1 I i I I To the memory of the Maya people .docx

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To the memory of the Maya people
whose lives were transformed
or cut short by these events, and
to their living descendants
INTRODUCTION
,: ....
:.:: ..
. ...
On March 13, I697, ' Sp~t1is~trOO~~fromYtl- :
;',¢,atanattacked and occupied N6jpeten, the small
jslartdciapitalofth(!
')ylaya people known as Itzas, the last unconquered nativ:e .
New . World
~~l~gdom. The capture of this small island in the tropical
forests of north-

i~~rn Gu~temala, densely covered with whitewashed temples,
royal palaces, .
~:arid thatched houses, turned out' t~ be the decisive mome.nt
in the final ·'
:; ~naptet of Spain's conquest of the Mayas. ClimaxiJ.).g more
than two years '
'{df intensive preparations and failed negotiations, the moment
only inaug-
';~tated several more years of struggle between Spaniards and
Mayas for
;:'~oritrol over the vast tropical forests of what is now the
central area of the
··. l)epartment of Peten, Guatemala (map I). .
;.~ The Itzas had dominated much of the lowland tropical
forests around
~;i:ag9 Peten Itza sin~e at least the mid-fifteenth century, when
their ances:
;;tbtS.,it was said, migrated therefrom Chich'en Itza in northern
Yucatan;
<~;rheir immediate neighbors, known as the Kowojs, were said
to have
; mignlted from Mayapan to Peten at the time of the SpanIsh
conquest of
Yucatan, probably during the 1530S. The remoteness of these
groups and
, the physical inhospitality of the land had undoubtedly
contributed to
,·Spain's failure to pursue their conquest during the century and
a half
:Jollowing the relatively late final conquest of Yucatan in 1544.
No less
•• significant had been the Spaniards' fear of the Itzas, whose
reputation as .
!.fierce warriors who sacrificed their enemies gave pause to
military ,con-

'; q~erors and missionaries alike. "
;. In this book I examine with it critical eye the events that
preceded and
'.followed the 1697 conquest of the Itzacapital of Nojpeten and
surround-
,jng regions, focusing on the short time between 169 5 and
1704. During
:those years the Spanish Basque military man Martin de :Ursuay
Ariz-
:mendi, commanding an army of Yucatecan soldiers, planned
and exe-
,c:uted the attack on the Itza capital. ~o.tJ.: d resistance from
II
I
'.

Mapr .
.'
G U A -
-,
I H
.. Kopan
• .', o'(...-s!;;.i"-.:!:
The Maya lowlands of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: '
1,II'IItil/.I/,1II

t~s ds of native inhabitan32?an~.t:~~_~~n!;!!lVoI.£~v.Q..--
mn'Ve
i~!nis.§i9.n. to~JP I704tfiese mission inhabitants staged an
abortive
[email protected] that threatene~ecapture Nojpeten from its
conquerors. Be-
~ ,
cause these, events were deeply complex, this account includes
details that
enable us to grasp some of the layers of political intrigue and
action that
characterized every aspect of the conquest of the Itzas and its
aftermath.
t'.The Spaniards left documentation on the conquest that is
staggering in
its 'quantity and challenging to the scholar who tries to make
sense of it.
My goal in studying this documentation has been to understand
these
'eVents as a series of unfolding interactions between conquerors
and con-
quered. The major challenge has been to understand theItzas as
indepen-
Aent actors who faced would-be Spanish conquerors with
strategies of
self-preservation developed over nearly two centuries of
European domi-
'nation of thdands surrounding Itza territory. Far from being
naive about
,Spanish methods of conquest and colonization, the Itzas
demon.stta.t.e.9
'~awareness and understanding of their enem . At the same time
they acted

