Vase dug at Flores by Arlen
Chase, displayed at Guatemala National Museum
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Flores |
The
ancient city of Tayasal, or Tah Itzá Capital of the Itzá, in the Post Classic, after they
migrated from Chichčn Itzá, is now the city of Flores, the
capitol of the department of
El Petén, that was built in the
site once occupied by Tayasal. Located
in an island of the
Petén Itzá lake in
central Petén. The archaeological significance
on this island is quite limited,
in the central plaza of Flores
in front of the Catholic church that was build with blocks from the
ancient city, You can appreciate some
sculptured monuments
from the
Post Classic, there is a small museum that also shows some
objects of Tayasal, however, the site itself is of great
importance in the heritage of the Maya. The Itzá, left the
Yucatán in the 13th century and turned the city of Tayasal into
their capital. It was here, on the island of Flores and on the
shores of
Lake Petén Itzá, that the last vestiges of the Maya
civilization held out against the onslaught of the Spanish
conquers. In 1541 A.D. Hernán Cortéz came to the island, on
route to Honduras, but due to the thickness of the jungle and
the fine defensive location of the city he desisted in the
attempt of attacking the island. Along with the Ko'woj Maya, from the lakes
Zacpetén
, Macanché,
and Queixil
was the longer lasting
Maya culture cities.
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Sites in Central Petén |
In 1618 two Jesuit friars and several hundreds of Tipú Indians
from today's Corozal in Belize (Sacalum), arrived to Tayasal,
they were received at
Tah Itzá and treated warmly. Despite the hospitality the friars
stood with cross raised after getting located in hospitality
houses and attacked his public audience with a fluent sermon in
Mayan, insulting the population, their religious beliefs and way
of life. He was heckled back and told to go back from where he
came from. The Lord Can Ek
continued to show forbearance and showed the two friars around
the town on the island. There were about two hundred well packed
houses along the shore. Twelve or more temples, with
monuments and
paintings the largest of
these was as large as the church in Mérida and could hold a
thousand people. The church had a statue of the horse that Hernán Cortez had left on his expedition through the area nearly
a century earlier. This horse was
worshiped and called
Tzimin Chac.
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A Late Classic Site
Misnamed as Tayasal in Front of Flores (Tayasal)
|
The
two friars had hoped to convince Lord Can
Ek and his people that Mayan prophecy of change and
conversion was due in this
Katún,
but failed when they disagreed on Mayan calendar dates. Young
men in canoes chased them across the lake and threw stones and
threatened the party with bows and arrows. But the friars let
the Tipú convinced Can Ek, to let
them go. , after several and costly attempts both from Belize
1685, and Yucatán 1695,
The final conquest of the
independent Maya Itzá and the Ko'woj from
Zacpetén
and Queixil, occurred on March 13, 1697 when the forces
of Martin de Ursúa attacked the Itzá of Tayasal from a ship.
The battle was one of gunpowder and firearms against Mayan
warriors in dugouts armed with only bows and arrows. The
Spaniards invaded the island and destroyed the idols building a
church on the old Mayan worship sites. also the last
Codices were destroyed. and
some scholars, like Michael Coe and James Porter think that the
Madrid Codex come from Here.
Coe’s belief that the Madrid Codex comes
from the 17th-century Petén stems from the presence of paper
with Latin writing on page 56, which he considers to be integral
to the manuscript. Although much of the Latin text cannot be
read, Coe identifies part of the name “...riquez” on the
fragment of paper that remains. He interprets this as a possible
reference to the Franciscan missionary Fray Juan Enríquez, an
idea that he attributes to Stephen Houston. Based on the fact
that Enríquez was killed in the town of Sacalum in 1624 during
an attempt to conquer Tayasal, Coe proposes that the manuscript
was produced after this date.
Porter independently arrived at a similar
conclusion, although his argument is based on two objects
depicted in the manuscript—what he interprets as a European
weapon on page 39b and an idol representing a horse on page 39c
. Porter attributes these two scenes directly to Hernan Cortéz’
visit to Tayasal in 1525, and therefore dates the painting of
the codex to the interval between Cortés’ departure and the
conquest of Tayasal in 1697. In
Polol a mid sized site located
to the south-west, there are proof of occupation by people from
Tayasal, that visited its Cave, used since the Preclassic.
This occurred according to the
Mayan
calendar just 136 days short of a Katún 8 Ahau, and seems to
reflect the Mayan prophecy, for this was going to be a
cosmologically mandated period of change and upheaval for the
Maya. While the event of the final conquest was trumpeted in the
Royal Court in Spain as a great victory, on the ground in the
Petén the conquest turned out to be a dismal failure. The
population had fled, leaving an empty town with no food supplies
and the Spaniards found they had no supplies and were in a panic
trying to raid the surrounding towns to secure provisions. They
were literally starving. The Spanish dreams of truly governing
the Itzá evaporated and the Spanish soon found themselves adrift
in a green expanse of jungle, without food to eat, souls to
convert, or slave labor to exploit. The conquered had drifted
away, abandoning the conqueror. The
Petén and heavy rain forest
was not like the dry Yucatán, forcing them to abandon the area
after several years of suffering. There
are today, around 4,000 Itzá speaking persons, mainly at San
José in the north shore of the lake.
