T E N
The Customs of the People
And it came to pass that the king put forth his hand to raise them, as was the customs with the Lamanites, as a token of peace, which custom they had taken from the Nephites.
(Alma 47:23)
INTRODUCTION
UP TO THIS POINT in the text, we have discussed two major reasons why the proposal is made that the events recorded in the Book of Mormon were centered in the geographic area called Mesoamerica.
The first reason is associated with the written language. Scholars have determined that the only place on the American continent where a written language was in use during the time period in which the Book of Mormon history occurred was in Mesoamerica. Indeed, the area in and around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec constituted the embryo for both the calendar system and the written language of the Americas. This fact alone virtually eliminates any other geographical area from being considered as "lands of the Book of Mormon."
The Book of Mormon was made possible as a result of a written language. Place names and phrases in the Book of Mormon in comparison with place names and phrases in Mesoamerica are now beginning to appear. And Book of Mormon readers can look to the future with great assurance that additional understanding of the Book of Mormon will occur as more knowledge is gained through the study of ancient languages.
The second reason relates to the size and quality of population centers-as outlined in Chapters 4-9 of this text. Archaeologists have determined that the vast majority of discovered archaeological sites dating to the time period of the Book of Mormon are located in Mesoamerica.
Everyone should be impressed with the vast amount of scholarly work that has been accomplished in this century in piecing together the history of the ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica by means of archaeological research. To surrender the area of Mesoamerica as non-Book of Mormon territory would be as unsound as to ignore the fact that the earth is round. In addition, when we realize the extent of the internal consistencies in the Book of Mormon wherein much of its history took place between the City/Land of Zarahemla and the City/Land of Nephi, a distance estimated at 250-300 miles, we are almost forced to arrive at the conclusion that generalized pinpointing of Book of Mormon lands is not as difficult as it may first appear.
Let us now discuss a third reason for centering the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica. This third reason-the one that will be discussed in Section III via Chapters 10-15-coincides with the traditional history of Mesoamerica in relation to the Book of Mormon.
The oral traditions, the cultural patterns, and the written history of Mesoamerica provide us with valuable insi(Yhts in understanding the Book of Mormon. Indeed, the more we understand the language, history, and customs in the Book of' Mon-non. the more we understand the Book of Mormon. I think we make a grave mistake in trying to piece together the historical puzzle of the Book of Mormon if we ignore the traditional history of Mesoamerica.
THE CODICES
Some of what we know about the ancient history ot' Mesoamerica was written in books called codices. Every pre-Spanish Conquest priest had a codex. In fact. libraries of codices were typically found in the cities.
The vast majority of these native documents did not survive the Conquest. In addition, many Maya priests. almost the only literate people among the Maya, were killed during the course of the Conquest. The Spanish inquisition that resulted in the burning of the codices by the Catholic priests almost negated any possibility of retrieving a detailed history of the Maya.
Although remains of completely decayed codices have been discovered by archaeologists, only four Maya codices survived the Conquest. A significant number of take Maya codices are also in existence today. (See Knorozov 1982.)
The following represents a brief explanation of the four Maya codices plus a Mixtec codex, called the Codex Nuttall.
The Dresden Codex
The Dresden Codex was discovered in 1739 when it was sold to the Royal Dresden Library at Vienna. It may have arrived at Vienna as a gift from Carlos V of Spain, who must have received it from the governor of the unconquered province of Yucatan in 1526.
The Dresden Codex was published in its entirety in Volume III of Lord Kingsborough's Antiquities of Mexico (1831-1848). The first facsimile was published in 1880 by Ernst Forstemann, director of the Dresden Library. During the Second World War, the codex was damaged by bombing. Today, the original Dresden Codex is located in the Saxon Regional Library of the German Democratic Republic.
Yurii Knorozov, a Russian scholar, conducted one of the most serious studies of the Dresden Codex. His work was translated by Sophie D. Coe from the Russian into English in 1982.
The Paris Codex
One of the first students of the Maya writing was a French scholar by the name of Leon de Rosny. He is credited with finding the Paris Codex in the Paris Library in a basket of assorted papers in 1859. The manuscript was first published in 1872. The Paris Codex is incomplete and is in a very frayed condition. Today, the original is in the hands of the Mexican government.
The Madrid Codex
The Madrid Codex is presently located in the Museum of the Americas in Madrid, Spain. The Madrid Codex was found in two separate parts and, as a result, was initially considered to be two separate codices. One part was referred to as the Cortez Codex, as apparently it was owned by the conqueror, Hernan Cortez. The second part was called the Troanus Codex.
