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ABSTRACT
The main focus in this article is on four maps from colonial Yucatan, Mexico (c.1542‒1821). The maps illustrate a two-volume set of Maya notarial documents called the Títulos de Ebtún and concern disputed communal rights to Tontzimin, one of the sparse water sources (cenotes) of this arid limestone region, and its surrounding arable land. Mention is also made of two maps of the province of Mani that were included in treaties agreed with the Spanish authorities as a final record of Maya claims to traditional agricultural rights. Although all these maps were produced by Spanish officials, they relate to broader colonial mapping traditions in Yucatan and embody a clear Maya influence. At the same time, they reveal the effect of Maya mapping practices on Spanish notarial and mapping traditions at the close of the colonial period.
Les Títulos de Ebtún, Yucatan, Mexique: cartographier l’identité communale Maya dans le contexte du notariat espagnol de l’époque coloniale
Cet article porte sur quatre cartes du Yucatan colonial, Mexique (vers 1540‒1821). Les cartes illustrent un recueil de documents notariés Maya en deux volumes, appelé les Títulos de Ebtún, et concernent des droits communaux contestés sur le Tontzimin, l’un des rares points d’eau (cenotes) de cette région calcaire aride, ainsi que les terres arables environnantes. Il est aussi fait mention de deux cartes qui furent jointes aux traités passés avec les autorités espagnoles comme enregistrement final des revendications des Mayas quant à leurs droits agricoles traditionnels. Bien que toutes ces cartes fussent produites par des fonctionnaires espagnols, elles se rapportent à une tradition de cartographie coloniale plus large au Yucatan, et témoignent d’une nette influence Maya. Dans le même temps, elles révèlent l’influence des pratiques cartographiques Maya sur les traditions notariales et cartographiques espagnoles, à la fin de la période coloniale.
Die Títulos de Ebtún, Yucatán, Mexiko: Die kartographische Widerspiegelung kommunaler Identität der Maya im Kontext kolonialer spanischer Notariatstätigkeit
Im Zentrum dieses Beitrags stehen vier in Yucatán (Mexiko) zur Zeit der Kolonialherrschaft (um 1540‒1821) angefertigte Karten. Diese gehören zu einer zweibändigen Zusammenstellung notarieller Dokumente, die Títulos de Ebtún genannt werden, welche Streitfälle um die kommunalen Rechte an Tontzimin, einer der wenigen Wasserressourcen in dieser ariden Kalkregion, und um die umliegenden landwirtschaftlich nutzbaren Flächen behandeln. Einbezogen werden auch zwei Karten, welche in Verträge zwischen der spanischen Obrigkeit und den Maya über deren traditionelle landwirtschaftliche Rechte eingefügt waren. Obwohl alle diese Karten von spanischen Beamten hergestellt wurden, spiegeln sie ein umfassenderes Spektrum kolonialer kartographischer Tradition, da sie eindeutige Einflüsse der Maya sowohl auf die kartographische als auch auf die notarielle Tradition der Spanier am Ende der kolonialen Periode belegen.
Los Títulos de Ebtún, Yucatán, México: cartografía de la identidad comunal maya en un contexto notarial de la colonia española
Este artículo se centra en cuatro mapas del Yucatán colonial, México (c.1540‒1821). Los mapas ilustran un conjunto de dos volúmenes de documentos notariales mayas llamado los Títulos de Ebtún y la preocupación en la disputa relativa a los derechos comunales sobre Tontzimin, una de las pocas fuentes de agua (cenotes) de esta árida región de piedra caliza, y sobre su tierra cultivable circundante. Se hace también mención a dos mapas que fueron incluidos en los tratados acordados con las autoridades españolas como registro final de las reivindicaciones mayas a los derechos agrícolas tradicionales. Aunque todos estos mapas fueron realizados por los oficiales españoles, están relacionados con amplias tradiciones cartográficas del Yucatán colonial, y encarnan una clara influencia maya. Al mismo tiempo, muestran la influencia de las prácticas cartográficas mayas en las tradiciones notariales y cartográficas de España al término del período colonial.
Acknowledgements
This paper developed out of research conducted under the auspices of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities Dean’s Research Funds at the University of Western Ontario, which allowed for my archival work at Harvard University’s Tozzer Library and at Tulane University’s Latin American Library. I would also like to thank the archivists and librarians at the Tozzer Library and the Latin American Library for their assistance.
