Do Trujillo and the Ciudad Blanca Areas Offer clues to the Conquest of the Americas?

Do Trujillo and the Ciudad Blanca Areas  Offer clues to the Conquest of the Americas?

By Wendy Griffin (2014)

 

One reason Trujillo gets chosen to be visited by cruise boats is that the mountains comedown to the sea, the only place that is true on the Central American Caribbean shore. Another is that it has a well maintained colonial fort with canons that overlook the Bay. It has an older church built in the 19^th century on a traditional central plaza or park, very typical of Spanish colonial towns. It is also very historic, being one of the few places in the New World that both Hernan Cortes went and Christopher Columbus landed, founded a century by the Spanish before the .Pilgrims came to America. 

 

Before the Spanish there were Indians in the area, and the archaeology of the Rufino Galan Museum near the swimming pool (piscine) in Trujillo shows the same pottery and other artifacts as the Ciudad Blanca or White city area in the area between the Paulaya river and the Rio Platano River in the area between colon, Olancho and Gracias a Dios Departments.  The name of nearby Agalteca Yoro (originally Acalteca) on the Aguan River, and the stories and the crafts of the Aguan Valley seem to support the stories told in Mexico of the Toltec King Ce Acalt Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl having come to Central America and dying in Huetlapalan, (Old city or Great city of Red Earth),which Hernan Cortes reported to the east of Trujillo. Traditionally houses in Honduras were often made of bahareque, a type of daub and wattle with clay, so that the houses may have had a red appearances as used to be common in Trujillo. Red earth or “barro” would also have been important for clay pots, which are abundant in the area. The Red Earth may also have referred to copper which the Honduran Indians manufactured into bells, axes and earrings.

 

The Olancho Nahua Indians in Honduras still say they came to Olancho with Tapaltzin Axil (Topilzin o Tapaltzin means Our Lord in  Nahua).   Later the Agalteca Indians reported that Moctezuma came to Honduras to try to conquer it and make it pay tribute, a story also found in the colonial era book Monarquria Indiana by Fray Torquemada. During the colonial era the area east of Trujillo was known as Taguzgalpa, the place where gold was melted, and there were for short times Spanish goldmines in the areas of Xeo (now Feo), and Tayaco perhaps in the Agalta Valley/Rio Sico area and on the Rio Platano, before the Indians revolted and threw them out of Taguzgalpa. The town of Bataya at the mouth of the Rio Platano is named for a battle betweenthe Payas and the Spaish and the Spanish lost. 

 

“Place where gold is melted” is also the origin of the name of Tegucigalpa the capital of Honduras. Some neighborhoods of Tegucigalpa include Calpules (neighborhood or land owned by a clan in Nahua) and Toncontin (a type of drum made of hollowed log with an H design carved in the top) also called tunkul, and known to the Mayas and the Nahuas. The Indians in Olancho, Colon and Gracias a Dios were exporting gold prior to the Spanish arrival and Cortes heard about it 7 years before coming to Honduras.

 

When Hernan Cortes came from Mexico to Trujillo in search of gold in Olancho (ulanco-the place of rubber in Nahua)  not only the conquistadors Bernal del Diaz Castillo and Lopez de Gomara came with him and wrote books about the area, but also his Mayan and Nahua translator known as la Malinche or doña Marina, who also now figures in the legend of La llorona in Honduras, which is  still told in Trujillo. In the Guancasco of  Mejicapa and Gracias, Lempira, there is still a small finally dressed girl  which represents the  Malinche. Among the Maya Chorti, the name of the dance of La Huatesca which also has a character called La Malinche, may actually refer to Doña Marina as she was captured the Huasteca area of Mexico, an Aztec princess whose family had been defeated in war by the Mayas and so given to them as a slave, and then later given to Hernan Cortes to be a slave. Hernan Cortes rescued a Spaniard who had beenheld captive by the Mayas for several years and so learned Maya, and so in this way found a way to speak to the Mayas and the Nahua speakers of Honduras, the rest of Central America and Mexico.

 

The combination of Hernan Cortes going from Mexico City to Veracruz in the La Huasteca area,  where the Toltec King Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl had left Mexico 500 years before by sea to found Payaqui (among Nahuas or among Yaquis) or Hueyalto (the most important one) in the Chorti area, Cuscatlan in the Pipil area of El Salvador and to die in Huetlapalan east of Trujillo in the Ciudad Blanca area of Honduras, and going with Dona Marina who could translate to the Nahua speaking Indians in Western Honduras and in the Trujillo area, and then Cortes went to back to Mexico after a long absence and people reacted as if he had come back from the dead, may have a lot to do with why he was able to conquer the Aztecs and the rest of Mexico, too, since some Mexicans considered he may have in fact been Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec god king returned from Huetlapalan after 500 years just as he had profesized. Some omens like the arrival of a spirit who cried in the streets over her children the Aztecs (origin of the La Sucia and la Llorona and the Sihuanaba or spirit of the woman myths in Honduras) in Mexico City made the Aztec Empereror Moctezuma II (not Moctezuma I who tried to conquer Honduras) already  think some bad or mysterious thing was coming before Cortes arrived.

