Into the Yucatan

Dr. Andrew Cartwright

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Published in 1850, this slim volume recounts Dr. Arthur Cartwright’s exploits in the Yucatan during the Golden Age of Exploration (and the text makes it fairly clear that Dr. Cartwright was more of an explorer than he was any sort of serious archaeologist).

Among tales recounting visits to a number of Mayan ruins and harrowing encounters with what Cartwright refers to as “the still primitive natives of that tawny and emerald land”, one chapter recounts his unexpected discovery of Chichén Xoxul.  Named for the people who inhabited it – the Xoxul, a name which Cartwright translates as either “outcast” or “pariah” based on his conversations with local Mayans – the site is reported to contain “sizeable and remarkable ruins”, including “a small pyramid dedicated to  sorcery and the stars”, all of which are apparently jammed together in the jungle, with
hardly any space between them.

“In character,” Dr. Cartwright writes, “there is much to recall the glories of Chichén Itza, although on a much smaller scale.  It is unclear to me whether this was a minor religious site usurped by the Xoxul, or if the Xoxul were merely aping the dominant Mayan architecture of their era.What is clear to anyone standing beneath the heavy boughs of the jungle in that ancient place is that, even at its height, it must have been
a secretive and remote place.”

With that being said, however, Cartwright also identifies among his rubbings the term “Golxumal”, which he claims to be “all the land controlled by the Xoxul around Chichén Xoxul (the spurious translation of Glauco Suarez in A Survey of Satan  notwithstanding).”  Furthermore, “this territory must have been quite vast at some point in their racial history, for a great deal of imagery pertains to sea voyages.”  Cartwright also records local Mayan legends claiming that the Xoxul once “ransacked the Isle of Gods”, which he conclude is “most likely a symbolic memory of the Xoxul’s
theft of Mayan traditions.”