Notes
1. The documents were discovered in the Ebtun archives c.1917 by the historian William Gates, who brought them to the United States where he had them photographed, mounted on card and bound in two volumes before returning them to Ebtun. As of the mid-1930s the original documents were in Ebtun, but they are now lost. The photographs, which Gates had bound into a two-volume set known as Los títulos de Ebtún, are currently in Harvard University, Tozzer Library Special Collections, C.A.6T54 Portfolio. Ralph L. Roys published a transcription and analysis of the documents. For consistency (and following common academic practice), unless otherwise indicated, all translations of the papers are taken from Roys’s text. See Ralph L. Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (Washington, D.C., Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1939), Publication no. 505. For translations of a number of documents not discussed in this article, see Matthew Restall, The Maya World: Yucatec Culture and Society, 1550‒1850 (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997). Another two documents are transcribed in Matthew Restall, Lisa Sousa and Kevin Terraciano, eds, Mesoamerican Voices: Native-Language Writings from Colonial Mexico, Oaxaca, Yucatan, and Guatemala (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005), 117‒18.
2. The year 1542 refers to the founding of the Yucatan’s provincial capital of Merida. Initial contact between the Spanish and the Maya of Yucatan had occurred in 1518. In 1521 the Spanish, led by adelantado [governor/captain general] Francisco de Montejo, attempted to colonize the peninsula, but the effort failed, as did another in the 1530s. Only in the early 1540s were Montejo and his family able to establish a permanent Spanish settlement. For the most complete history of Yucatan’s colonization, see Robert S. Chamberlain, The Conquest and Colonization of Yucatan, 1517‒1550 (Washington, D.C., Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1948), Publication no. 582.
3. See Restall, The Maya World (see note 1), particularly Chapter 3. On the way the peoples of Ebtun persevered and responded to the colonial encounter, see especially Rani T. Alexander, ‘Prohibido tocar este cenote: the archaeological basis for the Titles of Ebtun’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology 16:1 (2012): 1‒24.
4. For an exception to the general neglect, see Amara L. Solari, ‘Circles of creation: the invention of Maya cartography in early colonial Yucatán’, The Art Bulletin 92:3 (2010): 154‒68.
5. Instruction 10 in the royal questionnaire that, beginning in 1571 and continuing throughout the 1570s, was sent to every community in Spain’s overseas possessions, stipulated that the maps needed for answers to 3 questions (out of a total of 50) were to be oriented to the north. The replies are known as the relaciones geográficas (geographical accounts or reports). For transatlantic Spain, see Barbara E. Mundy, The Mapping of New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the Relaciónes Geográficas (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996); Barbara E. Mundy, ‘Hybrid space’, in Mapping Latin America: A Cartographic Reader, ed. Jordana Dym and Karl Offen (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2011), 51‒55; and Howard F. Cline, ‘The relaciones geográficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577‒1586’, Hispanic American Historical Review 44:3 (1964): 341‒74.
6. Yucatecan Maya mapping traditions are discussed in C. Cody Barteet, ‘Contested ideologies of space in Hispanic American cartographic practices: from the abstract to the real in Spanish and indigenous maps of Yucatán’, RACAR: Revue d’art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review 38:2 (2013): 22‒39; Solari, ‘Circles of creation’ (see note 4), 154‒68; and Amara L. Solari, Maya Ideologies of the Sacred: The Transfiguration of Space in Colonial Yucatán (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2013).
7. Although it was common for 16th-century colonial administrative maps in central Mexico to include indigenous glyph-signs, the practice does not occur in Yucatan. The signs and symbols on Yucatecan maps conform specifically to European cultural traditions. For a discussion on the use of indigenous place signs in central Mexican maps, see Dana Leibsohn, ‘Primers for memory: cartographic histories and Nahua identity’, in Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone and Walter D. Mignolo (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 1994), 161‒87. For information concerning European markers in early modern maps, see, Richard L. Kagan, Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493‒1793 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000), 61; and Catherine Delano-Smith, ‘Signs on printed topographical maps, ca. 1470‒ca. 1640‘, in The History of Cartography, vol. 3, pt. 1: Cartography in the European Renaissance, ed. David Woodward (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007), 528‒90.
8. Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1). In Roys’s text the images are also accompanied by modern drawings.
9. For the process of congregación and its effect on Maya language and their ideas of space see William F. Hanks, Converting Words: Maya in the Age of the Cross (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2010), 1‒22.
10. The abandoned settlements are listed in Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 73‒74, 80‒81.
11. Hanks, Converting Words (see note 9), 1‒22.
12. Restall, The Maya World (see note 1); and William F. Hanks, ‘Grammar, style, and meaning in a Maya manuscript’, International Journal of American Linguistics 54:3 (1998): 331‒64.
13. The literal meaning of chilam balam is ‘jaguar priest’, although balam is also a common Maya patronym. The extant books of the chilam balam are colonial-era productions that are based on pre-Columbian texts and oral histories, as noted by Matthew Restall, Maya Conqusitador (Boston, Beacon Press, 1998), 30‒32.
14. My understanding of the cah structure is derived almost entirely from Restall’s in-depth analysis in his text The Maya World (see note 1). Additionally, important work has been conducted by Sergio A. Quezada, Pueblos y Cacique Yucatecos, 1550‒1580 (México, D.F., El Colegio de México, 1993); and Tsubasa Okoshi Harada, ‘Los Canules: Anánlis etnohistorico del Códice de Calkini’ (doctoral dissertation, Universidad Autónoma de México, 1992). All three authors critically engage the foundational works of Ralph L. Roys, who was one of the first North American academics to delve into the social structure of Maya communities. See Ralph L. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatán, 2nd ed. (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1972); Ralph L. Roys, The Political Geography of the Yucatan Maya (Washington, D.C., Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1957), Publication no. 613; and France V. Scholes and Ralph L. Roys, The Maya Chontal Indians of Acalan-Tixchel: A Contribution to the History and Ethnography of the Yucatan Peninsula (Washington, D.C., Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1948), Publication no. 560. It is thought that most major Maya centres originally had their own chilam balam text, but only fragments of the chilam balam texts of the Maya communities of Calkini, Chumayel, Ixil, Kaua, Mani, Nah, Oxkutzcab, Teabo, Tekax, Tizimin, and Tusik are extant.
15. Solari, Maya Ideologies of the Sacred (see note 6), 20.
16. Hanks, ‘Grammar, style, and meaning’ (see note 12), 351. Hanks indicates that this information is presented in a section of the chilam balam known as the tzol peten, a phrase that roughly translates as ‘the ordering of the land’. As he also notes, tzol translates as the ‘counting out, ordering, explaining’, while peten can denote ‘country, island, region’.
17. Ibid.
18. Restall, The Maya World (see note 1).
19. My translation based on Spanish transcriptions in Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 130. The Spanish text reads ‘este pueblo despoblado de Panaba son de los ah Tunes son poblaciones antiguas de sus antepasados y Tibalchen que este junto al zapote’. For the significance of the sapote tree, see in text below.
20. Panba was also the location of a well.
21. The concept of a tree as a metaphorical axis mundi, the vertical link between the different parts of the cosmos, is almost universal. In the context of this article, see Timothy W. Knowlton and Gabrielle Vail, ‘Hybrid cosmologies in Mesoamerica: a reevaluation of the Yax Cheel Cab, a Maya world tree’, Ethnohistory 54:4 (2010): 709‒39; Elizabeth A. Newsome, Trees of Paradise and Pillars of the World: The Serial Stela Cycle of ‘18-Rabbit-God K’, King of Copan (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2001); and Matthew Restall, ‘The people of the patio: ethnohistorical evidence of Yucatec Maya royal courts’, in Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, vol. 2, ed. Takeshi Inomata and Stephen D. Houston (Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 2001), 350‒58.
