Jungle of Stone
Page 23
His most important project, however, was the design for his own panorama exhibit hall.49 He had already tested the waters in 1837 in Boston, where he had exhibited the Jerusalem panorama with success. In the spring of 1838, “Catherwood’s Panorama” opened at Prince and Mercer Streets, right off Broadway. The imposing brick and wood rotunda occupied ten thousand square feet and rose several stories. It was fitted with a circle of skylights for daytime exhibitions as well as two hundred gaslights for the evening shows. The exact cost of its construction is not clear, though according to Catherwood’s account book it may have run as high as sixteen thousand dollars, an enormous sum at the time. It was insured for only half that value. To pull it off, Catherwood had teamed up with a New York bookseller and publisher named George William Jackson, who helped finance the project and eventually ran the business side of the venture.50 It is likely Robert Burford invested as well.
Catherwood’s Panorama in New York City; illustration on the poster is believed to be drawn by Catherwood.
Jerusalem provided the rotunda’s first exhibit.51 As it had been in London, the panorama was an immediate success. It did not bring in 140,000 visitors in a single season as it had in London, but it still drew large audiences, sometimes as many as three hundred people a day, each paying twenty-five cents, or the equivalent of about six dollars today.
Over the next year and a half, Catherwood would have little time for architecture. Panorama ads had to be placed in New York’s newspapers, souvenir pamphlets giving historical background had to be written and sold at the exhibits. A panorama of Niagara Falls was created, probably from drawings by Catherwood. The partnership paid him a combined total of two thousand dollars for that canvas and the Jerusalem panorama. The business was so successful that at the end of 1838 he sailed to England with his four-year-old son, Frederick Jr., to retrieve more panoramas from Burford, including the canvas of Thebes, as well as one of Lima, Peru. Rome and New Zealand would follow. In addition, arrangements were made to set up showings in other cities, including Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. And throughout this period, Catherwood delivered as many as four lectures a day at the rotunda, drawing from his personal experiences in Jerusalem and Thebes.
Sometime in the midst of this whirlwind of activity Catherwood met Stephens.52 We have no record of their first encounter, but the two had certainly met by early 1838, when Stephens mentions Catherwood in his book Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land. The Harper brothers were printing new editions of the book as fast as they could, and Stephens first refers to Catherwood in the fourth edition, which came out in February 1838, just before the panorama opened. Catherwood, he said, had brought with him from England “models and drawings of all the principal monuments in the Old World” and “a panoramic of Jerusalem . . . which it is hoped, will soon be exhibited here.” In the eighth edition, published later that year, his comments reflected even greater familiarity with Catherwood. And his remarks were more generous, urging people to go to the new rotunda and see the exhibit, which, he wrote, “presents a vivid picture of the holy city.” He added that when he visited Jerusalem he was “so fortunate as to find in the hands of a missionary a lithographic map made by Mr. Catherwood . . . with which he was in the habit of rambling about alone.”
How familiar the two men were at that point is hard to gauge. But it’s not hard to imagine a friendship forming quickly—they were kindred spirits with much common experience to unite them. Egypt and the Holy Land initially brought them together and sometime during the next year their mutual interests alchemized into a partnership. The shift in their discussions about Jerusalem and Thebes to Copán and Palenque must have been an easy one.
