Reports on the Maya Indians of Yucatan: Indian Notes and Monographs; A Series of Publications Relating to the American Aborigines

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by Pedro Sanchez de Aguilar (Author), Francisco Hernandez (Author), Antonio García y Cubas (Author), Santiago Mendez (Author), Marshall H. Saville (Editor) 

This series of Indian Notes and Monographs is devoted primarily to the publication of the results of studies by members of the staff of the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, and is uniform with Hispanic Notes and Monographs, published by the Hispanic Society of America, with which organization this Museum is in cordial coöperation.

Only the first ten volumes of Indian Notes and Monographs are numbered. The unnumbered parts may readily be determined by consulting the List of Publications issued as one of the series.

PREFACE

So little has been written in regard to the ethnology of the Maya Indians of Yucatan, and especially concerning their beliefs, which persist to the present time, that we publish here a translation of an important and practically unknown account of this subject. This report was printed in Mexico in 1870, but it is buried in a study by Antonio García y Cubas entitled "Materiales para formar la Estadistica General de la Republica Mexicana," in Boletin de la Sociedad Mexicana de Geografia y Estadistica, segunda epoca, tomo II, pp. 352-388. It is on pages 374-387, bears the date Mérida, October 24, 1861, and was written by Santiago Mendez, who states that he was governor of Yucatan during the years 1841-42. In connection with a study of this report, so far as it relates to the beliefs of the Maya, it will be profitable to consult the paper by Dr Daniel G. Brinton on The Folk-lore of Yucatan, printed in the Folk-Lore Journal, London, vol. I, part viii, 13 pp., August, 1883.

We have also had translated the notes on the superstitions of the Indians of Yucatan contained in the work of Pedro Sanchez de Aguilar, 1639, published by the Museo Nacional of Mexico in 1892 (pp. 83-84), and the report of Francisco Hernandez on the religious beliefs of the Yucatan Indians, which was sent to Bartolomé de las Casas, evidently while Bishop of Yucatan in 1545, and is given by him in chapter cxxiii (pp. 328-330) of his Apologetica Historia de las Indias, a work which did not appear in print until 1875-76, the first complete edition of which was edited by M. Serrano y Sanz, and printed at Madrid in 1909.

The information contained in the Mendez report is strikingly similar to that given by Bartolomé José Granado Baeza on Los Indios de Yucatan, an account written in 1813 but not published until 1845, when it appeared in the Registro Yucateco, tomo I, pp. 165-178. This report of Baeza is one of the principal sources used by Brinton in his study.

The editor has incorporated a few brief notes, and has prepared a glossary of the Indian words and a short bibliography of the subject.

Marshall H. Saville.

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