~ntext otarii'ncient arulllIgfi y traditional culture, purposefully
re-
,:~airiing political, military, religious, and social institutions
that had served
~~hem . well even before the sixteenth-century conquests that
isolated them
iii a sea of Spanish colonies.
~~:'ILthis Ibn~mi1iari~I}"£' indirect contact
with.EJJIQ12ean~_ID.is
'pne of th..c:. . .!!lC!1ZleatuEes ~i~guis~~g 5.he con u~.§.Lof
th~~a_~~
r ,~:E!h-c~nt~EY .Spanisli conquests of the_
Aztecs,.Mayas,~Inca.s, J!na
p ther complex New World societies. In contrast, the S
..e.n.iar.d.JLh. onlY.Jl
~e,bleun~.er~.tal!.diE.K£~ tp.e Itzas=and.their~immecl-i·a-
te·H~ighb.m:~jn P~.n.
:.;rhey held stereotypical images <:E~~-~ bLutal., .barhatic-,
1l:!12_~p~r-
;,.Wtious ~ple...whose conques'fwas an inevitable and necessary
part of the
l~i¥ilizing mission of church and state. These images
portrayed~at
:;w~rk in the jungles, protecting the lasLuncon9...~a.yas--
~m the liberation of the gp..5p.eLand.the-enlight
ened.adrninistration of the
'}$'~~is~n. : " ,
;~e late seventeenth century, conquests of this scale were a
thing of
[l*li~past. !lnfa zed-bYJh.e..a...naWonism, Ursua a descendant
of sixteenth-
;1gentury military c:.0n~~~2£§., s~t abouLto,£ast hims,df in the
image of his
1~l'istocrati.si.~~. Despite criticism from his more "modern"
enemies

ii¥:i:he colonial administration, he designed a program to
subjugate the Itza
~~ihgdoin, first b a brief effort to em loy peaceful strategies of
di lomacy
)~I!.i. . --'....::'--"-'==:~~=;-=-
=::c~£~;.::.:=;::;.;~~:::::....:~:::!.t:7=~
~~d then~ e these failed .~y a costly an am_bitious project that
reo,
!is:Qrted to force of arms_and"V:IQlence.-. ,
~" "n ,,-'--
It}?The conquest of the Itzas became Ursua's obsession, not
only because
I ntl'oductiOlt
he hoped to enrich ,himself by collecting tribute fro~ the
conquered, a goal
~ but also because ~e ?eili~i:me a~pro~w'.iliiIf
~ cgl£nial administrative system. His success ana notoriety in
Spanish --circles earned him titles of nobility and, after the
conquest, an C!.12p.oint-
~
ment as governor of the Philipp~. The price paid for his
achievements,
however, was high j both in monetary terms and in loss of
human lives. No
viable colony emerged from the conquest, and epidemics soon
devastated
the native population, leaving little for Spaniards to administer.
Ursua
quickly abandoned the project, and Peten was left under the care
of mili-

tary administrators and a handful of missionaries . The conquest
of the
Itzas was, in retrospect, one of the more poignant tragedies in
Latin Amer-
ican history.
This book offers the first detailed account of these events since
the
publication of Juan de Villagutierre Soto-Mayor's massive
Historia de
~ia de elltza in l70!,1 Villagutierr~r,
prolific writer on Spanish-American colonial history, and
official relator
(chrorticler) of the Council of the Indies in Madrid, never
visited.tbe Amer~
J&a.s. Although his book has been widely cited by recent
scholars, who have
had few other sources to rely on, its contents are often biased
andunieli-
able. Apparently his book was commissioned by the Council of
the Indies
in order to support Ursua, whose reputation was under attack by
critics
who regarded the conquest as a colossal error in judgment, an
inhumane .
application of colonial power, and a waste of scarce colonial
funds.
The council made available to Villagutierre all of the
documentation it '
had received on the conquest of the Itzas from Mexico, Yucatan,
and Gua- .
temala. He read and utilized this huge quantity of material
thoroughly ..
Because he almost never cited his sourcesJ however, it is

