lly contention, revolt, was, after the
Conquest, the technical term for a legal process or lawsuit. These
papers, therefore, form part of the record in one of those interminable
legal cases in which the Spanish law delighted. The plaintiffs in the
case seem to have been the Xahila family, who brought the action to
recover some of their ancient possessions or privileges, as one of the
two ruling families of the Cakchiquel nation; and in order to establish
this point, they filed in their plea the full history of their tribe and
genealogy of their family, so far as was known to them by tradition or
written record. It belongs to the class of legal instruments, called in
Spanish law _Titulos_, family titles. A number of such, setting forth
the descent and rights of the native princes in Central America, are in
existence, as the _Titulo de Totonicapan_, etc.

The date of the present rescript is not accurately fixed. As it includes
the years 1619-20, it must have been later than those dates. From the
character of the paper and writing, I should place it somewhere between
1620 and 1650.

In his _Advertencia_ to his translation of it, Senor Gavarrete asserts
that the document is in the handwriting of one of the native authors.
This is not my opinion. It is in the small, regular, perfectly legible
hand of a professional scribe, a notarial clerk, no doubt, thoroughly at
home in the Cakchiquel language, and trained in the phonetic characters,
introduced with such success by Father Parra, as I have already
mentioned. The centre lines and catch-words are in large, clear letters,
so as to attract the eye of the barrister, as

VAE MEMORIA CHIRE VINAK CHIJ.

THIS IS THE STATEMENT OF THE TORTS.

or,

VAE MEMORIA [T]ANAVINAKIL.

THIS IS A RECORD OF THE WITNESSES.

The document is made up of the depositions and statements of a number of
members of the Xahila family, but that around which the chief interest
centres, and that which alone is printed in this volume, is the history
of his nation as written out by one of them who had already reached
adult years, at the epoch of the first arrival of the Spaniards, in
1524. Unfortunately, his simple-hearted modesty led him to make few
personal allusions, and we can glean little information about his own
history. The writer first names himself, in the year 1582, where he
speaks of "me, Francisco Ernantez Arana."[57-1] The greater part of the
manuscript, however, was composed many