 

Even though in paintings of Hernan Cortes, he is shown as having brown hair, historic reports say he was “rubio”, a word that now means blonde. Hernan Cortes is also reported as having light colored skin “tez clara”.  Some stories of Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl (One Reed Our Lord Quetzal Snake in Nahua) also say he was light skinned “tez clara” and his hair was “rubio” blonde. While this sounds unlikely, in fact in Scott Wood’s book one man in the Mosquitia describing  his father who was a Rah Indian, he said his father was “tez clara” (light skinned) and “rubio” (blonde).  The Indians that the Miskitos called the Rah were Indians who lived in the Mosquitia and in the Aguan valley and fought with the Miskitos and were either eventually absorbed into the Miskitos by marriage or killed in punishment for killing and eating a mixed Rah and Miskito child  and the Mosquitia. The Rah called the Honduran Miskitos Mam, notes Scott Wood. In Guatemala when the Toltec or Yaquis arrived there, they called the Mayas in Huehuetenango Mam which  means “mute”, because they could not understand them when they spoke.  That is why there are Mam Mayas in Guatemala, according to the Author of the Pipil-Toltecs of Guatemala.

 

 Some mixed descendants of the Rah and Miskitos helped Scott Wood with his research for his book La Mosquitia desde Adentro and mixed Rah and Miskitos were also writers of some of  stories in the Miskiwat books like The People of Miskut and Other Stories such as Orfa Jackson of Brus Laguna and Erasmo Ordeñes of Ahuas.

 

Theodore Morde who visited the Ciudad Blanca area in 1939 wrote in his typewritten report in Spanish, “La Ciudad de Mono Dios” (The city of the Monkey god) which is in the IHAH library in Tegucigalpa, also tells the story of a Choroteca princess named Oro who is fair skinned “tez clara” and “rubia” blonde, associated with the City of the Monkey God,which he thought was the Ciudad Blanca. The Choroteca people’s name means people from Cholula a valley near Mexico City.

 

They are also called Cholulateca Indians, in colonial documents,  which means in Nahua people from Cholula and this is where the city and department of Choluteca, Honduras gets its name from.  Morde’s story sound unlikely, except the Miskito Indians of Wampusirpe still dance a dance called “Oro” for Christmas, and it is their favorite dance reported Juan Antonio Cruz, the high school principal in Wampusirpe. What is even more interesting is that Miskito does not have the sound of the letter O in its language, so the word Oro, which does not refer to the Spanish word for gold inthis case,  is not a word of Miskito origin. The Pech Indians also note that the Nahua Indians in Olancho are of “tez clara”, light colored skin.

 

The Miskitos usually change O’s to U’s, so that the name Oro would be pronounced Uru,in Miskito  related to the Miskito and Pech  word “urus” or monkey.  The Monkey of the City of the Monkey god or Ciudad blanca is probably the half monkey half man,hairy and tall, known as Sismite in Honduran Spanish and Nahua, Takaskro in Pech, kisi in Miskito, and Ulak in Tawahka.  The Sisimite stole a woman, in Ladino and Pech and Nahua versions and three women in the Tawahka version told by Morde. In the Ladino version in Honduras, he had a son, and that son saw how the father mistreated the mother, and in the end he killed the father and helped the mother escaped. Sisimite stories are also told by the Mayas of Honduras and Guatemala. In the Pech story, the Pech husband’s brother rescues her after slaying Takaskro, and Takaskro turns into a mountain with all kinds of poisonous snakes and scorpions. This mountain is known as Sierra de los Payas on Honduran maps.  Some places where the descendants of the people who called their grandmothers Payas like Gualaco, Olancho, now are part of the Nahua Federation of Olancho.

 

The name Paya probably comes from Payaqui (among Nahuas or Among Yaquis). Yaqui is now a language related to Nahua, and the Nahua speakers sometimes called themselves and the Yaqui “chichimeca” (the dog people). The word chichimeco is a character in the Guancasco in Mejicapa and Lempira. The Rah are especially remembered by the Miskitos as staying up all night to do wakes for dogs, and if the Miskito who spent the night in their village did not stay up all night to do a wake for the dog, he was put to death. The Nahuas believed that dogs guided the soul of the dead to the land of the paradise of the rain spirit below the rainbow, and may have feared the dog would take the soul of his master now if the Indians did not stay up all night to do a wake for him. The Miskito Indians still have similar beliefs about where the dead go after they die, and Alawan, the thunder god was the most important god among them.