22. The genealogical tree belongs to a set of papers known commonly as The Xiu Chronicles (Papeles de los Xiu). The collection of 138 folios, dating from c.1600 to 1817, is housed in Harvard University’s Tozzer Library Special Collections, C.A.7X4 Portfolio. The entire collection of the Xiu papers, which includes both the family tree and the Mani treaty map c.1600, can be accessed online through Harvard University’s digital library collection: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:2034967. For the Xiu genealogical tree, see Constance Cortez, ‘Gaspar Antonio Chi and the Xiu Family Tree’ (doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1996); Constance Cortez, ‘New dance, old Xius: the “Xiu family tree” and Maya cultural continuity after European contact’, in Heart of Creation: The Mesoamerican World and the Legacy of the Linda Schele, ed. Andrea Stone (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2002), 201‒15; Tsubasa Okoshi Harada, ‘Los Xiu del siglo XVI: una lectura de dos textos Mayas coloniales’, Revista Mesoamérica 21, no. 39 (junio 2000): 225‒38; Sylvanus G. Morely and Ralph L. Roys, ‘The Xiu Chronicle: Xiu Probanzas and Family Records’, 1941 (unpublished manuscript at Harvard University, Tozzer Library, Special Collections, 2 vols.); and Sergio A. Quezada and Tsubasa Okoshi Harada, Papeles de los Xiu de Yaxá, Yucatán: Introducción, transcripción, traducción, y notas (México, D.F., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2001).
23. On the challenges faced by the people of Ebtun, see Alexander, ‘Prohibido tocar este cenote’ (see note 3).
24. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatán (see note 14), 178. John F. Chuchiak and Matthew Restall note that as the Maya began to understand Spanish bureaucracy, the lineages found new outlets through which to validate their claims to contested territories, thus avoiding violent disputes. See John F. Chuchiak IV, ‘Maya scribes and colonial literacy in colonial Yucatán’, Human Mosaic: A Journal of the Social Sciences 36:1 (2006): 77‒91; John F. Chuchiak IV, ‘Writing as resistance: Maya graphic pluralism and indigenous elite strategies for survival in colonial Yucatán, 1550‒1750’, Ethnohistory 57:1 (2010): 87‒116; and Restall, Maya Conquistador (see note 13), 24.
25. Restall, The Maya World (see note 1), 191; Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatán (see note 14), 184; and Solari, ‘Circles of creation’ (see note 4), 154.
26. Harvard University’s map, referred to as the ‘Map of Mani’ and catalogued under the date 1600, is in the Tozzer Library, Special Collections C.A.7X4 Portfolio. Tulane University’s map, described as the ‘Mani Land Treaty Map’ and catalogued with the date 1557 (although it could be a later copy), is Latin American Library, Manuscripts Collection 26, Oversize Manuscripts, folder 1. The treaties for both maps have been translated into English by Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatán (see note 14), 185‒92.
27. The Acanech treaty map is in private ownership in Yucatan. The Sotuta map is in New Orleans, Tulane University, The Latin American Library, at Latin American Library Rare Books, 497.2051 Y47.
28. For a reproduction of the Acanech map, see Michel Antochiw, Historia cartográfica de la Península de Yucatán (Campeche, Gobierno del Estado de Campeche-Grupo Tribasa, 1994), 36.
29. See Figure 5.2 in Solari, Maya Ideologies of the Sacred, 104 (note 6), in which only a few markers are named.
30. In marking the western border, the survey continued just past Tibacal to Tiopilchen, a waterhole not depicted on the map, before returning to Hoal (Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatán (see note 14), 187).
31. Maya water management and hydraulic strategies are considered from two points of view: elite control and access of resources, and the rise of engineering works. See in particular Vernon L. Scarborough and Barry L. Isaac, eds., Economic Aspects of Water Management in the Prehispanic New World, Research in Economic Anthropology, Supplement 7 (Greenwich, Connecticut, JAI Press, 1993). Many of the pre-Hispanic cisterns were deliberately placed in the vicinity of a cenote. At Chichén Itzá they were in the city’s ceremonial core in order to reinforce the omnipresence of the Maya’s governing elite that controlled the city and its environs. Similar arrangements are found at Uxmal, Sayil and Mayapán. On water and pre-Columbian Yucatecan cities, see Rafael Cobos and Terance L. Winemiller, ‘The late and terminal classic-period causeway systems of Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico’, Ancient Mesoamerica 12 (2001): 283‒91; Clemency Coggins and O. C. Shane III, Cenote of Sacrifice: Maya Treasures from the Sacred Well at Chichén Itzá (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1984); and Roman Piña Chan, Informe preliminar de la reciente exploración del cenote Sagrado de Chichén Itza, Seri Investigaciones 24 (México City, D.F., INAH, 1970).
32. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatán (see note 14), 38.
