MAYA, ma' ya", the ruling race of Yucatan at the time of the discovery of America and for many years previous. Where they came from is uncertain; but that they invaded the peninsula from two different directions is as serted in various of their traditions. This probably means that the people are of distiirt races, one of which came by way of the Ge'l of Mexico and the other from the west r southwest by land. The first influx of in habitants to Yucatan recorded in the traditions was led by the great culture hero Zamna. (qv) who became the first temporal and ecclesiastical ruler of the land, a sort of Moses, a of laws and a solidifier of traditions. Tradition says he lived to be quite old and that he di vided the country into districts which he gave to his followers of noble birth. At the time of his death the Mayas were in secure and peaceable possession of the peninsula of Yuca tan, throughout the length and breadth of which they had extended their culture. These early Mayas seem to have been closely connected with the other great cultured peoples of Chiapas, Honduras and Guatemala. in lan guage, customs and religious institutions.
The second inroad of foreigners into Yuca tan was, according to traditions, headed by Quetzalcoatl. This probably means that the newcomers were followers of the Toltec re ligion and probably possessors of Nahuan cul ture. Whether, on their arrival in Yucatan. they spoke the same language as the first Mayas is not known; but it seems probable that they did, since they are called, by various early writers, "the Itzas,u a name generally con ceded to mean the followers of Zamni or Itzamnfi, the culture god of the early Mayas Yucatan now had two governing races which seem to have lived on more or less friendly terms with one another, and to have had no trouble in communicating with one another. It is certain that, at the time of the conquest of Yucatan, which took place about 500 years later, only one language existed in the Yet the style of the various ruins of Yucatan show that there must have been a blending of cultures and religious ideas, and indicates the influence of Nahuan civilization in the penin sula. It is probable and there are intimations in the Maya and Quiche traditions, that not only one but numerous migrations took place over considerable periods of time from the southwest into Yucatan.
Both the original followers of Zamni and the immigrants from the southwest, Chiapas and Guatemala, must have been, as tradition pic tures them, great builders for Yucatan is literally covered with ruins whose forms, decorations and peculiar characteristics show that at least two races of considerably different cultures built them. Yet however different may
have been the cultures of these two peoples they appear to have become pretty well blended by the time of the conquest, and the two races had merged into one, which the Spaniard named Maya or sometimes Itza. Under the Tutul Xius at Uxmal (q.v.) the Mayas built a civilization noted for its splendor among all the neighbor ing nations. Uxmal most powerful, wealthy and artistic city in Yucatan and as such flourished for many years; but it was finally conquered; and Maya power was transferred to Mayapan, which in its turn fell into the hands of people from the mountains near the end of the 13th century. This was followed by a century and a half of civil war in the peninsula, which led finally to the destruction of Mayapin (q.v.) about 1460. In this war the Tutul Xius found their power greatly reduced and themselves driven to take refuge in Mani, a city which they still inhabited at the time of the Spanish conquest during the first half of the 16th century. With all these influxes of foreigners who evidently remained in the country, into which they appear to have continued to flood up to the time of the dis covery of America, the language of Yucatan remained a unit, in which the dialects were so slightly marked that the people of the whole peninsula conversed with one another without any difficulty. This would seem to indicate that the Maya race was fundamentally the same as that which erected the great historic buildings now in ruins throughout the Quiche country, part of Honduras and the Mexican state of Chiapas. Their culture seems also to have been related to that of Oaxaca, Tabasco, Cam peche and Guerrero. The territory of the Maya race proper stretched southward covering all the peninsula of Yucatan and reaching to the Pacific Ocean.
The Mayas had made a very great advance in civilization at the time of the discovery of America; though, owing to the long and bloody civil wars through which they had just passed, this civilization had lost much of its splendor. This was completely destroyed during the Spanish conquest, which lasted 16 years. Then many of the Mayas retreated to the hilly coun try and the deeply-wooded coast-land to the west where they continued to maintain their independence during the 300 years of Spanish rule. Numerous military expeditions were sent against them and it was not until the adminis tration of Porfirio Diaz that they were reduced to comparative quiet, from which they have again more or less freed themselves. The Maya tongue is still spoken by about 300,000 persons, of whom about 100,000 are of mixed descent.
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