 

Stories of the Rah Indians collected by Scott Wood in his book La Moskita desde Adentro (the Moskitia from the Inside) include that they were very warlike, and liked stories of war. If a Miskito Indian spent the night in a Rah Indian village, if he kept them well entertained with war stories, he was welcome. If he did not he risked being eaten by them. The Pech stories of the Kao Kamasa or White House also report that the Pech were captured, sacrificed and eaten by the people in the valleys who worshiped spirits of storms. The Indian capital near the Trujillo area was Papayeca, the place of the Papa, or the high priest of Quetzalcoatl in his round temple in the form of God of the Wind. Cortes confirmed that Papa meant high priest in the Trujillo are Quetzalcoatl heads on corn grinding stones are common in the Trujillo Museums and in the Ciudad Blanca area, such as on the website www.roatanet.com/ciudadblanca. Cortes also told his cousin when he left Trujillo to make sure that he stopped the sacrifices, so it seems that they were in fact happening. La piedra del duende (the rock of nature spirit) in Trujillo has a shape which would make it a good altar for sacrifice and it is high on a mountain.

 

Tlaloc (or Quia) rain god faces have been found on clay vessels in the Agalta Valley in Olancho and in the area of  Ciudad Blanca and an example can be seen in the Museum in the town of Copan Ruinas. The original name of Quimistan Santa Barbara was Quiatlan, the place of rain god Quia.  Quia is the Nicarao rain god equivalent to the Aztec rain god Tlaloc. The Nicaroa of Nicaragua were Nahua speakers from the Valley of Chulala in Mexico, now called Nahoas. The Spanish called them Nicaroas because that was the name of their chief. The Nahua speakers of El Salvador and Honduras were also called Pipiles, which comes from the word Pipiltin the leaders. Central American Nahua is in  the same language as Nahuatl the language of the Aztecs. In colonial documents they are often called Mexicanos, which meant that they had similar cultures to the Mexica, the name of the Aztecs for themselves or that they were from the Valley of Mexico where Mexico City is now, and where there are the ruins of the Toltec capital of Teotihuacan (tulan) and Tenochitlan.

 

The sister of Tlaloc among the Aztecs was princess Green, and her equivalent in Teotihuacan in Central Mexico was the Goddess of Terrestial Waters, she may be in Honduras the origin of Texiguat (the pool of the woman) in El Paraiso and Atlantida Departments, Siguaté (the woman of the pool), Olancho, Poza de la Sirena in Betulia west of Trujillo, La Llorona (the crying woman) in Culmi Olancho, and the woman in Siguatepeque (mountain of the woman) and the legend of the Sirena, the spirit who takes care of fish among the Pech, the Miskitos, the Nahuas and the Ladinos of Honduras (probably also the origin of the Agayuma among the Garifunas). In Teotihuacan she was shown in the form of a cross or a world tree, from which fish and water came, so that those crosses on the hilltops above the Chorti and Lenca communities and the name of Las Crucitas (the little crosses), which are included in healing ceremonies and on the Day of the cross and the first day of the Rainy Season (3May) maybe related to her.

 

So there is a lot of indications that the Pech were right and that their enemies who made the stone ruins in the Aguan Valley such as near Rio Claro, near Olanchito/Agalteca, and in the Paulaya (river of Blood in Miskito) valley and the Rio Platano area  (originally Waraská in Pech for the river, but the mountains, passes, and archeological sites in the area between the Agalta Valley and the Rio Platano area often had Nahua names) did indeed worship rain spirits. The Nahua speakers, such as the Pipils and the Nicarao from the Valleys of Mexico and Cholula, were known to sacrifice people in relation to victories and crisis related to rain, accompanied by copper war bells, such as the type found in Quimistan Cave, the San Pedro Museum and the Bay Islands museum in Sandy Bay.

 

 Doña Marina said those who lived near Trujillo like Papayeca and Champagua (damp house in Nahua, with champa still being a type of house by the water in the Trujillo area, like palapa in Mexico and in Santa Barbara) and Cecoatl (one snake in Nahua) spoke in a way similar to those of Chulula, with a few differences. At the time of conquest there was also a town called Chulula in what is now the Department of Cortes, and also  a town called Culhuacan, after the Toltec neighborhood in the Valley of Mexico in what is now Mexico City, in Cortes in Honduras.

 

The Nahua speaking Toltecs (people from Tulan the place of tule or which could also be Acatan, the place of acat or acatl which can mean the names of plants tule (used to make petate mats in Honduras), junco, used to make baskets in Honduras, or Carrizo used to make baskets and flutes in Honduras) were known to be descended from Chichimecas and at the time of Spanish conquest their descendents were in the kingdom of Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico which formed part of the Triple Alliance which was the Aztec Empire. The Toltecs went fleeing from Teotihuacan which they called Tulan (place of tule), to Culhuacan and to chulula, and from Chulula then to the Veracruz Coast, and then to Mayan area such as near Chichen Itza (also called Tula or Tulan) and Palenque (called Culhuacan).  Rememberances of these places lives on in the place names of Tulian (place of lots of tule in Nahua(, Cortes),  Tulito (little tule) on the Rio Paulaya, and Acalteca or Agalteca (person from Acatan-the place of tule) in Santa Barbara, Comayagua, Yoro and Olancho, and Cerro Palenque in Cortes.