33. Ibid., 178; Alexander, ‘Prohibido tocar este cenote’ (see note 3), 7‒8
34. Alexander, ‘Prohibido tocar este cenote’ (see note 3), 7.
35. Gómez and Lomelí see these new engineering works as examples of colonial mestizaje (mixture, often referring to the mixing of races) supporting high-yield agrarian practices and the additional livestock of the ranching system: José Manual A. Chávez Gómez and Leonardo Icaza Lomelí, ‘Norias de Yucatán. Ensayo sobre el mestizaje de una síntesis geométrica’, Boletín de Monumentos Históricos, 3rd ser. 18 (2010): 34‒57. See also Jorge Victoria Ojeda and Sergio Grosjean Abimerhi, ‘Los Chulubo’ob. Arquitectura para el agua en la sierra yucatanense durante la época colonial’, Boletín de Monumnetos Históricos, 3rd ser. 16 (2009): 109‒22.
36. See Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatán (note 14), 185‒94. It would seem that in the late 18th century the people of Mani took this map to arbitration proceedings over their dispute with the neighbouring province of Calkini (west of Uxmal). This would explain the annotations in a later hand and the reference to the ‘Nohcocob controversy with Calkini over communal lands’ (bottom left). For further information on the Calkini see Tsubasa Okoshi Harada, Códice de Calkiní (México, D.F., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Centro de Estudios Mayas, 2009).
37. Roys, The Indian Background of Colonial Yucatán (see note 14), 190. The words in brackets are in Roys’s transcription.
38. Ibid., 190.
39. Yiba is approximately 4 kilometres south of Uxmal while Calppul is to the southeast of the ancient centre. Ibid.
40. Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 11‒12.
41. Ibid., 106‒13.
42. The fifth map in the Titulos de Ebtún records the properties of individuals in the Ebtun community near the Tzeal cenote. It is not discussed here since it played no part in the Ebtun–Cuncunul proceedings.
43. For Maya identity in colonial Yucatecan maps, see Solari ‘Circles of creation’ (note 4), 154‒68; Solari, Maya Ideologies of the Sacred (note 6); and Merideth Paxton, ‘The map of the province of Mani: a record of landscape and northern Maya lowland concepts of origin’, in Landscapes of Origin in the Americas: Creation Narratives Linking Ancient Places and Present Communities, ed. Jessica Joyce Christie (Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press, 2009), 77‒97.
44. Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 120‒21.
45. Ibid., 25. As Roys and Alexander have independently noted, the sale of land was increasingly connected with agrarian change¸ as at Tontzimin and two waterholes, Cibac and Panaba, in the vicinity of the town of Panaba, which were acquired by a wealthy estate holder during the 17th century (Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 24). The major changes affecting Ebtun were the expansion of the livestock industry; the large-scale depopulation of the region during the early years of colonization; the Caste Wars of c.1847–1901; and the transformations of religious practices, as described by Rani T. Alexander, ‘Maya settlement shifts and agrarian ecology in Yucatán, 1800‒2000’, Journal of Anthropological Research 62 (2006): 449‒70; and John F. Chuchiak IV, ‘In servitio dei: Fray Diego de Landa, the Franciscan order, and the return of the extirpation of idolatry in the colonial diocese of Yucatan, 1573‒1579’, The Americas 61 (2005): 611‒46.
46. According to Roys the map (or maps) and the supporting documents were stolen while they were being transferred to Merida (Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 29).
47. Ibid., 106‒7.
48. The judicial proceedings in 1775 were conducted by Antonio de Arze, and those of 1797 by Manual de Arze. In this paper I am dealing only with documents produced by Manual de Arze.
49. Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (note 1), 168‒69.
50. The folio is badly damaged along its southern edge, making it impossible to decipher what was recorded there. Roys presumes the texts once referred to the communities of Cuncunul, Tekom, Tixcacal, which appear on some of the later maps (Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 27).
51. ‘Vivienda de Juan Ant° Ɔul de Ebtun en la tierras de las de Cuncunul’. In Mayan, the ‘Ɔ’ signifies the glottal ‘ts’ or ‘dz’.
52. ‘Camino viejo de Cozil [h]asta Kochila’.
53. Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 28.
54. Ibid., 182‒83. The Spanish text reads, ‘figurando con carbon en el suelo el propio diseño para mayor claridad’.
55. The scribes responsible for writing out most of the notarial documents, including the provincial surveys, were Maya, and even at this late date the Spanish officials were apparently happy to accept traditional Maya practice of working counter-clockwise found in many notarial documents; see Restall, The Maya World (note 1), 189‒203, for other examples.