impossible to sep-
arate his ~faithful paraphrasing of original letters and other
docu- '
ments from his equally common lengthy personal editorial
comments. He
often ini t anscribed the names of key personages and Qlac~,
making it :
difficult for modern readers to ma kecntfCa l connecr i; n;-;-
mong peop~e, i
locations, and events. 2 •.
As readers of the endnotes and bibliography in this book will
discovet, t
numerous other primary and secondary sources provide valuable
infor- ·.
mation on many pieces of the puzzle of this conquest. Until
now, however, )
XXII it has been impossible to connect these pieces
satisfactorily, primarily ;
because the massive documentation that Villagutierre consulted·
hadnoi: ;t
been intensively restudied from a contemporary perspective. It
is this doc~
umentation that forms the backbone of this book, although I
have tried to :;)
. ····1
consult as many other sources as I could locate. .);
Introduction
.' ' My research for this book began in earnest in 1982-83 with a
search
for the extant documentation on the conquest of the Itzas and
related

events in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain.
Assisted by the
results of Nicholas Hellmuth's previous search for such
materials,3 I found
virtually all of the documents used by Villagutierre. During the
summer of
. I9 88 I found a small number of additional materials in the
Archivo Gen-
eral de Centro America in Guatemala City, and during I9 88 -
89 I com-
pleted the transcription and computer indexing of microfilmed
and photo-
copied relevant manuscripts . Since then I have identified other
sources as
well, including sources containing ethnohistorical evidence for
Itza social
~hd political organization, which I studied intensively during
1995-9 6.
.•.. .•• I do not pretend to present here a full ethnohistorical
reconstruction of
:: the culture and social life of the Itzas and their immediate
Peten neighbors.
. any case, much of the information we now have about topics
such as
trade, and material culture must be considered in lightof new ar-
logical studies being carried out in central Peten by Proyecto
Maya
onial, co-directed by Don S. Rice, Prudence M. Rice, R6mulo
Sanchez
. ; and myself. Although readers will find much ethnographic
detail

'.' . only chapter 3 is devoted entirely to an ethnographic issue -
the all-
'. nt question of the social and political organization of the Itza
': ~'·"UM'''V" .l1.
4
One of this book provides ethnographic and historical back-
to the conque~t of the Itzas. The first chapter gives an overview
of
principal Yucatec-speaking groups that occupied Peten at the
iiE~n:e:;()t the l697 conquest. Chapter 2 summarizes the history
of Spanish
. cts with the Itzas and their neigh bors, beginning with the
journey led
'. Cortes across Peten in. I 5 25, during which he met with the
dy-
'. Ttia ruler, Ajaw Kan Ek', and traveled south across Itza-
controlled
.. ' to the Gulf of Honduras. On that journey Cortes left a lasting
. I of his contact - a horse, which later died and which the Itzas
transformed into an object of veneration.
3 describes what can be reconstructed of Itza Maya social
. organization, suggesting that the Itzas possessed a complex
.· s.ystem that stressed both maternal and paternal links and the
. . of marriage ties between lineages. While patrilineal descent
.the most important organizing principle, a limited form of mat-
may have constituted the critical marker of the nobility's

The ruling Kan matrilineage controlled, at least symbolically,
ance of the capital and four territorial quarters that were also
the four quarters of the capital. Patrilineal affiliation seems
x;
XXIV
Introduction
to have been called upon primarily to seal alliances between
high-ranking
noble groups. Intermatrilineage alliance - with the Kans
controlling the
top levels of governance and other lineages occupying second-
level posi-
tions -, created a system dominated by a single elite group that
allowed
others to share rule at lower levels.
Chapter 3 also proposes that military chieftains from outlying
towns
and regions represented their towns on the Itza ruling council.
They may
have doubled as the principal priests charged with the rituals
concerned
with calendrical prophecies for twenty-year periods known as k
'atuns.
The incorporation of such nonroyal elites in the organization of
the king-
dom might be one way the Itzas succeeded in mounting such an
effective
military resistance to Spanish intrusions on their territorial

