Exploring American Ruins (12 March 1903)

EXPLORING- AMERICAN RUINS.

BY ELDER WALTER M. WOLFE OF THE LONDON CONFERENCE.

(Continued from page 134).

TRADITIONS OF CENTRAL AMERICAN INDIANS.

Throughout Central America two classes of ruins are to be found. Each antedates the period of the Spanish Conquest. One class consists of massive structures, of unhewn stone, square but not high. These are unadorned save by rude and grotesque images, very much resembling the Hindoo conception of Buddha. The second class is of much greater architectural importance. The buildings are of hewn stone, often polished. There are rich carvings. Hieroglyphics take the place of crude pictures. Hard and sometimes colored cements, stuccos and tiles are found. These are the pyramid cities, the cities that belong to the forgotten past. Some ancient towns, like Utatlan, in Guatemala, the old capital of the Quichés, destroyed by Alvarado, in 1524, possesses certain characteristics of each type.

The Maya, Quiché and Kachiquel Indians, who are the degraded remnants of the once-powerful possessors of Guatemala, Yucatan and Honduras, claim that the first class of ruins were made by their immediate ancestors, since about 500 A.D. The structures of the second class were erected before the third century of this era; how long before they cannot tell—possibly thousands of years. It is strange that a barbarous people who cannot tell their own history for four generations back, should yet have traditions that date back for 1900 years. The more ignorant tribes are in absolute darkness as to the origin of the splendid ruins of Yucatan, but the more enlightened believe them to have been the work of their ancestors, a prosperous and enlightened people, thousands of years ago.

The ruins, wonderful and magnificent as they are, have not yet revealed their secrets. It may be that some day a Rosetta stone or a Moabite stone will be found that will prove a key to the whole mystery. Until that time the traveler and student must make a study of the Indian and gather his scattered tradi­tions, his broken threads of history, and see if it is possible to weave from them a reasonably accurate story of ancient life on the American continent. But the Indians of Central America are cautious and secretive. The red men of the United States will fight to the death. None have endured slavery. Few, with all the inducements offered by a government that too long robbed and injured them, have accepted the offers of education, have settled down to the pursuit of agriculture, although everything necessary, in addition to a cash bonus, has been furnished them. They much prefer the nomadic life of the Bedouin Arab to the holding of land in severalty.

Between the treatment of the aborigine by the Anglo-Saxon and the treat­ment by the Spaniards there has always been a vast difference. Unjust as the English and American has been, they have never been cruel. By the seizure of land, the destruction of game, the introduction of the vices of civilization, they have often driven an impulsive, warlike, revengeful people into committing terrible atrocities, into long and bloody wars. For all this they are to blame. But with Cortez, Alvarado, Pizzaro and their successors the case is different. They brought fire and sword, and all the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. They claimed the souls no less than the bodies of all who came under their jurisdiction. Infants too young to be of service, the aged, the sick, were summarily baptized by the priests, who always accom­panied military expeditions, and were then as summarily murdered that they might not impede the march or the labors of the conquerors. When kings and emperors were slowly roasted to death to compel them to reveal their treasure houses, what could the commons expect?

I have touched on this subject, not because it is an agreeable one, but rather to show why the Central and South American Indians have such a hatred of Catholicism and of the whites; why they are so distrustful and secretive. With them it was: “Embrace the Catholic faith or die.” To save their lives they became and are to-day nominal Catholics, but hundreds of thousands hate the religion to which their ancestors gave assent, and long for the time of deliverance. Often have I seen the Quichés and Kachiquels go to mass on a Sunday morning, prostrate themselves in ignorant adoration before the altar, pay their pittance as an oblation, and then, in the afternoon, go stealthily by some mountain path to a secret cave and worship the gods of their fathers. Once, in an Indian hut in the heart of Yucatan, I saw a rude picture of the “Madonna and child.” Before it a candle was burning. I asked the Indians why they burned the light. They replied that many years before a black-robed Spanish priest had come among them (I think it was about six years prior to the time of my visit), had baptized their children, said some prayers, taken their money and left this picture with instructions to keep a candle lighted before it until he should come again. That was the sum total of their knowledge of the religion they professed. I have no fight with Catholicism. If the Indians of the south had been visited and instructed by such missionaries as Joliet, Marquette and the Jesuits of the early days of Canada, it would have been the greatest thing possible for them at the time, but they were not. The church has brought to them a moral and a physical degradation that they keenly realize. As a cultivated Jesuit priest said to me, while sailing across the Caribbean sea, “Mr. W—, the Spanish priests are the curse of Central America.”