Leon de Rosny published the Cortez Codex in 1892. Brasseur de Bourbourg published the Troanus Codex, named after the person he bought it from, in 1869. The two codices, which form the Madrid Codex when combined, consist of 112 pages, many of which are frayed and almost indistinguishable. The document was originally written by different Maya scribes.
The Grolier Codex
The Grolier Codex is an 11 -page codex that manifests heavy Mixtec influence. The Mixtecs lived in and around the Oaxaca Valley.
The Grolier Codex is located in a private-society collection in New York. The Grolier Codex was first published in 1973 by Michael D. Coe, archaeologist.
The Nuttall Codex
The Nuttall Codex is a Mixtec Indian codex. The Mixtec people lived in and around the Valley of Oaxaca. The original manuscript surfaced in the hands of an Englishman by the name of Lord Zouche. The first copy of the Nuttall Codex was made by Zelia Nuttall in 1902 and, as a result, carries the name of the Codex Nuttall. It was published by the Peabody Museum. In 1975, a complete color reproduction of the facsimile screenfold from the Peabody publication of the codex, in standard book format, was published by Dover. The 1975 edition includes commentary by Arthur G. Miller.
Shortly before his death in 1970, the great Mexican archaeologist, Alfanso Caso, translated the Codex Nuttall. The original manuscript includes history and genealogy of the Mixtecs dating from 838 AD to 1330 AD. Figure 10-1 is a copy of one of the 84 pages of the Codex Nuttall.
THE NATIVE DOCUMENTS
Other books, which may or may not have been written originally in the native languages but which were written by the natives after the Conquest-either from memory or from the ancient documents-fall into the category of native documents. Foremost among these documents is the Popol Vuh. Other native documents include The Annals of the Cakchiquels, The Title of the Lords of Totonicapan, and The Books of Chilam Balam.
The Popol Vuh
The Popol Vuh is a Mesoamerican document that was written shortly after the Spanish Conquest. The document was written by a Quiche Indian who had learned how to read and write Spanish. It has also been called the Popol Buj, Book of the Council, Book of the Community, the Sacred Book, or National Book of the Quiche.
The Quiche Indians live in the Country of Guatemala and are a branch of the Maya race. At the time of the Spanish Conquest, the Quiche nation was the most powerful and cultured of all those that occupied the region of Central America. In 1524, Pedro de Alvarado, who was sent by Cortez, attacked the Quiche, caused them to surrender, and then burned their capital city, Utatlan.
Some of the Quiche nobility moved from Utatlan to the neighboring town of Chichicastenango. The Spaniards named the place Santo Tomas Chichicastenango. Today, the town is a favorite place to visit among foreigners, especially on Sundays and Thursdays, which are the market days.
The Popol Vuh was apparently written by one or more of the nobles of the Quiches from oral traditions. It appears to have been written originally in the Quiche tongue by using Latin letters. It was discovered by Father Francisco Ximenez in the Santo Tomas Church at Chichicastenango early in the 18th Century. Father Ximenez transcribed the record and translated it into Spanish. The original may have been returned to the Quiche people.
The Popol Vuh contains traditions of the creation, the flood, the origin of the Quiche nations, and the chronology of their kings down to the year 1550.
The Popol Vuh was first published in English in 1950. It was published from a Spanish version that was published in Spanish in 1947. The English version was published by Delia Goetz and Sylvanus Morley from the translation of Adrian Recinos and contains 158 pages.
In writing a 72-page introduction, Recinos makes the following judgment about the PopolVuh:
This manuscript is, without doubt, the most vigorous, literary, and significant effort achieved by the American Indian in the fields of mythology and history. (Recinos 1950:75)
Bancroft, in his history on the native races, was a little more conservative as he wrote:
Ofall American people, the Quiches ofGuatemala have left us the richest mythological legacy. Their description of the Creation as given in the PopolVuh, which may be called the national book ofthe Quiches, is, in its rude strange eloquence and poetic originality, one of the rarest relics of aboriginal thought. (Bancroft 1883,111:42)
The above statements deserve some consideration. However, when taken in the context of the overall picture, the PopolVuh is a kindergarten text when compared with the Book of Mormon.
Both the PopolVuh and the Book of Mormon contain information on dogma, origins, history, and genealogy of the native Americans.
Both the PopolVuh and the Book of Mormon were written originally by American natives and subsequently translated into the English and the Spanish languages.
However, the Popol Vuh contains only 158 pages of work compared to 531 pages in the Book of Mormon. The PopolVuh reads like a fragmented text. The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, develops a highly sophisticated doctrinal and historical narrative.
