Ekab

Kuchkabal Ekab
	1441–1547
	Kuchkabals of Yucatan after 1461.
Capital	Ekab
Common languages	Official language:; Yucatec
Religion	Maya religion
Government	Oligarchy
Halach Uinik
Preceded by	Succeeded by
	League of Mayapan
New Spain

Last updated March 29, 2019

Ekab or Ecab was the name of a Mayan chiefdom of the northeastern Yucatán Peninsula, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century.^[1] In the fifteenth century most of Yucatán was controlled by the League of Mayapan. By 1441 there was civil unrest. The provinces of the League rebelled and formed sixteen smaller states. These states were called Kuchkabals. Most Kuchkabals were ruled by a Halach Uinik, but Ekab wasn't. It was divided up into several Batabil. Each Batabil was ruled over by a leader called a Batab. In Ekab the Batabs were supposed to have equal power, but the Batabs on Cozumel had much more power than the others.

The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Maya peoples, and noted for its logosyllabic script—the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in pre-Columbian Americas—as well as for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in an area that encompasses southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. This region consists of the northern lowlands encompassing the Yucatán Peninsula, and the highlands of the Sierra Madre, running from the Mexican state of Chiapas, across southern Guatemala and onwards into El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain.

The Yucatán Peninsula, in southeastern Mexico, separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, with the northern coastline on the Yucatán Channel. The peninsula lies east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a northwestern geographic partition separating the region of Central America from the rest of North America. It is approximately 181,000 km² (70,000 sq mi) in area, and is almost entirely composed of limestone.

The Kuchkabal, Ah Kuch-Kab, or Ah Cuch-Cab were the forms of government used by the pre-Columbian nations of the Yucatan Peninsula. There were somewhere between 16 and 24 kuchkabalob in the 16th century. Kuchkabal could also refer to the ruling family.

Religious importance

The island Cozumel was a Batab of Ekab. Cozumel was an important religious area for the Maya. People traveled to Cozumel from as far away as Nicaragua and Michoacán. The island was sacred to the moon goddess, Ix Chel. Most of the pilgrims who traveled there were women. Ix Chel was also patron goddess of childbirth, medicine, and weaving.

Geography

Ekab was surrounded in the west by Chikinchel , Tazes , Cupul and Cochuah , and in the south Uaymil. There were several port towns along the coast, most notably Tulum, Xcaret, and Xel-Ha. Ekab had a strategic position on the coast, sailors circumnavigated as far away as Tampico and Nicaragua.

Chikinchel was the name of a Mayan chiefdom of the northern coast of Yucatán, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century. Chauacá has also been used to refer to this province, but apparently it was the name of the main city.

Cupul or Kupul, was the name of a Maya chiefdom at time of the Spanish conquest of Yucatán. Cupul was one of the most extensive and densely populated Maya provinces on the Yucatán Peninsula. It was formed in the mid-fifteenth century after the fall of Mayapan and reached its maximum power during the sixteenth century, at the time of their own Spanish conquest led by the adelantado Francisco de Montejo. According to the Encyclopedia Yucatán in time, the Mayan voice ku-pul, means that throws the bouncing, giving a connotation referring to the Mayan ballplayers that existed in the region.

Cochuah is the name of one of the sixteen Mayan provinces into which the central Yucatán Peninsula was divided at the time of the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century.

European Contact

In 1502 on Christopher Columbus's fourth voyage to America he made contact with an Ekab merchant's ship. After this, the news of Europe spread throughout the Maya world. In 1511 a Spanish ship was caught in a storm and destroyed. The survivors were taken as slaves by Ekab. Maya slaves were allowed to work their way up. By the time of formal contact with the Spaniards they had wives and children.

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonist who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. He led the first European expeditions to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, initiating the permanent European colonization of the Americas. Columbus discovered the viable sailing route to the Americas, a continent which was not then known to the Old World. While what he thought he had discovered was a route to the Far East, he is credited with the opening of the Americas for conquest and settlement by Europeans.

Aztec slavery, within the structure of the Mexica society, produced many slaves, known by the Nahuatl word, tlacotin. Within Mexica society, slaves constituted an important class.

In 1517 Francisco Hernández de Córdoba sailed to Isla Mujeres where he found the ruins of a Maya village and an observatory. They continued inland and made contact with the Mayans. They attacked the Mayans but were defeated, but managed to take two prisoners as translators.

Isla Mujeres is an island in the Gulf of Mexico, about 13 kilometres (8.1 mi) off the Yucatán Peninsula coast. The island is some 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) long and 650 metres (2,130 ft) wide. To the east is the Caribbean Sea with a strong surf and rocky coast, and to the west the skyline of Cancún can be seen across the clear waters. In the 2010 census, the namesake town on the island had a population of 12,642 inhabitants.

Juan de Grijalva visited Cozumel in 1518 and observed Zama and Xel Ha. Hernan Cortes visited Ekab on his way to conquer the Aztecs in 1519.

