Then their wives had being, and their women were made. God himself made them carefully. 1 And so, during sleep, they came, truly beautiful, their women, at the side of Balam-Quitzé, Balam-Acab, Mahucutah, and Iqui-Balam.
There were their women when they awakened, and instantly their hearts were filled with joy because of their wives.
Here are the names of their wives: Cahá-Paluna was the name of the wife of Balam-Quitzé; Chomihá was the wife of Balam-Acab; Tzununihá, the wife of Mahucutah; and Caquixahá was the name of the wife of Iqui-Balam. These are the names of their wives, who were distinguished women. 2
They conceived the men, of the small tribes and of the large tribes, and were the origin of us; the people of Quiché.
There were many priests and sacrificers; there were not only four, but those four were the Forefathers 3 of us, the people of the Quiché.
The names of each one were different when they multiplied there in the East, and there were many names of
the people: Tepeu, Olomán, Cohah, Quenech, Ahau, as they called those men there in the East, where they multiplied. 4
The beginning is known, too, of those of Tamub and those of Ilocab who came together from there in the East. 5
Balam-Quitzé was the grandfather and the father of the nine great houses of the Cavec; Balam-Acab was the grandfather and father of the nine great houses of the Nimhaib; Mahucutah, the grandfather and father of the four great houses of Ahau-Quiché.
Three groups of families existed; but they did not forget the name of their grandfather and father, those who propagated and multiplied there in the East.
The Tamub and Ilocab also came, and thirteen branches of peoples, the thirteen of Tecpán, and those of Rabinal, the Cakchiquel, those from Tziquinahá, and the Zacahá and the Lamaq, Cumatz, Tuhalhá, Uchabahá, those of Chumilahá, those of Quibahá, of Batenabá, Acul-Vinac, Balamihá, the Canchahel, and Balam-Colob. 6
These are only the principal tribes, the branches of the people which we mention; only of the principal ones shall we speak. Many others came from each group of the people, but we shall not write their names. They also multiplied there in the East.
Many men were made and in the darkness they multiplied. Neither the sun nor the light had yet been made when they multiplied. All lived together, they existed in great number and walked there in the East.
Nevertheless, they did not sustain nor maintain [their God]; they only raised their faces to the sky, and they did not know why they had come so far as they did.
There they were then, in great number, the black men
and the white men, men of many classes, men of many tongues, that it was wonderful to hear them. 7
There are generations in the world, there are country people, whose faces we do not see, who have no homes, they only wander through the small and large woodlands, like crazy people. So it is said scornfully of the people of the wood. So they said there, where they saw the rising of the sun.
The speech of all was the same. They did not invoke wood nor stone, 8 and they remembered the word of the Creator and the Maker, the Heart of Heaven, the Heart of Earth.
in this manner they spoke, while they thought about the coming of the dawn. 9 And they raised their prayers, those worshipers of the word [of God], loving, obedient. and fearful, raising their faces to the sky when they asked for daughters and sons:
"Oh thou, Tzacol, Bitol! 10 Look at us, hear us! Do not leave us, do not forsake us, oh, God, who art in heaven and on earth, Heart of Heaven, Heart of Earth! Give us our descendants, our succession, as long as the sun shall move and there shall be light. Let it dawn; let the day come! Give us many good roads, flat roads! May the people have peace, much peace, and may they be happy; and give us good life and useful existence! 11 Oh, thou Huracán, Chipi-Caculhá, Raxá-Caculhá, Chipi-Nanauac, Raxá-Nanauac, Voc, Hunahpú, Tepeu, Gucumatz, Alom, Qaholom, Xpiyacoc, Xmucané, grandmother of the sun, grandmother of the light, let there be dawn, and let the light come!" 12
Thus they spoke while they saw and invoked the coming of the sun, the arrival of day; and at the same time that they saw the rising of the sun, they contemplated the
[paragraph continues] Morning Star, the Great Star, which comes ahead of the sun, that lights up the arch of the sky and the surface of the earth, and illuminates the steps of the men who had been created and made.
113:1 p. 226 Xavi Cabahuil x-naohin chic. Naohin means to make something carefully.
113:2 Ximénez (Historia . . . de Chiapa y Guatemala, I, 35) interprets these names as follows: Cahá-Paluna, standing water (vertical) falling from above; Chomiha, p. 227 beautiful, chosen water; Tzununihá, water of hummingbirds; Caquixahá, water of the macaw. The Título de los Señores de Totonicapán gives the names of the wives of those Quiché heroes with some differences: "The wife of Balam-Quitzé was called Zaka-Paluma, the wife of Balam-Agab was Tzununi-há; that of Mahucutah, Cakixa-ha; Iqui-Balam was single."
