these was an order of personages called batab, each of whom held and ruled a portion of the country. The batab stood in much the same relation to the ruler of the large city as a medieval baron to the king. Doubtless each batab, ruling from his own city, had a hierarchy of officers under him. Probably Labna, Kabah, Chacmultun, Sayil, Hochob, Aké, Tihoo, Acanceh, Tinum, Kewick, and all the other cities in northern Yucatan were once seats of batabs who were more or less intimately connected with the ruler of one of the three great cities. There was ample machinery for the administration of justice, and crimes were fittingly punished. Such positions as the Halach Uinic (Real Man, i.e., king) of Mayapan and the office of batab of some lesser city usually were inherited according to the rules of primogeniture, but this custom could, for sufficient cause, be set aside.[1]

VI. The Period of the Toltec Mercenaries (1200-1450 A.D.). However much in the dark we may be as to the details of the

[2]

1. ↑ Seler (1908, p. 157 ff.) says that the Casa de las Monjas, the Akat tz'ib, and the Casa Colorada all belong to this period and that they are to be associated with the various buildings at Uxmal, Kabah, Labna, and elsewhere. Rain-god masks are a striking characteristic of the architecture of this period.

2. ↑ this is accepted in the main by modern writers. (Tozzer, 1907, p. 9; Faliès, 1915, vol. i, p. 247 ff.)
To summarize, we may say that the Cocomes were the lords of either Mayapan of Chichen Itza, though it is more likely they were identified with the former. They became too ambitious and powerful to please the Tutul Xiu of Uxmal and the ruler of Chichen; they called in Mexican mercenaries about 1200, and from then until about 1440 they became increasingly more arrogant until, in the latter year, the Xiu and other people who had been wronged completely destroyed the city of Mayapan, so that only two or three members of the ruling family escaped destruction. We have now reached the crux of this whole discussion. The three possible surviving Cocomes were: (1) the son of the last lord of Mayapan; (2) the Cocom Cat, who, according to Molina (quoting an old Relación), fled southward to Tiab at about that period; and (3) King Ixcuat Cocom of Aké, who, according to Nahau Pech, also went southward, about 1508 more or less.

There is a distinct possibility that Cocom Cat may eventually have got to Tayasal. It is likewise entirely possible to believe that from him descended that Cocom who, with Ahchatappol and Ahauppuc, came out from Tayasal to meet Padres Fuensalida and Orbita in 1618. (Villagutierre, p. 116.) Sapper (1904, p. 625) tells that a Juan Pablo Cocom became the leader of an insurrection at Bacalar in May, 1848.

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History of the Spanish Conquest of Yucatan and of the Itzas.pdf/31

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