FIFTY

CARLOS TOLD ME more of the grisly history of the early Spanish in the Yucatán region as we moved across the peninsula. “Columbus never set foot on the dirt of the American continent, his movements were restricted to the islands of the Caribbean. The Yucatán Peninsula itself was discovered around 1508 by Juan Díaz de Solís and Vincent Yáñez Pinzón. Pinzón had commanded the Niña for Columbus in the original discovery of the New World. Solís and Pinzón sailed along the coast of the Yucatán and down to the area of Central America in search of a passage to the Spice Islands. Fortunately for Pinzón, he and Solís disagreed, and Pinzón returned to Spain. Solís went ashore while exploring a river region of South America. Charrua Indians attacked and captured him and his men, eating them one by one in plain view of the other sailors. Only one man escaped to tell the tale.”

Ay! What thoughts went on inside the heads of the sailors as they watched their shipmates being cut up, cooked, and eaten . . . knowing their turn was coming? More important, what was the character of the one man who escaped to tell the tale?

“After the defeat of Montezuma, the crown gave one of Cortés’s captains, Don Francisco Montejo a royal commission to conquer the people of the ‘islands’ of Yucatán and Cozumel. Montejo was soon to find that the Yucatán indios were the most fierce and warlike in all of New Spain. Everywhere he went, he encountered resistance. Foolishly, he sent one of his captains, Dávila, to Chichén Itzá, from which Dávila ultimately retreated with many casualties. After more years of fighting—and losing—by 1535, the indios had driven the Spanish out of the Yucatán.

“Around 1542, sixteen years after Montejo first received the royal license to conquer the Yucatán and twenty-one years after the fall of Montezuma, the Spanish had subdued enough of the region to occupy with some confidence the areas around Campeche and Mérida.”

We left Mayapán and began a trek through the tropical forest to the city Carlos most desired to see: Chichén Itzá.

Carlos educated me about the city as we traveled. “Chichén Itzá is a large site, I’m told,” he said. As we walked, he pushed a serpent tick off his pant leg. “As we have seen, the Yucatán possesses little water. Violent deluges frequently fall during the rainy season, but the peninsula’s terrain doesn’t hold water. The only year-round water source for much of the region are cenotes, sinkholes in limestone formations. Chichén Itzá was built on the site of two such water sources. And those sinkholes gave the city its name: chi, which means ‘mouth’ and chen, which means ‘wells.’ Itza refers to the tribe that lived there.”

“So, the name means ‘the people at the mouth of the wells,’” I said.

“No one knows for certain how long the city had been inhabited, but we estimate it was founded over a thousand years ago, about the time barbaric hordes were overrunning the last tattered remnants of the Roman Empire and Mohammed’s armies were conquering North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. By the time we conquered the region, most of the major cities had been abandoned and people were living in smaller communities. Once again, we don’t know the reason for the inhabitants’ flight.”

Nothing had prepared me for the wonders of the ancient city called Chichén Itzá. The ruins covered more than a square league, and the vegetation that hid much of the other sites had been cleared from magnificent edifices in the heart of the ruins.

“Strange,” Carlos said. “Someone has gone through the great effort of clearing El Castillo and other structures of growth.”

The city was a feast for our eyes, with amazing structures, including an observatory for studying the night sky. I was once again struck by the power and glory of an ancient civilization that could build such monuments, and, as Carlos pointed out, they did so without metal tools for carving and beasts of burden and wheeled carts for hauling.

We stood in an incredible sports arena, a place for playing a ball game Carlos called pok-ta-pok. The arena was over two hundred paces long and about a hundred wide.

“Pok-ta-pok was even more dangerous than bullfighting,” I said, pointing out a sculpted relief on the wall that showed the victor of a game holding the severed head of a loser.

The name for the Chichén Itzá pyramid, El Castillo, didn’t originate from the indios but from the Spaniards who found the structure to have a castlelike appearance.

I found the naked stone edifices as strange and eerie as the dark, twisted formations in the caverns we had explored. Picking our way through brush and vines to see previous structures had distracted me from the magnificence of the sites, but with the center of an ancient city laid out before us, its grandeur left me thunderstruck. How could the indios, whom I had always thought of as common savages, have built this magnificent city that lay before my eyes?

The Castillo pyramid, Carlos said, was about eighty feet high. “Ninety-one stairs at each of its four sides and another step on the top platform, for a total of 365. That this equals the number of days in the solar year, the time it takes the earth to revolve around the sun, was no accident. Mayan astronomers of that period were more advanced than their European counterparts. See that elegant building over there? It’s called the Observatory, and it may be where sky watchers gazed at the heavens and made their calculations.”

He pointed at the carving of a plumed serpent at the top of the pyramid. “Quetzalcóatl, the god called the feathered serpent, was known to the Mayas as Kukulcán. During the spring and autumnal equinoxes, shadows cast by the setting sun give the appearance of a snake slithering down the Castillo’s steps. It’s said to be an eerie sight.”

We paused by a cenote among the ruins. More a sunken lake than a well, it was oblong, over 150 paces in length and a bit less than that in width. The sides were 60 feet high from water level to the ground surface we stood upon.

“The cult of the Cenote,” Carlos said.

“Señor?”

“Just as other indio nations believed the gods had to be fed blood to appease them, the Mayans also practiced human sacrifice. Tying their victims up, they threw them into this cenote as well as others in the Yucatán. They had priests, called chacs, who held onto the arms and legs of the sacrificial victims. A moment ago we passed a life-size stone figure of a man lying on his back with his head up and his hands holding a bowl, the god named Chac Mool. Human hearts were deposited in his bowl after they were ripped out of the victim’s chest.”

Carlos said the Romans, Huns, and other European tribes, crusaders, perpetrators of the Inquisition, infidels of Mohammed, and Mongol hordes all had violent pasts. What was it in mankind that sought satisfaction in bloody slaughter?

Even before we set up a proper camp, the sergeant and other soldiers joined Carlos and the rest of the expedition in rushing to the cenote to take a swim in the cool, dark water. They could have their swim. I didn’t care how long it had been since someone had been sacrificed in the pool; it was haunted as far as I was concerned.

While they swam, I took a walk to the Castillo pyramid. The steps up were not for the faint of heart, being nearly vertical. Although most vegetation had been cleared, a twisted vine could still snarl a foot and send one tumbling down.

I was three-quarters of the way up when I saw something that caused me to stop and stare. Splattered on the upper steps were bloodstains. Dried blood, but in this hot climate, blood would dry almost as soon as it hit the warm stone.

I turned and looked behind me as if expecting to find my nocturnal hounds of hell at my back.

They were.

Hundreds of indios had crept into the cleared area between the Castillo, where I climbed, and the cenote where the rest of the expedition was swimming. They had come silently, not breathing a word or snapping a twig.

Besides their large number, the first thing that struck me was their battle dress, their spears, shields, and elaborate headdresses. I had seen them before; at least I had seen their spiritual brothers. Etched on many of the walls of the indio ruins we had examined, were these warriors of the past, from the days when great indio empires ruled what they called the One World.

In the center of this indio mass, one figure stood out, a warrior with the most elaborate headdress, a great spray of brilliant feathers, green and yellow and red.

I didn’t need an introduction; he had to be Canek, the rebellious Mayan warlord who had gathered an army and was reviving the “old ways.” He raised his spear and yelled. Immediately, a great roar erupted from the warriors. They charged up the steps of the Castillo for me and rushed for the cenote.

I pulled the machete out of my backsheath. As the warriors raced up the steps screaming like ghouls from the indio underworld, my last thought was to wonder what it would be like to watch my companions being eaten one by one while I awaited my turn.