edges for so
many years.
Part Two considers the political, religious, and economic
elements in-
volved in decisions to construct a new road - a camino real-
connecting
Guatemala and Yucatan, as well as the road's initial impact on
the native
populations through whose lands it was routed. Chapter 4
presents the
Spanish political background of the 1697 conquest: the elite
Basque an-
cestry of Martin de Ursua, his political connections to the Royal
Council
of the Indies in Spain, and his plans, in cooperation with the
Guatemalan
colonial hierarchy, for constructing the road from Yucatan that
would
reduce the threat of coastal piracy that had long plagued the
coastal trade
and mail routes. As interim governor of Yucatan, Ursua began
work on
the camino real in 1695. The Council of the Indies specifically
ordered
that the task not disrupt militarily the lives of natives who
might be en.;.
countered along its route . .
Chapter 5 recounts the failed first attempt by Spanish troops
from
Yucatan to open the new road, first through the territory of
Kejach Mayas
(see map 2) whose hostility discouraged them from proceeding
further.
Meanwhile, Guatemalan troops, coordinating their efforts with

those of
the Yucatecans, managed to occupy the Chol-speaking
"Lacandon" tQwn .'
of Sakb'ajlan in 1695. Subsequent actions by Guatemalans and
Yucate- :',
cans soon revealed, however, that they both hoped to conquer
the Itzasi';
who lived far from the proposed road. A Guatemalan captain,
accom/ '1
panied by Dominican missionaries, encountered Itzas near Lago
Peten;,t
Itza, but he and his officers abandoned any immediate thoughts
of attack.;-i:~
ing Nojpeten when they realized the dangers and the magnitude
of the'~
task. With a dramatic race toward the Itzas already under way,
the Yuca", :j¥ .. ,
tecans soon rerouted the camino real directly toward Lago Peten
Itza. 1 );~
Chapter 6 records the effects of Governor Ursua's decision to
send;::f~
Introduction
Franciscan evangelists to accompany the troops and Maya
workers from
Nutatan as they opened the camino real southward through
Kejach Maya
.territory toward Nojpeten, the Itza capital. These missionaries;
excited by
prophetic reports that the Itzas were about to submit peacefully,
competed
:among themselves to reach them first. Working with captured
Kejach
"Mayas along the road, they also documented the horrors

implemented by
'Ursua's military captain, who sent many of his captives to work
as la-
borers in his economic enterprises in Campeche. 5
. '.!-<': In r695 Spaniards in Yucatan received notice that the
Itza ruler, Ajaw
' Kiln Ek', citing Itza prophecies, was willing to consider terms
for surren-
,: dering his people to Spanish rule and Christian conversion.
Reports of
, '~: ,Maya prophecies that predicted the coming of a new age in
which the Itzas
.. . succumb to Christ and the Spanish king began to circulate in
ear-
in Spanish circles. They were reinforced by the arrival AjChan,
son of
Itza ruler's sister, as his uncle's ambassador in Merida at the end
of the
These events represented a brief effort by parties on both sides
to
a peaceful solution to the Itza "problem," the subject of Part
Three.
7 details these events and the complex circumstances leading up
royal nephew's declaration of his uncle's desire to join the
Spanish
and the decision by Ursua to demand the ruler's immediate sur-
on Spanish terms.
.'. . AjChan was committing the Itzas to Spain in Merida, the
Fran-

. n friar Andres de Avendano was traveling to Nojpeten, aware
of the
. er's decision to send his nephew as his emissary. Chapter 8
analyzes
""u.",,,·uv detailed account of his journey and visit to Nojpeten,
his
es in reinforcing the ruler's previous decision to surrender, and
his
in discovering that most Itzas regarded Ajaw Kan Ek' as a
traitor
, '. own people. Avendano, a party to this treason, hastily
slipped out of
•. ' . with his companions and nearly died trying to find his way
back
. -held territory. It soon became clear in both Yucatan and
Guate-
Spanish optimism for the peaceful surrender of the Itzas was
and misinformed.
failure of peaceful initiatives led to a series of violent
between Itzas and Spaniards. Ursua became convinced that the
was military conquest, Part Four records the Spanish transi-
a mood of elation at the Itzas' imminent surrender to a fierce de-
to meet the enemy in battle. In chapter 9 we learn that follow-
expulsion from Nojpeten, the Itzas attacked, captured,
Iy murdered Yucatecan and Guatemalan soldiers and mis-
rushing separately to Lago Peten Itza . Ursua, infuriated, was
XXI