First, however, Catherwood had to return to England to get additional canvases from Burford. Gertrude was pregnant again and Catherwood was intent on putting his panorama business on a sound footing. Stephens, meanwhile, was as tireless and productive as ever. After the success of his first book, he dashed off a second on his travels through Greece, Turkey, Russia, and Poland. It went through three editions in two weeks and kept the printing presses at Harper Brothers humming.53
It is unclear when Stephens and Catherwood first discussed Central America or whose idea it was, but there are clues. Stephens had met a logging contractor named Noah O. Platt, who worked in Mexico and described visiting some ruins in the state of Chiapas. Then, not long after Stephens’s book on Egypt and the Holy Land came out in 1837, the Knickerbocker, a New York monthly, published a series of articles on old Indian ruins in the United States and Central America.54 Reminiscing twenty years later, the editor of the magazine, Lewis Gaylord Clark, recalled an encounter with Stephens right after the series was published. It was an autumn morning, Clark remembered, when Stephens stopped by for a chat. Clark recalled Stephens asking how he might contact the series’ author. “I have become deeply interested in the subject,” Stephens reportedly said, “and really I have half a notion to go upon that long-sleeping and deserted ground [of Central America], and examine it for myself.”55
So important were Stephens’s and Catherwood’s later books on Central America that others also vied for the credit. John Russell Bartlett, a Rhode Islander who moved to New York in 1836, claimed the expedition south was his idea. With a partner, he opened a bookstore at Astor Place that became a famous center for the literati of New York. In his journal he wrote about an encounter with Stephens in 1838 during which he mentioned reports of mysterious ruins in Yucatán. He pointed out that it would be a natural follow to Stephens’s book on Egypt and Arabia Petraea and gave him books on the subject.56
Meanwhile, Catherwood and Bartlett had also become friends. They were on such good terms that Catherwood offered him partial use of his residence on Houston Street while he went to London to retrieve more panoramas. “I am sorry I did not see you yesterday,” he wrote Bartlett in November 1838, aware that Bartlett was looking for lodging. “As I shall probably take my little boy with me to England, Mrs. C does not feel inclined to live in a House by herself and I thought if you could not do any better you might occupy the House reserving one parlour and bedroom for Mrs. C and her baby. . . .”57
Sometime after Catherwood returned from London, whatever discussions he and Stephens earlier had about Central America began to jell into a plan of action. These talks came before Stephens’s appointment as U.S. chargé d’affaires following the death of his immediate diplomatic predecessor, William Leggett. As Catherwood later recalled: “Our preparations were scarcely completed, when Mr. Leggett, who was on the point of setting out as United States Minister for that country, died suddenly, and upon application for it, Mr. Stephens immediately received the appointment. We had some misgivings lest this should interfere with our antiquarian pursuits. . . .”58
Yet Gertrude was eight months pregnant and Catherwood had two other young children and his business to consider. Stephens’s offer of $1,500 in exchange for his artistic services helped, but it could not have been inducement enough to leave his young wife, children, and comfortable home for the wild, disease-plagued jungle in a region racked by civil war. But the chance to find old ruins again, to live outside the genteel constraints of urban and domestic life, to relive, in effect, what had been the most exciting time of his life, was simply too seductive. Indeed both men were primed for such an adventure. Decaying ancient ruins had become each man’s raison d’être. They had been away from them too long. And it would not be the last time they felt compelled to go back.
Elizabeth Catherwood was born on July 8, 1839. It was decided that Gertrude, the newborn, and the other two children would return to England and live with Catherwood’s mother while he was away in Central America. Gertrude left New York in early September.59 That month the contract was signed between Catherwood and Stephens providing a guaranteed income to Mrs. Catherwood of twenty-five dollars a week, and no matter what, the full $1,500 to be paid even if they failed to return.60 On the third of October 1839 the two men stepped
aboard the Mary Ann and sailed away.
PART THREE
Archaeology
12
Journey into the Past
The massive volcanos of Aqua, Fuego, and Acatenango loomed over Stephens and Catherwood as they rode west out of Guatemala City for Mexico on April 7, 1840. Stephens’s ministerial blue coat was packed and on its way home, his diplomatic mission over, and the two men were free at last to pursue the antiquities that had riveted them in New York and drawn them into chaos and turmoil of Central America. Their destination, Palenque, lay two hundred and fifty miles on a direct line from Guatemala City, but the winding up-and-down path through the mountains would add countless extra miles to the trail. “It would be less difficult to reach Palenque from New York than from where we were,” wrote Stephens, noting that only water separated the docks of Manhattan from the Gulf of Mexico and Usumacinta River, the jumping-off point to Palenque. Coming from the Guatemalan capital, where Stephens’s obligations had left them, they would have to pass over the highlands of central Guatemala, undulating terrain crisscrossed by deep ravines and mountain rifts, and then climb over two of the highest mountain ranges in Central America and Mexico. Awaiting them on the other side was the steep, dangerous descent into the jungles surrounding Palenque.