Between 1527 and 1547 there were three attempts to conquer Yucatán. In the first two the Spaniards were easily defeated, but as smallpox spread through Mesoamerica the Maya population was decimated. The final conquest was between 1542 and 1547. The conquistadores started in the west and worked their way towards Ekab. Cozumel was the last part of the Ekab to be conquered.

Related Research Articles

Ixchel or Ix Chel is the 16th-century name of the aged jaguar goddess of midwifery and medicine in ancient Maya culture. She corresponds, more or less, to Toci Yoalticitl "Our Grandmother the Nocturnal Physician", an Aztec earth goddess inhabiting the sweatbath, and is related to another Aztec goddess invoked at birth, viz. Cihuacoatl. In Taube's revised Schellhas-Zimmermann classification of codical deities, Ixchel corresponds to the Goddess O.

Champotón is a small city in Champotón Municipality in the Mexican state of Campeche, located at 19°21′N90°43′W, about 60 km south of the city of Campeche where the small Champotón river meets the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. At the 2010 census it had a population of 30,881.

Cozumel is an island and municipality in the Caribbean Sea off the eastern coast of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, opposite Playa del Carmen, and close to the Yucatán Channel. The municipality is part of the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico.

Gonzalo Guerrero was a sailor from Palos, in Spain who shipwrecked along the Yucatán Peninsula and was taken as a slave by the local Maya. Earning his freedom, Guerrero became a respected warrior under a Maya Lord and raised three of the first mestizo children in Mexico and presumably the first mixed children of the mainland Americas. Little is known of his early life.

San Gervasio is an archaeological site of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, located in the northern third of the island of Cozumel off the northeastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, in what is now the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. San Gervasio's pre-Hispanic name was Tantun Cuzamil, Mayan for Flat Rock in the place of the Swallows. The ruins were once a hub of worship of the goddess Ix Chel, an aged deity of childbirth, fertility, medicine, and weaving. Pre-Columbian Maya women would try to travel to San Gervasio and make offerings at least once in their lives. In 1560, the Spanish historian, Diego Lopez de Cogolludo, wrote: "The pilgrims arrive at Cozumel for the fulfillment of their vows to offer their sacrifices, to ask help for their needs, and for the mistaken adoration of their false gods." The bishop of Yucatán, Diego de Landa, wrote in 1549 that the Maya "held Cozumel in the same veneration as we have for pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome, and so they used to go to visit and offer presents there, as we do to holy places; and if they did not go themselves, they always sent their offerings."

Xelha is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, located on the eastern coastline of the Yucatán Peninsula, in the present-day state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The etymology of the site's name comes from Yukatek Maya, combining the roots xel ("spring") and ha' ("water").

Spanish conquest of the Maya Conquest dating from 1511 to 1697

The Spanish conquest of the Maya was a protracted conflict during the Spanish colonisation of the Americas, in which the Spanish conquistadores and their allies gradually incorporated the territory of the Late Postclassic Maya states and polities into the colonial Viceroyalty of New Spain. The Maya occupied a territory that is now incorporated into the modern countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador; the conquest began in the early 16th century and is generally considered to have ended in 1697.

Ah Canul was the name of a Maya Kuchkabal of the northwest Yucatán Peninsula, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century.

Ah Kin Chel was the name of a Maya chiefdom or Kuchkabal of the northern Yucatán Peninsula, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century.

Can Pech was the name of a Maya chiefdom of the southwestern Yucatán Peninsula, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century. Can Pech was south of Ah Canul and north of Chakán Putum, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. In 1517 the population of the capital city Campeche was approximately 36,000.

Ceh Pech is the name of a post-classic Maya ruling family and a province, or kuchkabal of the northern Yucatán Peninsula.

Chakán Putum was the name of a Mayan chiefdom of the southwestern Yucatán Peninsula, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century. It was named after the capital city Chakan Putum. The city had approximately 8000 houses. It was a major port.

Hocabá-Homún, Hokabá-Homún or Hocabá was the name of a Maya Kuchkabal of the northwestern Yucatán Peninsula, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century.

Tutul-Xiu, also Tutul Xiues or Mani, was the name of a Mayan chiefdom of the central Yucatán Peninsula with capital in Maní, before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century.

The League of Mayapan was a confederation of Maya states in the post classic period of Mesoamerica on the Yucatan peninsula.

Halach uinik or halach uinic was the name given to the supreme ruler, overlord or chief, as they were called in the colonial period of a Maya kuchkabal.

References

↑ Calderon, Diego de Landa. Yucatan Before and After the Conquest: The Maya. Forgotten Books. p. 28. ISBN 978-1-60506-857-2 . Retrieved 5 July 2012.

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[Calderon-1] Calderon, Diego de Landa. Yucatan Before and After the Conquest: The Maya. Forgotten Books. p. 28. ISBN 978-1-60506-857-2 . Retrieved 5 July 2012.