A record of the count of the katuns since the discovery of Chichen Itzá occurred. It is written for the town in order that it may be known by anyone who wishes to be informed of the count of the katuns.
6 Ahau 2 was when the discovery of Chichen Itzá occurred.
4 Ahau.
2 Ahau.
13 Ahau was when the mat <of the katun> was counted in order. 3
11 Ahau.
9 Ahau.
7 Ahau.
5 Ahau.
3 Ahau.
1 Ahau. 4
12 Ahau.
10 Ahau.
8 Ahau was when Chichen Itzá was abandoned. There were thirteen folds of katuns 1 when they established their houses at Chakanputun. 2
6 Ahau.
4 Ahau was when the land was seized by them at Chakanputun.
2 Ahau.
13 Ahau.
11 Ahau. /
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9 Ahau.
7 Ahau.
5 Ahau.
3 Ahau.
1 Ahau.
12 Ahau.
10 Ahau.
8 Ahau was when Chakanputun was abandoned by the Itzá men. Then they came to seek homes again. For thirteen folds of katuns had they dwelt in their houses at Chakanputun. This was always 3 the katun when the Itzá went beneath the trees, beneath the bushes, beneath the vines, to their misfortune.
6 Ahau.
4 Ahau.
2 Ahau.
13 Ahau.
11 Ahau.
9 Ahau.
7 Ahau.
5 Ahau.
3 Ahau.
1 Ahau.
12 Ahau.
10 Ahau.
8 Ahau was when the Itzá men again abandoned their homes because of the treachery 1 of Hunac Ceel, because of the banquet 2 with the people of Izamal. 3 For thirteen folds of katuns they had dwelt there, when they were driven out by Hunac Ceel because of the giving of the questionnaire 4 of the Itzá. 5
6 Ahau.
4 Ahau was when the land of Ich-paa 6 Mayapan was seized by the Itzá men who had been separated from their homes because of the people of Izamal and because of the treachery of Hunac Ceel. 7 /
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2 Ahau.
13 Ahau.
11 Ahau.
9 Ahau.
7 Ahau.
5 Ahau.
3 Ahau.
1 Ahau.
12 Ahau.
10 Ahau.
8 Ahau was when there was fighting with stones at Ich-paa Mayapan because of the seizure of the fortress. They broke down the city wall because of the joint government in the city of Mayapan. 8
6 Ahau.
4 Ahau was when the pestilence occurred; it was when the vultures entered the houses 1 within the fortress. 2
2 Ahau was when the eruption of pustules occurred. It was smallpox.
13 Ahau was when the rain-bringer died. It was the sixth year. The year-count was to the east. It was <the year> 4 Kan. Pop was set to the east. . . . It was the <fif>teenth <day of the month> Zip. 9 Imix was the day when the rain-bringer, Napot Xiu, died. It was the year of our Lord 158. 3
11 Ahau was when the mighty men arrived from the East. They were the ones who first brought <disease> 4 here to our land, <the land of > us who are Maya, in the year 1513. 5 /
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9 Ahau was when Christianity began, when baptism occurred. It was in this katun that Bishop Toral arrived here also. It was when the hangings ceased in the year of our Lord 1546. 6
7 Ahau was when Bishop de Landa died. 7
5 Ahau.
3 Ahau.
135:1 The following three chronicles have been dependably translated by Brinton and Martinez (Brinton 1882; Martinez 1912, 1927). If the present translator has ventured to disagree with them in some particulars, it is because new material has come to light.
135:2 The katun consisted of twenty tuns of 360 days each, making 7200 days in all, and was named for the day Ahau on which it ended.
135:3 Fifty years ago Brinton translated this sentence: "The thirteenth ahau; Pop was set in order." He admits that he was at a loss for the exact bearing of the expression, but since Pop was the name of the first month in the Maya year, he concludes that this is a record of the adoption of the Maya calendar at that time (Brinton 1882, p. 150). Later it was thought that this statement recorded a calendrical change of some sort. But although Pop, the name of the first month of the year, means mat, we have seen on page 72 of the present work that there was also a mat of the katun and that it was "counted in order." (See page 72, note 13.) Here we have the actual count, and it seems obvious that it is the so-called mat of the katun which was counted in order in this case. Moreover Katun 13 Ahau is the last of the recurring series of 13 katuns, and it would be the time to make a count of the preceding katun-markers of this period, now that it had elapsed. The following day is 1 Imix, the day with which Landa tells us the Maya calendar began, and the first day of the new series. Further mention of the mat of the katun will be found on page 165. Cf. Roys 1922, p. 52, and Dieseldorff 1931, p. 31.
135:4 The long gaps in these chronicles, sometimes covering more than two centuries, are puzzling. Besides the so-called second Chumayel chronicle which is really a historical folk-song, there are four which have come down to us, and they are uniform in the two following particulars. All four end about the second decade of the Seventeenth Century and none of them take on the character of a genuine chronicle except for the period following the destruction of Mayapan, which occurred about the middle of the Fifteenth Century. Subsequent to that event the entries are fairly frequent, but during the thousand years prior to that date, a period which the Mani, Tizimin and first Chumayel chronicles purport to cover, the historical entries are few and far between. The most likely conclusion to be drawn from these circumstances is that for the long period before the fall of Mayapan our chronicles are compilations or reconstructions made by early Seventeenth Century Maya writers from the historical allusions contained in the katun-prophecies and the old folk-songs, supplemented no doubt by a certain amount of oral tradition. That the Maya once had genuine chronicles written in hieroglyphic characters, there is little doubt, as has been demonstrated by Carrillo y Ancona (1872, p. 563); and it is probable that some of these were composed in much the same form as the chronicles of the Books of Chilam Balam, only with more numerous entries.