There would be crucial benefits, however, to the path they were taking, despite the terrain and the bands of agitated Indians still roaming the countryside. And it characterized the planning Stephens had put into their now-revived archaeological expedition. They were to pass through a series of old Indian ruins along their route. But unlike the stones of Copán and Quiriguá, these ruins were well known, were much more modern, and had been part of the history of the Spanish Conquest of Central America. They were the first Maya cities the conquistadors encountered, built by descendants of the ancient Maya, although neither Stephens nor anyone else had yet fully made that connection. Their route to Palenque, then, unknown to them, was to take them back through layers of the Maya past.
The first stop was Iximche,1 which had been the capital of the Kaqchikel Maya Indians when the first Spanish conquistador, Pedro de Alvarado, and his invading army arrived on the scene in April 1524. The ruins lay less than fifty miles west of Guatemala City on a table of elevated land surrounded by deep ravines that gave the site an almost impregnable defensive position. By the time Alvarado approached, he had already defeated the powerful K’iche’ Maya nation, the Kaqchikel’s tribal enemy immediately to the west, in a series of savage, terrifying battles. Well aware of Alvarado’s military prowess (the Kaqchikel had sent warriors to help the Spanish against the rival K’iche’), the chief lords of Iximche greeted Alvarado outside their capital, professed allegiance to the Spaniards, and invited them into the city. The Maya capital was only a little more than fifty years old, founded after the Kaqchikel broke away from the K’iche’, but it was nonetheless impressive. Its central core consisted of two major plazas and two smaller ones, at least two temple pyramids, several courts where the ball games favored by natives throughout Mesoamerica were played, as well as other rudimentary palaces and residences. The construction consisted of well-cut stone; the streets were straight and crossed at right angles. Alvarado decided to make Iximche his center of operations. But the Spaniards’ oppressive treatment of the Kaqchikel, including incessant demands for gold and other tribute, eventually led to a rebellion; in 1527 Alvarado razed the city.2 The Spaniards then relocated their operational center to a site forty miles southeast, at the foot of Volcan Agua.3
This history was known to Stephens and Catherwood as they entered what was left of the old city through a narrow passage that took them up the side of a steep ravine to the tableland above. As they came out on top at first they did not see any evidence of ruins. Walking a short distance, however, they came upon a low wall beyond which they saw mounds of rubble. In contrast to the much older Copán, Iximche was a major disappointment. Among the piles of stones, they could make out the foundations of what had been large structures. They found two sculpted stones but their features were so weathered they were barely visible. There was little else to see, and certainly no hint at the former glory of the once-powerful Kaqchikel Maya. There was nothing in the way of artwork or hieroglyphics that might establish a link to Copán or Quiriguá. The Spaniards had been efficient in their demolition. And during the intervening centuries, nearby inhabitants finished the job by carrying away much of the city’s remnants to provide construction materials for their surrounding villages.
As Stephens and Catherwood continued west, they followed Alvarado’s path backward, in the direction from which he and his army had come. When they arrived days later at Utatlán, the former capital of the K’iche’ Maya, they were equally disappointed. Alvarado had destroyed and burned this city as well.4 And again much of the rubble had been removed and reused by nearby villagers.5
Like Iximche, the K’iche’ capital also sat on an elevated table of land surrounded by deep ravines that made it an effective stronghold during the K’iche’s almost continuous warfare with the Kaqchikel and other neighboring Indian nations. Modern estimates put its founding in the early 1400s, and by the time the Spaniards arrived more than a century later, it had grown into one of the more impressive cities in Mesoamerica. Like Iximche, it had once had a ball court, palaces, gardens, royal residences, temples, and plazas. As Stephens and Catherwood wandered through the three-hundred-year-old ruins, it was clear that little of its sophistication was left. Corn grew among the mounds of stone, cultivated by a local family. There were remnants of walls, the hard floor of the plazas, and faint indications of decorative painting on the inside corners of some structures. In the center of the rubble stood a small, pyramid-shaped mound with steep steps on three sides. Breaking off pieces of stucco at the pyramid’s corner, the two men discovered several more layers of stucco underneath, revealing a hint of the art that apparently had once flourished. On one layer they could make out the colored shape of what looked like a jaguar.
