A New Canek Group Forgery

Historians often assume historical documents to be authentic. Forgeries are common, however, and it is worthwhile to ask whether documents were actually composed at the time, at the place, and by the author as claimed. Here I discuss the “leather codex,” a suspicious document that a Canadian collector acquired around 1984 and made available to scholars in 1987 (fig. 1).1 It consists of twelve palm-size leather strips tied together with strings. I group its text and images into four sections. Folios I through VI (line 10) deal with Colonial Maya politics and religion. Folios VI (line 11) through VIII explain the Maya calendar. Folios IX through XI narrate the conversion of the Maya to Christianity. Folio XII contains a list of Maya gods. The back shows a series of animals, humans, and supernatural beings. The leather codex claims to have been written by Friar Joseph de Cartaxena in 1542, which would make it one of the earliest European sources on Maya culture.The historical potential of the leather codex makes authenticating it a priority. This requires examining its physical characteristics, pedigree, handwriting, linguistic properties, content, and sources from which it copies (Barber and Berdan 1998: 148–77; Eberl and Prem 2011: 155–57). I apply these six criteria to the leather codex to show that it is a modern forgery and belongs to the so-called Canek group of forged historical documents.So far the Canek group consists of five modern forgeries dating from the 1950s to the 1970s that deal with the sixteenth-century conquest of the Maya in the northern part of the Yucatan peninsula and the seventeenth-century conquest of the Maya interior. The manuscript that resulted in the eponymous group moniker describes the journey of three Franciscan friars to Tayasal and their meeting with Canek, the last Itzaj Maya king, at the end of the seventeenth century (Jones 1992). At least four of the Canek group documents were written by the same hand, and all five have similar stylistic characteristics, lexicon, orthography, and content. Hanns J. Prem (1999) showed that their texts and illustrations draw from Sylvanus G. Morley’s (1946) Ancient Maya or subsequent editions and translations.The first step in authenticating a historical document is to physically examine its surface, writing medium, and applicator. However, this was not possible for the leather codex. According to the collector’s description, it consists of twelve rectangular leather folios that measure approximately 4.5 cm by 9.0 cm and have two perforations on each long side except for the first and last folios (fig. 1). Strings connect the individual folios to each other. The use of leather instead of parchment as well as the binding are unusual for a colonial Spanish report (see, e.g., Reed 1975: 44–46, 95). The leather codex exhibits similarities with some Highland Mexican codices made from deerskin (however, the pages of these are square and form one long strip of hide). Physically, the leather codex reflects a conglomeration of writing traditions.The second step in authenticating a historical document is to assess its pedigree. Ideally, a historical document can be traced from the moment it was composed to its appearance in a collection or on the art market. The leather codex lacks markings from previous owners that would allow it to be traced to specific collections and their acquisition history. Nothing verifiable is known about the leather codex between its alleged origin in 1542 and its appearance on the art market in the 1980s. According to the Canadian collector, a clergyman spent time in the Yucatan peninsula and supposedly brought the codex back when he returned home.The leather codex’s purported author, Cartaxena, left no other known document to which the codex could be compared. However, his handwriting should at least conform to the orthographic and stylistic conventions of the sixteenth century (Carlin 2003; Millares Carlo 1983; Riesco Terrero 1983). It frequently deviates from these conventions, though. Stylistically, it lacks the drawn-out or rounded letters that characterize sixteenth-century documents. Unlike the common ‹conqor›, the leather codex abbreviates conquistador as ‹conqistador› (folio I: 7 and 17) and instead of the usual ‹xpiano›, Cristiano appears as ‹xristiano› (folio VIII: 15). The leather codex consistently abbreviates que (and) with qe, while colonial documents tend to use q or q̃. A detailed look at the leather codex’s handwriting shows that it coincides with the handwriting in the Canek group (fig. 2).Next I turn to the linguistic properties of a potential forgery. I start with anticipatory anachronisms: words or phrases that did not exist at the time when the document was allegedly composed. The leather codex refers to the Tzolkin, the Maya ritual calendar of 260 days (folio VI: 15 and 20). While now widely used, the term Tzolkin was coined only in the 1920s. William E. Gates (1931: 42) recalls that “this word tzolkin was my own suggestion, nearly ten years ago, to get away from the Aztec.” Tzolkin appeared in print for the first time in Herbert J. Spinden’s second edition of Ancient Civilizations of Mexico and Central America, which was published in 1922. The same applies to the term Baktun on folio VII, referring to the period of 144,000 days and forming the fifth-highest period of the Maya Long Count. Herbert J. Spinden (ibid.: 105) declared that “for years it has been customary to speak of the fifth period as cycle for want of a native term: this will now be called baktun.” The original Mayan term for Tzolkin remains unknown, while the Baktun was called Pih