ligent being (animal de razon), they gave it to eat chickens and other meat and offered it garlands of flowers as they were wont to do to their own chieftains. All these honours, for such they were in their sight, helped to bring about the death of the poor horse, for he died of hunger. It was given its name (the god of the thunderbolt) because they had seen some of the Spaniards discharging their arquebuses or guns when on horseback hunting the deer, and they believed that the horses were the cause of the noise, which appeared to them like thunder, and the flash from the muzzle of the gun and the smoke of the powder they mistook for lightning. Upon this the Devil took advantage of the blindness of their superstition so to increase the veneration in which the statue was held that, by the time the missionaries arrived, this idol had become the principal object of their adoration.
"As soon as the Padre Fray Juan de Orbita caught sight of the idol (says the Padre Fuensalida) it seemed as if the spirit of our Lord had descended on him, for, carried away by a fervid and courageous zeal for the glory of God, he took a great stone in his hand, climbed to the top of the statue of the horse and battered it to pieces, scattering the fragments on the ground"[1].
This act naturally roused the anger of the Indians, who, however, refrained from attacking the missionaries, but a few days later the padres, finding that their preaching was of no effect, left the island and returned to Tipu.
The following year the missionaries again visited Tayasal, but at the end of a few weeks they were driven out by the Indians, and returned to Tipu after suffering great hardship on the way.
In 1623 another attempt was made to Christianize the Itzács. Padre Diego Delgado reached Tayasal from Tipu accompanied by a few Spanish soldiers and eighty Indians; the Spaniards were apparently received with courtesy, but as soon as they had been thrown off their guard the Itzács turned on them and massacred the whole party.
Towards the end of the 16th century the Spaniards began to press upon the unconquered Indians from all sides. Expeditions from Chiapas and Guatemala met on the Rio Lacandon and founded the settlement of Dolores de los Lacandones, and exploring parties descended the river to its junction with the Pasion, and then ascended that stream for a considerable distance. With the exception of the small clusters of ranchos inhabited by the Lacandones, no Indian settlements were met with, but the discovery of the ruins of an ancient stone-built town of great size is incidentally mentioned in one of the reports.
- ↑ Cogolludo's 'History of Yucatan,' 1688.
