devoted. "If one looks closely at these Indians," complains an old author, "he will find that everything they do and say has something to do with maize. A little more, and they would make a god of it. There is so much conjuring and fussing about their corn fields, that for them they will forget wives and children and any other pleasure, as if the only end and aim of life was to secure a crop of corn."[1]
In their days of heathenism, all the labors of the field were directed by the observance of superstitious rites. For instance, the men, who always did a large share of the field work, refrained from approaching their wives for some days before planting the seed. Before weeding the patch, incense was burned at each of the four corners of the field, to the four gods of the winds and rains; and the first fruits were consecrated to holy uses.[2] Their fields were large and extremely productive.[3] In this connection it is worth noting, in passing, that precisely Guatemala is the habitat of the Euchlœna
- ↑ "Si bien se advierte, todo cuanto hacian y decian, era en orden al maiz, que poco faltó para tenerlo por Dios, y era, y es, tanto el encanto y embelezo que tienen con las milpas que por ellas olvidan hijos y muger y otro cualquiera deleite, como si fuera la milpa su ultimo fin y bienaventuranza." Chronica de la S. Provincia del Santissimo Nombre de Jesus de Guattemala, Cap. VII. MS. of the seventeenth century, generally known as the Cronica Franciscana.
- ↑ See Francisco Ximenez, Las Historias del Origen de los Indios de esta Provincia de Guatemala, p. 191. (Ed. Scherzer, London and Vienna, 1857).
- ↑ Their first conqueror, the truculent Captain Pedro de Alvarado, speaks of the muy grandes tierras de panes, the immense corn fields he saw on all sides. Relacion hecha per Pedro de Alvarado á Hernando Cortéz, in the Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, Tom. XXII, p. 459.