136:1 Possibly the reference is to the folds of the screen-like book in which the katuns were recorded, or else to thirteen turns of the katun-wheel.
136:2 Chakanputun is generally supposed to have been the modern Champoton in Southwestern Yucatan. The latter name is substituted for Chakanputun on page 75 of the Codex Perez.
136:3 Katun 8 Ahau recurred approximately every 256 years, and for a thousand years every time a katun of this name occurred, the Itzá were driven from their homes, no matter where they were living at the time. Late in the Seventh Century A.D. they were expelled from Chichen Itzá after their first occupation of that city. In the middle of the Ninth Century they were driven out of Chakanputun. At the end of the Twelfth Century they were again driven from Chichen Itzá by Hunac Ceel. About the middle of the Fifteenth Century Mayapan was sacked and destroyed; and strangely enough it was again in a Katun 8 Ahau at the end of the Seventeenth Century that the Spaniards conquered the last Itzá stronghold at Tayasal, which was the end of this remarkable nation.
137:1 Maya, keban-than, variously defined as treachery, treason, plot, conspiracy, to accuse falsely and to slander. Hence the Itzá may have been driven out because of some false accusation that Hunac Ceel made concerning them.
137:2 Maya, uahaluah, literally an occasion when there is an abundance of bread for everyone. Brinton's translation of the term as a banquet seems appropriate, and it accords with the Itzá legend of the wedding feast from which the bride was stolen. Cf. Appendix C.
137:3 Here the Maya word, Ah Itzmal, could be equally well translated as the ruler of Izamal.
137:4 Maya, u ¢abal u natob. This a passive form of the expression, ¢a-naat, which we find on page 30, and which is applied to the questionnaire of the chiefs in Chapter IX. The primary meaning of naat is to understand something; and the Motul dictionary also defines it as "to foretell by conjectures and prophecy in this manner," although the translator has not found the expression employed in this sense in any Maya text.
137:5 There are a number of references in Maya literature to the episode so briefly recorded here. Cf. Appendix C.
137:6 lch-paa, literally: within the walls.
137:7 Evidently the Itzá were able to regain their power forty years after the great disaster.
137:8 Katun 8 Ahau ended 1457-1460. The reference is to the well-known destruction of the capital in which the Cocom and Xiu families had long governed the rest of the country. The Xius, whose power had been inferior to that of the Cocoms, organized a conspiracy among the subject chiefs, killed most of the Cocom family and destroyed the city. Subsequently northern Yucatan was divided among a number of petty states. Cf. Landa, 1928, p. 82.
138:1 Maya, oc-na-kuchil. This expression is a stereotyped one employed as a synonym for pestilence.
138:2 The Maya term, ich-paa, was one of the names for Mayapan, but that city was now destroyed.
138:3 The episode referred to was the murder of the "rain-bringer" Napot Xiu, halach-uinic of Mani, by Nachi Cocom at a town called Otzmal in the latter's territory. Following a severe drought Napot Xiu started on a pilgrimage to the Sacrificial Cenote at Chichen Itzá to make an offering of human victims to the rain-god. Being obliged to pass through Nachi Cocom's territory, the pilgrims stopped at Otzmal where they were entertained and subsequently murdered by the Cocom ruler. Cf. Morley 1920, page 478; Landa 1928, page 114. Here the chronology of the event is badly confused. It occurred in 1536 in a year 8 Cauac, while the year 4 Kan cited here began in 1545. We can only conclude that our Maya historian confused the time of the Otzmal murder with some similar occurrence which took place in the latter year. The number 158 appears to be an error of the Maya compiler.
One phrase left untranslated here, he tun te na cici pahool, is rendered by Martinez as follows: "cesó de llevarse la cuenta del katun de los anos;"
138:4 The present writer has followed the translation given here by both Brinton and Martinez, but the Maya expression y-ah-talzah-ul simply means "those who brought something or someone." Cf. San Buenaventura 1888, f. 27 v. As previously noted, an epidemic of smallpox swept through Yucatan in Katun 2 Ahau, and it may have been brought by the party of Spaniards who were shipwrecked and cast on the east coast in 1511 (Landa 1928, p. 34). The Tizimin chronicle states that white men first came in tun 13 of Katun 2 Ahau (Martinez 1927, p. 17).
138:5 This date recalls the statement on page 81 that the Spaniards seized Campeche in 1513.
138:6 Katun 9 Ahau covered approximately the twenty years following 1556 or 1559, according to which of the two chronological correlations we accept. It was in this katun that the conversion of the country took place, although efforts in this direction began a decade previously. Bishop Toral arrived in 1562. The hangings referred to here were probably the result of the Indian uprising of 1546 in the region of Valladolid.
138:7 Landa died on April 29, 1579.