But where were the sculptures and carved hieroglyphs they found at Copán? Already the two men wondered if there was any link at all between Utatlán and what they had found in Copán and Quiriguá only 150 miles to the east.
In our investigation of antiquities we considered this place important from the fact that its history is known and its date fixed. It was in its greatest splendor when Alvarado conquered it. It proves the character of the buildings which the Indians of that day constructed, and in its ruins confirms the glowing accounts given by Cortez and his companions of the splendor displayed in the edifices of Mexico. The point to which we directed our attention was to discover some resemblance to the ruins of Copán and Quiriguá; but we did not find statues, or carved figures, or hieroglyphics, nor could we learn that any had ever been found there. If there had been such evidences we should have considered these remains the works of the same race of people, but in the absence of such evidences we believed that Copán and Quiriguá were cities of another race and of a much older date.
The two men were just beginning to gather pieces of the puzzle. Clearly some of the Indian societies Cortés and Alvarado encountered during their conquests displayed advanced social and artistic achievements. And some of the impressive architecture they found, including that of the Aztecs in Mexico and Indians of Guatemala, even if demolished by the Spaniards, was at least preserved in vague descriptions written by the conquistadors themselves and the priests who accompanied them.
The Maya Indians who built Iximche and Utatlán were, in fact, of the same ethnic and linguistic group as the builders of the Classic-era cities of Copán and Quiriguá. Though the two Indian groups’ exact origins are not clearly understood by today’s scholars, at the time of the conquest some experts believe they had occupied Guatemala’s western and central highlands for as long as a millennium, living on the southern fringe of the great Classic Maya heartland in the Petén.6 Stephens and Catherwood were on to something but the connections were anything but clear.
Their initial perspective was also colored by the most prevalent scholarly theory of the time, which proposed that another race had landed in Mesoamerica hundreds if not thousands of years earlier, and had brought the seeds of Old World civilization with them, resulting in cities like Copán, Quiriguá, and Palenque. The so-called Lost Tribes of Israel were among most frequently mentioned candidates, along with the Phoenicians and other Mediterranean seafarers.7 After all, they would have known about temples and pyramids, hieroglyphics, and other forms of writing invented by the Egyptian and other Middle Eastern civilizations. If the theory was true, then they could have built Copán centuries before, and the Indians who constructed Iximche and Utatlán were merely copying and carrying on this tradition hundreds of years later, even if they lacked the artistry and written language evident in the earlier, now-buried cities. The one explanation that nineteenth-century scholars found impossible to grasp was that the ancestors of the existing Indian tribes could somehow have created Palenque and other highly evolved cities completely on their own.
The “tribes of Israel” hypothesis had been advanced as far back as the sixteenth century by the Spanish bishop Bartolomé de Las Casas, who was known as the fervent “protector” of the native Indians in Mexico and Guatemala. Later, multiple versions of the “theory” were proposed down the centuries, including one variation incorporated in the Book of Mormon. But the version Stephens was probably most familiar with—and a good example of the speculation of the day—was put forward in a lecture given before the Mercantile Library Association in New York City in 1837 and published later that year, not long before Stephens left for Central America. The author, Mordecai M. Noah, was a prominent Jewish journalist and early Zionist who was active in New York City politics, and like Stephens was a published travel writer. Noah’s lecture, which Stephens may have attended, advanced the two prevailing ideas concerning the Phoenicians and the tribes of Israel, and in a single stroke, combined them. He explained that the Phoenicians, or Canaanites as he also called them, sailed out from the Mediterranean and across the Atlantic to the New World more than two thousand years earlier. Meanwhile, the lost tribes went from Palestine in the opposite direction and traveled through Asia, eventually crossing the Bering Strait to North America, and moved south to Central America.8