I take it this should read _Chiic u Kaba_ (_Chiic_; fundar o poblar alguna cosa, casa, pueblo, etc.

_Diccionario de Motul_, MS.)] As Itzamna had disappeared without undergoing the pains of death, as Kukulcan had risen into the heavens and thence returned annually, though but for a moment, on the last day of the festival in his honor, so it was devoutly believed by the Mayas that the time would come when the worship of other gods should be done away with, and these mighty deities alone demand the adoration of their race.

None of the American nations seems to have been more given than they to prognostics and prophecies, and of none other have we so large an amount of this kind of literature remaining.
Some of it has been preserved by the Spanish missionaries, who used it with good effect for their own purposes of proselyting; but that it was not manufactured by them for this purpose, as some late writers have thought, is proved by the existence of copies of these prophecies, made by native writers themselves, at the time of the Conquest and at dates shortly subsequent.
These prophecies were as obscure and ambiguous as all successful prophets are accustomed to make their predictions; but the one point that is clear in them is, that they distinctly referred to the arrival of white and bearded strangers from the East, who should control the land and alter the prevailing religion.[1] [Footnote 1: Nakuk Pech, _Concixta yetel mapa_, 1562.

MS.; _El Libro de Chilan Balam de Mani_, 1595, MS.

The former is a history of the Conquest written in Maya, by a native noble, who was an adult at the time that Merida was founded (1542).] Even that portion of the Itzas who had separated from the rest of their nation at the time of the destruction of Mayapan (about 1440-50) and wandered off to the far south, to establish a powerful nation around Lake Peten, carried with them a forewarning that at the "eighth age" they should be subjected to a white race and have to embrace their religion; and, sure enough, when that time came, and not till then, that is, at the close of the seventeenth century of our reckoning, they were driven from their island homes by Governor Ursua, and their numerous temples, filled with idols, leveled to the soil.[1] [Footnote 1: Juan de Villagutierre Sotomayor, _Historia de la Provincia de el Itza_, passim (Madrid, 1701).] The ground of all such prophecies was, I have no doubt, the expected return of the hero-gods, whose myths I have been recording.