113:3 Ri qui chuch oh quiche vinac, literally "the mothers of us, the Quiché." Chuch, "mothers," here has the generic meaning, as the word "fathers" has in Spanish, and both are understood as the forefathers.
113:4 It is possible to recognize among these names that of Tepeu, which in other places in this book is applied to the Yaquis, Yaqui-Tepeu, one of the tribes of Toltec origin who emigrated together with the Quiché. The people of Olomán, who are the Olmeca, Olmeca-xicalanca, who lived at the south of Veracruz, may be identified as those with whom the Quiché were likewise intimately united.
113:5 Copichoch, Cochochlam, Mahquinalon, and Ahcanabil were the chiefs of the tribe of Tamub whose names are found in the Título de los Señores de Totonicapán and in the Historia Quiché de D. Juan de Torres, an unpublished manuscript which also describes the succession of these chiefs. Brasseur de Bourbourg (Popol Vuh, p. cclxi) makes known the names of the chiefs of the tribe of Ilocab, which he took from another manuscript, the Título de los Señores de Sacapulas, which was in his possession. These names, which also appear in the Título de Totonicapán, are as follows: Chi-Ya-Toh, Chi-Ya-Tziquin, Xol-Chi-Tum, Xol-Chi-Ramag, and Chi-Pel-Camuhel.
113:6 These thirteen tribes of Tecpán, which the Título de Totonicapán calls Vukamag Tecpam, are the Pocomam and Poconchi tribes, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg. The tribe of Rabinal was established in the interior of the present Republic of Guatemala, and its descendants still form an important center of Quiché population. The Cakchiquel constituted a strong and numerous kingdom, a rival of the Quiché Kingdom, which had as its capital, Iximché (native name of the tree now called bread-nut or ramón in Spanish).The Mexicans called Iximché Tecpán-Quauhtemállan, from which comes the present name of Guatemala. The tribe of Tziquinahá took as its capital the city of Atitlán, and occupied the western part of the territory surrounding the lake of this same name. Zacahá is the present Salcaja, close to the modern city of Quetzaltenango. Lamac, Cumatz, Tuhalhá, and Uchabahá were on the outskirts of Sacapulas, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg. It has not been possible to identify the rest of the tribes. That of Balamihá may be the tribe which established itself in the place now called Balamyá, in the department of Chimaltenango.
113:7 p. 228 In the original this paragraph reads as follows: Ta x-qohe pa qui chiri queca vinac, zaqui vinac, qui vachibal vinac, qui u chabal vinac, cay u xiquin. Brasseur de Bourbourg changed the meaning of qui, "much," for quiy, "sweet," and says in his translation that "sweet was the appearance of those peoples, sweet the language of those peoples." Qui vachibal vinac means literally "men of many forms, aspects, or appearances." Qui u chabal vinac, "many were the tongues of the men." Evidently the author was trying to give the idea of the multitude of different people, strange to each other, blacks and whites, that is, of light skin and of dark skin, and of the many different tongues which were in the East. The Quiché, however, maintained their ethnic unity and their common tongue in the midst of this Babylon, as is seen farther on. Ximénez translates the end of the paragraph saying "there were many languages and of two ears," which lacks meaning. In his second version (Historia . . . de Chiapas y Guatemala, I, 36) he tries to explain the sentence and says "that they hear and understand each other through the diversity of languages." Cay, cab, or caíb is the number "2," but the first form, which is the one used in the text also means to see or hear with wonder, and this is probably the idea which it means to express here.
113:8 That is, the idols.
113:9 "They were only waiting for the sunrise" is Ximénez' interpretation.
113:10 Creator and Maker.
113:11 Utzilah qazlem, vinaquirem ta puch coh a ya vi.
113:12 The Quiché pantheon appears complete in this paragraph with the addition of the two new names, Voc and the large and small Nanauac. The first, Voc or vac, the hawk, was the messenger of Huracán who came to be present at the ball game of Hun-Hunahpú and Vucub-Hunahpú, according to the account in a previous chapter of the Quiché book. Nanauac, the Omniscient, according to Brasseur de Bourbourg is the same person who, with the name Nanahuatl (the disfigured), appears in the Códice Chimalpopoca.