This is the name of the year when the foreigners arrived, the year One thousand five hundred and nineteen. This was the year when the foreigners arrived here at our town, <the town> of us, the Itzá, here in the land of Yucalpeten, 2 Yucatan, in the speech of the Maya Itzá.
So said the first Adelantado; Don Juan de Montejo, 3 because he was thus informed by Don Lorenso Chable when he listened to this conqueror 4 at Tixkokob. He received the foreigners with all his heart. This was the reason they named him Don Lorenso Chable, because he gave well-roasted meat to the foreigners and all the captains. He had a son also named Don Martin Chable. 5
This is the year which was current when the foreigners prepared to seize Yucalpeten 6 here. It was known by the priest, the prophet, Ah Xupan, 7 as he was called. Christianity was introduced to us in the year 1519. 8 The church at Merida was founded in the year 1540. 9 In the year 1599 the church at
Merida was completed. In the year 1648 yellow fever 1 occurred and the sickness 2 began <to afflict> us. /
| p. 64 C |
There was death by famine for five years, 1650, 1651, 1652, 1653 and 1654. Then the famine ended. There was a hurricane which killed Father Agustin Gomes in the year 1661. There was a drought in the year 1669. <The disease called> uzankak 3 occurred in 1692.
119:2 Yucalpeten is an attempt to turn into Maya the name Yucatan given by the Spaniards. The origin of the latter has been variously explained. The most plausible account is that of Ah Naum Pech, a contemporary of the Conquest. He states: "The Christian captains asked them in the Spanish language where they lived. They did not comprehend and merely replied, 'We do not understand what you say.' This they said, and <the Spaniards> called it Yucatan. It was the Land of the Turkey, the Land of the Deer" (Martinez 1926, p. 27).
119:3 Here again the son, Don Juan, is confused with his father, Don Francisco de Montejo, who conquered Yucatan.
119:4 The Maya allies of the Spaniards who had assisted in the Conquest afterwards called themselves "conquistadores" (Brinton 1882, p. 216). This was evidently the priest, Ah Kin Chable, mentioned on page 86. However, Montejo may be the conqueror referred to here.
119:5 The Chablé family of Tixkokob does not appear to have lived up to expectations. Already in 1581 or thereabouts, Diego de Santillan, the husband of Doña Beatriz de Montejo, writes of this town: "The governor of the said town of Tixkokob is Lorenzo Puch from the town of San Cristóbal de los Naborios (a suburb of Merida). For although the said town has a native chief, the government of the said town has not been entrusted to him, as he is not capable of it" (Relaciones de Yucatan, I, p. 281).
119:6 Yucalpeten, a Maya imitation of the name Yucatan, has been translated as "the neck of the land" (Molina Solís 1896, p. 168).
119:7 Ah Xupan, an early Maya prophet. Cf. Tizimin p. 13 and Appendix D.
119:8 Cortez exhorted the Indians at Cozumel to accept Christianity and set up a cross for them in 1519 (Herrera 1725, Dec. 2, Book 2, Chap. 3).
119:9 Although Montejo reached Merida in 1540, the Spanish city was not founded until early in 1542.
120:1 Maya xe-kik, literally blood-vomit.
120:2 This was the famous epidemic recorded in the French colony of Guadeloupe in this year. It broke out in Campeche in June and lasted for the next two years. Molina Solís 1910, p. 168. The Maya cimil can be translated as either sickness or death.
120:3 Uzankak is a term applied to both measles and scarlatina.