'"
Introduction
now determined to strike a military blow at the Itzas, whom he
considered
to be renegade subjects of the Spanish empire. Chapter 10
describes the
costs of the massive preparations that Ursua engineered during
the second
half of 1696 and the first weeks of 1697 - political conflicts,
financial
debts, and sufferings imposed on the Mayas of Yucatan, His
aims, which
he pursued against great opposition in Merida, were not only to
complete
the camino real to Itza territory but also to move troops and
heavy artillery
to the lakeshore for a large-scale attack on Nojpeten, the island
capital.
Ursua, surmounting opposition to his project in colonial
circles,had
achieved nearly all of his goals by the end of February 1697,
when he
arrived at the western port of Lago Peten Itza. There he
commanded a
large number of troops, Maya carriers, and boat builders who
completed
and launched a sizable oar-driven galeota(galliot) for use in the
attack on
Nojpeten. The twelve days between his arrival and the attack on
March
13 are the subject of chapter II. This was an intense period

during which
Ursua received several important Itza visitors, some of whom
may have
wished to find a way to avoid bloodshed. The failure of Ajaw
Kan Ek',
who had either lost control over his enemies or was in hiding, to
accept
Ursua's invitation to participate in discussions incensed the
commander.
Ursua and his officers decided in a vividly recorded meeting
that the Itzas
would be punished for their failure to live up to the agreement
reached
with AjChan in Merida over a year earlier.
Part Five documents the Spanish capture of the Itza capital and
ex-
plores its tragic consequences. The Spanish occupation of
Nojpeten on
March 13, detailed in chapter I2, was brief and bloody, causing
massive
loss of life among the capital's defenders. The attackers raised
the Span-
ish flag over a nearly deserted island and immediately destroyed
every
"pagan" object they could find . They soon managed to capture
and inter-
rogate the ruler and other high-ranking Itzas. Finding
themselves isolated ,
however, on their heavily fortified island presidio, the
Spaniards now
faced starvation and a sea of enemies. These conditions form
the subject of
chapter 13, which details the interrogation of the Itza high
priest and the
execution of the ruler of the Kowojs, the robbing of food from

ltza cultiva-
tions by Spanish soldiers, the abandonment of many
surroundingtowns
by their inha bitants, and the failure of the first resident
missionaries to win
XXVI converts in the region.
By the end of 1698 the "conquest" appeared to be on the. verge
of
collapse. Morale reached a low ebb among the fifty soldiers
stationed at
the island presidio, long since abandoned to their own devices
by Ursua.
Chapter 14 focuses on a belated and tragic rescue mission,
organized in
Introduction
Guatemala and designed to shore up this dismal situation. Ursua
returned
from Campeche to exercise joint command over the new
military rein-
forcements with the aging Guatemalan general Melchor de
Mencos y
Medrano. From March through May I699, when the surviving
reinforce-
. ments abandoned the project, conditions went from bad to
worse. The
Guatemalans had brought with them a devastating epidemic,
probably in-
fluenza, that killed many soldiers and a large percentage of the
Guate-
malan families who had been brought to settle at the presidio.
The epi-

demic also ravaged the native population, already beleaguered
by Spanish
depredations of their food supplies. When the Guatemalans
retreated,
they took with them, in shackles, Ajaw Kan Ek', his son, and
two of his
cousins, one of whom was the high priest. The priest and the
other cousin
. both died on the long journey to Santiago de Guatemala (now
Antigua
Guatemala). The ruler and his son spent the rest of their lives in
the capital
under house arrest. With the Itza kingship in a state of collapse,
bloody
:;wars broke out among Maya groups, reducing their numbers
even further.
News of new native rulers living deep in the forest intimated
that the
;conquest was not over yet.
U> Somehow, despite epidemics, constant food shortages, and
threats of
:pative rebellions, the Spanish presidio survived. In the final
chapter we
: . that during 1702 and 1703, secular clergy from Yucatan
finally suc-
., ...... '" ... , .... in establishing several mission towns among
the surviving Itzas
' . Kowojs. In I704, however, a well-planned rebellion by the
mission
.. ' . . ers broke out. The rebels ' aims, which they initiated
successfully, were
.' murder the Spanish troops and recapture Nojpeten. The
rebellion ulti-