56. ‘Tontzimin vendidos a los de Cuncunul por Ah Kin Chan Tauc en el centro de las Ebtun’.
57. ‘Tierras de Ebtun’ and ‘Las que quieren rovar a Ebtun’.
58. Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 182. My translation of the Spanish text ‘señalados en el diseño con las letras A, B’.
59. Ibid., 32.
60. The Descripción reads ‘La letra A. manifiesta el Pueblo de Tixkakal: B. manifiesta el Pueblo de Tekom. C. manifiesta el Pueblo de Cuncunul. D. manifiesta el Pueblo de Ebtun. E. manifiesta el Pueblo de Kaua. La linea, tirade de oriente a poniente e la que divide los montes y tierras figurados en el quadrangulo. Por la banda del norte pertenese a los de Ebtun, y Kaua: Por la del sur a los de Tixkakal Tekom y Cuncunul. El labado obscure demarca la comprehension a las tierras del poso nombrado Tontzimin, que demarca la letra F y tiene segun se significa parte de las tierras de Ebtun y Kaua, y parte de las de los otros Pueblos. Merida y Mayo 20 de 1802. Don Manuel Ɔul Tixcacal = Don Silvestre May Batab Tekom = Don Juan Chan Batab Cuncunul—Pedro Ɔul, Casimiro Chulim, Pedro Chan, Alacaldesob—Miguel May, Manuel Sisto Kavil, Gaspar Hoil, Regidroes. Josef Hoil Escrivano Francisco Kauil Escrivano Juan Tus Escrivano’. [The letter A shows the town of Tixkakal. B shows the town of Tecom. C shows the town of Cuncunul. D shows the town of Ebtun. E shows the town of Kaua. The line from east to west is that that divides the forest and lands depicted in the quadrangle. On the north side [of the line] belongs to Ebtun and Kaua: on the south belongs to Tixkakal, Tekom and Cuncunul. The dark wash demarcates the lands of the well named Tontzimin that is marked by the letter F, and accordingly, marks the lands of Ebtun and Kaua, and the parts of those of the other towns. Merida and May 20 of 1802. Don Manuel Ɔul Tixcacal = Don Silvestre May governor of Tekom = Don Juan Chan governor of Cuncunul—Pedro Ɔul, Casimiro Chulim, Pedro Chan, mayor—Miguel May, Manuel Sisto Kavil, Gaspar Hoil, councilors. Josef Hoil clerk Francisco Kauil clerk Juan Tus clerk.] Los títulos de Ebtún (see note 1), vol. 2, folio 169.
61. Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 202. My translation of the Spanish text ‘ofrecieron guarder perpetuo silencio en le asunto’.
62. Cuncunul is approximately 25 kilometres (15.5 miles) from Tontzimin, whereas Ebtun is 30 kilometres (18.6 miles) away.
63. The Spanish text reads, ‘y que se conformen con la secion, que graciosamente le hacen los de Cuncunul de la midtad del paraje, que señala el citado diseño’. My translation from the Spanish in Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (see note 1), 202.
64. Ibid., 204‒11.
65. Ibid., 208‒9.
66. Ibid., 210. My translation of the Spanish text ‘de Cuncunul guarden perpetuo silencio’.
67. Throughout the colonial era, the Spanish league ranged from 1,588 metres (5,210 feet) to 1,696 metres (5,564 feet) or 1.58 kilometres (0.9 mile) to 1.69 kilometres (1.05 mile), approximately the distance an individual could walk in one hour. A cuadra was usually a distance of approximately 100 metres (328 feet), mecate approximately 20.11 square metres (66 square feet), and a fathom approximately 1.82 metres (6 feet). See Roys, The Titles of Ebtun (note 1), 55.
68. Ibid., 228. The Spanish text transcribed in Roys reads, ‘hayé la primera moxonera principal con un senote llamado Kochila distatne un mecate de dicah moxonera principal señalada con la letra A … y siguiendo al oriente crusamos serca del senote Cosil’.
69. Ibid., 36.
70. The inhabitants of modern Ebtun still erect crosses and landownership signs in front of cenotes and norias. See Rani, ‘Prohibido tocar este cenote’ (see note 3), 19.