Regarding the creation, the Popol Vuh states:
Then they planned the creation, and the growth of the trees and the thickets and the birth of life and the creation of man. Thus it was arranged in the darkness and in the night by the heart of heaven who is called Huracan. (Goetz and Morley 1950:82)
The Annals of the Cakchiquels
The Annals of the Cakchiquels is a document that was written by the Cakchiquel Indians of Guatemala. The Cakchiquels are literally neighbors of the Quiche Indians associated with the PopolVuh. The Annals of the Cakchiquels has also been referred to as the Memoirs of Solola. The town and province (department) of Solola is where beautiful Lake Atitlan is located. Lake Atitlan has been proposed to be the Waters of Mormon in Book of Mormon geography.
Although The Annals of the Cakchiquels contains some statements regarding their origin, the greatest value is that the document presents the native story of the Spanish Conquest.
Brasseur de Bourbourg translated the Cakchiquel document into French around 1855. This translation was subsequently used for the Spanish translation. An American scholar, Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, acquired the original document in the Cakchiquel language along with Brasseur's translation. Brinton translated the works into English in 1885. He gave the originals to the library of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, where the document is today. (Information taken from Recinos and Goetz, 1953)
The Title of the Lords of Totonicapan
The Title of the Lords of Totonicapan is a native document that also comes to us from the Highlands of Guatemala. The same people who are responsible for the PopolVuh, the Quiche Indians of Guatemala, wrote The Title of the Lords of Totonicapan. It was probably written in 1854 by the natives of the town of Totonicapan in the Quiche language using Latin letters.
The Title of the Lords of Totonicapan was translated from the Quiche text into Spanish by Dionisio Jose Chonay. The English version was translated by Delia Goetz and first published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1953.
The Books of Chilam Balam
The early Spanish missionaries who arrived in the Yucatan in the 16th Century learned the Maya language so they could teach Christianity to the natives. The missionaries developed an alphabet based on the Latin alphabet.
Children of the leading Maya families were instructed and trained to become priests in a quasi-boarding- school arrangement. By the latter part of the century, these native priests, who had mastered the Spanish and Latin languages and yet retained their original tongue, attempted to record their ancient histories. Some of the documents were even written in a distorted type of ancient Maya hieroglyphic form.
These manuscripts have often been called The Books of Chilam Balam, named after a Maya prophet/priest named (Chilam) Balam, who lived during the Spanish Conquest. (Information taken from Knorozov, 1982)
THE SPANISH CHRONICLES
A third type of literature to surface about the ancient history and traditions of Mesoamerica includes the abundant amount of material written by the Spanish chroniclers. For the most part, the chroniclers consisted of the Catholic clergy who were either from Spain or who were of Spanish descent.
Some of the most famous of the 16th-Century writers were Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, Bishop Diego de Landa, Juan de Torquemada, Father Diego Duran, San Bartolome de las Casas, and Bernal Diaz de Castillo. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 of this text discuss the works of Ixtlilxochitl, Sahagun, and Landa in some detail.
Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (1578-1650)
Ixtlilxochitl was born of both Spanish and Mexican royalty. He grew up in the native environment of Texcoco near Mexico City.
He wrote his works during the latter part of the 16th and the early part of the 17th Centuries. He affin-ns that his source material consisted of the native painted records of the Mexicans. The first chapter of the works of Ixtlilxochitl occupies all of Chapter 11 of this text as written in Spanish by Chavero and translated into English by Allen.
Fray Bernardino de Sahagun (1510-1591)
Sahagun also wrote during the 16th Century. He spent a large part of his adult life in and around Mexico City. He utilized the services of his trilingual students to extract the oral history and traditions from the communities in the Mexico Valley. Some of Sahagun's writings are included in Chapter 12 of this text. The entire chapter is dedicated to him.
Bishop Diego de Landa (1524-1579)
Diego de Landa served the Catholic Church in the Yucatan, where he gained the information for his writings on the Maya people. He recorded their customs and was a part of the latter 16th-Century movement to recreate the Maya alphabet. Some of Landa's works are included in Chapter 13 of this text.
Fray Juan de Torquemada (1557-1664)
Torquemada wrote a history of Mexico called Monarquia Indiana. He recorded the legends of the origins and migrations of the Mexican people. He also wrote about some of the legends of the white god, Quetzalcoatl. Chapter 14 of this text analyzes the legends associated with Quetzalcoatl.
Father Diego Duran (1537-1588)
Duran was convinced that the native Mexicans were part of the lost tribes of Israel, as he observed many similarities between the religious customs of the Mexicans and the religious customs outlined in the Old Testament. A priest of Spanish descent, Duran spent most of his life in the Mexican States of Mexico, Puebla, and Morelos. His writings on the history, gods, and calendar rites remained in oblivion for many years. His contributions on the customs of the people of ancient Mexico, however, now classify him as one of the elite Spanish chroniclers of the 16th Century.