.. y failed, and the Spaniards stepped up efforts to concentrate
the
. . in fewer, more compact towns. Despite military forays to
cap-
runaways and unconverted people to place in these towns,
smallpox
cs quickly reduced the native population even further; by the
mid-
century only a small fraction of Peten Mayas had survived.
. . to the Itza kingship had established refugee followings in
isolated
' . . of the forest. One of these, AjChan, the former ruler's
nephew, held
". an independent ruler in southern Belize for some years. Yet
he, too,
y reached the end of his long life in a mission town, symbol of
irrevocability of a conquest by firepower and attrition.
Disappearance of the Mimbres People."
But when a team of archaeologists led
. bi Michelle-Hegmon and me took a
closer look at this moment in time

and the following decades, we found
that people had not disappeared from
the Mimbres region. Some people left,
but many did not; they simply moved
out of their villages into small ham-
lets situated near some of their fields.
This move away from village life
helped them preserve their farming
traditions and allowed them to remain
in their Mimbres homeland. The mys-
tery is not one of disappearance, but
of metamorphosis . Here 1 trace two
pieces of the story of change. The
first is the way archaeologists revised
their view of the past, and the second
is the way the people of the Mimbres
region transformed their lifeways.
Figure 12.3. Footprints pecked into stone above Palomas Creek
in th e ~:_c ..
Mimbres area-another image expressing the theme of movement.

Changing the Questions
You may have heard your teachers say, in elemen-
tary school, "There's no such thing as a stupid ques-
tion." Perhaps there isn't, but there is definitely
such a thing as an outdated or inappropriate ques-
tion. Science is the investigation of a series of ques-
tions that become progreSSively more refined as we
learn more about the subject of study. When we
look back in time, earlier research questions often
no longer make sense; they no longer direct our
attention in the right ways. That is not bad . Science
is the process of improving our understanding, and
as we do so, we ask different, and presumably bet-
ter, questions.
Early researchers, local residents, and archaeol-
ogy enthusiasts in the Mimbres region documented
many dozens of ruined villages and hundreds of
smaller, stone masonry field houses scattered across

the landscape. On the surfaces of these sites were
strewn thousands of fragments of broken clay bowls
and jars, painted with intriguing naturalistic and
geometric designs. No contemporary Native people
make this pottery, and no Native communities then
lived in the area . It seemed that the people who had
lived in these villages and made this pottery had
disappeared. The question that emerged was.
What caused the mysterious disappearance :'
the Mimbres people?
Later twentieth-century archaeologists. k ::
often labeled a people by their pottery, as T 0 :'"
tend to do in the twenty-first century. If we c~:
pottery "Mimbres" and the people who made. '.
correspondingly, "the Mimbres people," the . . - - -
we see that the pottery was no longer made .. ; _
conclude that the people must have disappe".~, .:.
This conOation of pottery and people has ca-.:o - -
to ask the wrong question. What disappeare ~
fact not people, but a pottery tradition. Wh :-. -=- .

pIe moved away from the villages, they sto :: ~ =
making Mimbres-style pottery. To understar. C: .-
changes, we need better questions: Why did: - _
people leave their villages? Where did they ~ :' -
How did their lives change 7 And why did t i". C' -
making Mimbres-style pottery?
Why Did People Leave Their Villages?
We do know that thousands of people left ~ _ .
of villages in the Mimbres region within th . 0-
some 20 to 30 years-a dramatic event. ,- . .; ~ - -
association of this movement with the end :' : -
pottery-painting tradition Signals impona n : 0 :
changes. The decades of the early twelfth c:>-
100 Margaret C. Nelson

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