CAKCHIQUEL, a group of Indians living in the highlands of Guatemala. Their tongue, one of the "metropolitan" Maya dia lects, is spoken in the Departments of Solola, Chimaltenango, Sacatepequez, and Escuintla. They number about 130,000 souls.
The history of the Cakchiquel, like that of the Quiche (q.v.), is preserved in a manuscript written shortly after the Spanish con quest. It relates the history of the creation and their wanderings from the mysterious Tulan where all the Maya tribes once lived. It describes their varying fortunes in the almost constant wars they waged with their neighbours after settling on the shores of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. Upon the arrival of the Spaniards (15 24) the Cakchiquel made no resistance, partly through fear of Spanish arms and partly through unwillingness to ally themselves with their Quiche enemies. Hence Alvarado and his army were received in peace and the first European settlement in the country resulted. The following year, however, the Cakchiquel revolted and were defeated by the Spaniards. Like the other highland Indians, the Cakchiquel were agriculturists, who lived in cities of stone strongly fortified, on inaccessible mountain ridges. Their capital, Iximche, was particularly impregnable, as the surviving remains testify to-day. Written books, the Maya calendar, and other higher arts enjoyed by the more advanced people of Middle America were known to the Cakchiquel. A curious feature of their government was the succession of kings. This post they allotted to two families who assumed the triple canopy of State in rotation.
To-day the Cakchiquel, like their neighbours, are largely engaged in agricultural pursuits, for the most part as peons on the coffee estates. They still retain their costumes of native cotton covered with embroidery which differ from village to village. They per form ' various dances, sometimes of a pagan nature, but, living closer to the capital than some of the other Indians, they have been forced to assume more ostensibly Christian ways.
See Domingo Juarros, History of the Kingdom of Guatemala (5823); D. G. Brinton, ed., Annals of the Cakchiquels (Philadelphia, 1885).