His arrangements completed, he is said, by some, to have journeyed
westward, to Mexico, or to some other spot toward the sun-setting. But by
the people at large he was confidently believed to have ascended into the
heavens, and there, from his lofty house, he was supposed to watch over
the interests of his faithful adherents.
Such was the tradition of their mythical hero told by the Itzas. No wonder
that the early missionaries, many of whom, like Landa, had lived in Mexico
and had become familiar with the story of Quetzalcoatl and his alleged
departure toward the east, identified him with Kukulcan, and that,
following the notion of this assumed identity, numerous later writers have
framed theories to account for the civilization of ancient Yucatan through
colonies of "Toltec" immigrants.
It can, indeed, be shown beyond doubt that there were various points of
contact between the Aztec and Maya civilizations. The complex and
artificial method of reckoning time was one of these; certain
architectural devices were others; a small number of words, probably a
hundred all told, have been borrowed by the one tongue from the other.
Mexican merchants traded with Yucatan, and bands of Aztec warriors with
their families, from Tabasco, dwelt in Mayapan by invitation of its
rulers, and after its destruction, settled in the province of Canul, on
the western coast, where they lived strictly separate from the
Maya-speaking population at the time the Spaniards conquered the
country.
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