It will be evident, then that the Indian must be convinced that he is not talking to either a Catholic or a Spaniard before he will converse freely, and tell not alone of the grievances of the past but of the hopes of the future. Brown, squat, a bearer of burdens, a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, he is not a stranger to ambitions which include not alone his own success but the downfall of his oppressors. The feeling in the Kachiquel and Quiché is similar to that of the Jews toward the Romans in the time of Herod. Every Indian longs, first of all, for his own hut, corn-patch, sugar field and banana grove, where neither soldier nor priest dare molest or make afraid. Next, he wants the mixed governments, these degenerate republics that have succeeded the Spanish monarchy, crushed; and that crushing includes the destruction of ecclesiastical as well as political power. He looks for his lost deities to re­assert their authority. He believes that his skin will become fair as it once was. He expects to obtain mastery in everything that is great and good and noble. In fact so lofty are his hopes, so crude his ideas, so limited his know­ledge that he seems a mere visionary to those who do not sense that he belongs to the chosen people and that his destiny is in the hands of One who has ruled and over-ruled from the beginning of all things.

The very fact that the Indian has a tradition, to him positive history, that he once was white; that his color was changed on account of his wickedness; that his people were once visited by a great Teacher and Prophet; that His return is expected is proof to me that the Indian has a story that will ab­solutely confirm the Book of Mormon in its most minute details.

In the early part of this article I mentioned two classes of cities—the one built about the time of the Christian era or prior to that epoch, the other dating from about 500 A.D. Now the Indians claim that, as a result of their disobedience, terrible wars and calamities came upon them in the fourth and fifth centuries after the Prophet’s visitation. There were earthquakes and tidal waves that laid waste their cities, and they had already lost both know­ledge and ambition, so that it was impossible to construct any more master­pieces of architecture. From this time of catastrophe, of universal desolation, the Quichés and Kachiquels reckon dates.

Some four hundred years before the final cataclysm the Indians, then in the zenith of power, prosperity and civilization, were visited by One whose advent had been prophesied for centuries. This Prophet, of whom they still speak reverently as the “Greatest, Good-One,” remained with them for many days teaching, blessing and healing. Especially did He command them to abstain from war and bloodshed, promising that so long as they did so their prosperity would be permanent, and threatening that when they should disobey His instructions their cities should be overthrown, their color become black, and they should become slaves and captives. How or when the “Greatest Good- One” disappeared I do not know, but this I do remember, that after His ressurrection the Savior, according to the Apostles, appeared ten times in Judea and Galilee. Five of these appearances were upon the resurrection day, and as forty days elapsed between the crucifixion and the ascension, the question naturally arises: Where did Jesus spend the remainder of His time? Certainly He was not preaching to the spirits in prison. He had left the prison house. Long before His death He had said (John x:16), “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.”

After this the terrible catastrophe that heralded to the western continent the crucifixion of the Lord, a catastrophe that possibly ruined some of the cities of which I have been writing, the Book of Mormon records the appear­ance of Jesus among the people of Nephi. In this connection the tenth and eleventh chapters of III. Nephi should be carefully read. Then compare the direct Book of Mormon statement with the Indian tradition of the “Greatest Good-One,” and see if the question as to the whereabouts of the Savior during a part of the forty days prior to His ascension from Bethany is not clearly answered. It seems to me that there can be no greater external evidence of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon; its historical accuracy; its miraculous restoration.

For several generations after the departure of the “Greatest Good-One” from among them the people remembered His counsel. But gradually vices crept in among them. They became idolatrous and warred with one another. Then their blessings became curses. Art and civilization passed away. Little by little their color changed and as a nation they were low and degraded. Yet the change of color was so gradual that the Quichés claim that up to the time of the Spanish conquest there were a few pure whites left. These acted as priests because “Only a white man is capable of repentance, and can offer up sacrifice for the sins of the people.” This idea of repentance and sacrifice is certainly the remnant of some ancient, more pure form of worship that still haunts the savage’s mind, in spite of the superstitious idolatry of ages.

In the next article I hope to be able to give at length one of the Quiché legends, and to point out that in it which would verify historically the Book of Mormon story.

[To be continued].