Cakchiquels

The Annals of the CakchiQuels

The Cakchiquels, whose traditions and early history are given in the present work from the pen of one of their own authors, were a nation of somewhat advanced culture, who occupied a portion of the area of the present State of Guatemala.

The remaining three were the Quiches, the Tzutuhils and the Akahals, who dwelt respectively to the west, the south and the east of the Cakchiquels.

Such, however, is the fixedness of this linguistic family in its peculiarities, that a most competent student of the Cakchiquel has named the period of two thousand years as the shortest required to explain the difference between this tongue and the Maya.

There is a slight admixture of Aztec words in Cakchiquel.

But the grammatical structure and stem-words of the Cakchiquel remained absolutely uninfluenced by this association.

The Cakchiquels were referred to as Tecpan Quauhtemallan, the Quiches as Tecpan Utlatlan, the Tzutuhils as Tecpan Atitlan, and the Akahals as Tecpan Tezolotlan.

For in their own dialects, Quiche, iche, means “many trees;” Tuztuhil, utuhil, “the flowery spot;” Akahal, “the honey-comb;” and Cakchiquel, a species of tree.

It would appear that the Cakchiquels did not borrow from their neighbors, but developed independently the system of mensuration in vogue among them.

Among the Cakchiquels, who interest us at present, the regal power was equally divided between two families, the Zotzils and the Xahils; not that there were two kings at the same time, as some have supposed, but that the throne was occupied by a member of these families alternately, the head of the other being meanwhile heir-apparent. 

The contingent sent to Alvarado by the Cakchiquel king, to aid in the destruction of Quiche, was four thousand warriors in one body, according to Alvarado’s own statement, though Xahila puts it at four hundred.

I propose, in a future work, to discuss the methods of reckoning time in use in Central America; but a brief explanation of that adopted by the Cakchiquels is essential to a comprehension of their Annals.

The Cakchiquels were probably acquainted with the length of the year as 365 days; there is even some evidence that they allowed an intercalary day every four years, by beginning the reckoning of the year one day earlier.

This allotted to the solar year twenty months of eighteen days each, leaving a remainder of five days, which the Mexicans called nemontemi, insufficient; the Mayas n yail kin, days of pain or of peril, and the Cakchiquels api ih, days of evil or days at fault; and which were not included in the count of the months.

This explains the frequent occurrence in the Cakchiquel Annals of such strange appellatives as Belehe Queh, nine deer; Cay Batz, two monkey, etc.; these being, in fact, the days of the year on which the bearers were born.

Hence in Cakchiquel tale, the Chay Abah represented the principle of life, as well as the source of knowledge.

The Cakchiquel Annals do not pretend to deal with mythology, but from various references and fragments inserted as history, it is plain that they shared the same sacred legends as the Quiches, which were, in all probability, under slightly different forms, the common property of the Maya race.

In the Cakchiquel Annals, as in the Popol Vuh and the Maya Chronicles, we hear of the city of the sun god, Tulan or Tonatlan, as the place of their origin, of the land Zuiva and of the Nonoalcos, names belonging to the oldest cycles of myths in the religion of the Aztecs.