or Pik. As inventions from the 1920s, the terms Tzolkin and Baktun would not appear in a genuine sixteenth-century document and are thus anticipatory anachronisms in the leather codex.The leather codex is linguistically similar to the Canek group forgeries in substituting words like cun for con or “with” (folio I: 3) and atro for otro or “other” (folio VI: 9). Another shared characteristic are anomalous noun phrases like los estos indios (those natives) (folio I: 6). These constructions have been analyzed as a local variant of Spanish with archaic forms (Hanks 1992). Alternatively, the leather codex and other Canek group documents may adapt conventions from Italian, in which constructions like la mia lettera (my letter) and la nostra scuola (our school) are common. Italian may also have served as source for the following words:nostro and nostra “our” instead of Spanish nuestro and nuestra (folios VIII: 11, IX: 4, X: 17, XI: 10)vit[t]ima “victim” instead of Spanish victima (folios II: 21, III: 3, III: 22)abrenunzio “I renounce” instead of Spanish abrenuncio or Latin abrenuntio (folios I: 4, II: 19, XII: 11)pratican “they practice” instead of Spanish practican (folio VI: 2)figli[i] “son” instead of Latin filii (folio XI: 11)Italian words and syntax may have been chosen to give the leather codex an archaic feel or because the writer spoke Italian (cf. also the word choices in the Codex Cardona in Wood 2010: 397–98).The fifth aspect of authentication concerns the contents of the document in question. Mundane temporal, spatial, and cultural details often challenge document forgers. The leather codex raises eyebrows in its attempted correlation of the Maya to the Christian calendar. Cartaxena draws the glyphs for the Maya Calendar Round 2 Ajaw 8 ? and says that this day corresponds to 5 July 1529 “in our Christian [i.e., then Julian] calendar” (folio VIII: 12–16; the drawing of the Haab glyph is illegible). When converted according to current knowledge, the latter day would have been 11 Lamat 11 Kumk’u and not 2 Ajaw 8 ? in the ancient Maya calendar.Cartaxena is likely fictional. He is not attested in any sixteenth-century source from the Yucatan peninsula. His signature (fig. 1) is in style and letter forms indistinguishable from the signatures of Friars Joseph de San Buenaventura and Joseph Antonio María Roldán, the alleged authors of two Canek manuscripts (Prem 1999: 307, fig. 5).Contentwise, the leather codex is very similar to the Canek group documents. It deals with the Maya in the northern Yucatan peninsula like the Memorias de Guerrero, an assumed eyewitness account of Gonzalo Guerrero, who washed ashore on the Yucatan peninsula in 1511 and survived among the Maya until at least 1519 (Aguirre Rojas 1975). Cartaxena describes their spiritual conquest during the late 1520s and 1530s. He mentions Balan Acab as a native ruler, “conqueror of many peoples,” and “protector of all sciences” (folios I: 15, II: 1), who is unfortunately not attested elsewhere. On firmer ground is the inclusion of Adelantado Don Francisco de Montejo, with whom Cartaxena claims to have negotiated the destruction of all native temples (folios IX: 11–14, X: 1–3). By mixing known and unknown peoples and places, the leather codex creates a sheen of authenticity.Last, a forgery has to be shown to copy later sources. The Canek group documents claim to be of colonial origin but include materials that were published only in the twentieth century. They took inspiration especially from Morley’s Ancient Maya. The period glyph drawings in the leather codex copy Morley’s illustrations and differ from common Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions. For example, the glyph for Winal (the period of twenty days) includes a trilobed shape in the interior and not a simple triangle. In both the leather codex and Morley, the Piktun glyph appears not by itself but as 18 Piktun. The prefixed coefficient varies in real inscriptions, and it therefore makes no sense to include it in a list of period glyphs.Six aspects are involved in the authentication of historical documents: physical characteristics, pedigree, handwriting, linguistic properties, content, and copied sources. I have discussed each criterion in relation to the leather codex. While I was unable to study the leather codex in person or submit it to physical tests, the use of leather for a colonial Spanish report is very suspicious. It appeared out of nowhere on the art market and has no traceable history that would lead back to, or at least closer to, its supposed 1542 origin. The handwriting not only ignores conventions of genuine sixteenth-century documents but also is indistinguishable from the handwriting of other Canek group documents. The leather codex also shares the Canek group’s linguistic properties. Particularly revealing is the use of neologisms like Tzolkin and Baktun, which were coined only in the twentieth century. With regard to its contents, the leather codex fits into the Canek group in terms of its description of the colonial contact between Maya and Spaniards. Finally, the drawings in the leather codex replicate illustrations found in Morley’s Ancient Maya. From these observations I conclude that the leather codex is yet another Canek group forgery. It was likely produced between the late 1940s and 1984.I dedicate this article to the memory of Hanns J. Prem. The help of Victoria R. Bricker, Gregory Andrachuk, and Stephanie Wood was invaluable. Jeffrey Shenton copyedited the manuscript. I thank Matthew Restall, Ken Ward, and five anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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