Utatlan: The Constituted Community of the K'iche Maya of Q'umarkaj

Table 1.1. Chronological list of K’iche’
rulers
Dates (AD) Name
1225–1250 B’alam Kitze
1250–1275 K’ok’oja
1275–1300 E,Tz’ikim
1300–1325 Ajkan
1325–1350 K’okaib’
1350–1375 K’onache
1375–1400 K’otuja
1400–1425 Quq’kumatz
1425–1475 K’iq’ab’
1475–1500 Vahxak’ iKaam
1500–1524 Oxib Kej
Source: after Carmack 1981: 122.
The Greater Utatlán Project
from twenty years to forty years. Father-son relationships
might be separated by a reign. In his
discussion, he notes that others estimated the
city was established between AD 1125 and 1275
(Brasseur de Bourbourg), between AD 1214
and 1254 (Villacorta 1938: 125, 142; Ximenez
1929: 71), in the twelfth century (Lothrop 1933:
111), or in the fifteenth century (Brinton 1885:
59). Wauchope used father-son relationships
stated or implied in the sources and a generational
length of twenty years to place the arrival
of the warlords in the Quiche Basin at ca. AD
1263 and the founding of Utatlán at AD 1433.
Elsewhere (Wauchope 1947) he elaborates further
on the problems of correlating pre-conquest
chronology and the Mayan calendar with
the European calendar and post-contact events
based on assumptions of generation spans that
might range between eighteen and fifty-five years and that could lead to the founding
of Q’umarkaj at an earliest date of AD 1217 and a latest date of AD 1490, each
of which, he maintained, presented very unlikely scenarios regarding the life events
of K’iche’ rulers. The three early K’iche’ rulers who, documents report, were sent
to receive the symbols of authority could have been born, according to the possible
scenarios, as early as AD 977 or as late as AD 1343, but Wauchope opts for a “more
probable” AD 1210 (1947: 64).
An alternative hypothesis has been proposed, that the K’iche’ came from
Mexico to their present location via the Pacific coast rather than the Gulf Coast
(Map 1.1). Although the Gulf Coast may have been home to a Chontal Mayan
group closely affiliated with Nahua speakers (the Chontal-Nahua), the Pacific
coastal areas extending from Chiapas to El Salvador were home to the Nahuaspeaking
Pipil. Van Akkeren (2009) uses a methodology he calls “lineage history”
to map migration of the Pipil from the Pacific coastal area during the Late Classic
and Early Postclassic (Van Akkeren 2009). Brown (1985) drew similar conclusions
about the origins of the K’iche’ based on evidence of imported materials and presumed
trade networks.
Recent work along the Usumacinta and Pasión rivers, an area through which
the Chontal-Nahua are presumed to have migrated, can support the argument that
circumstances following the Lowland Maya collapse may have bearing on migrations
to the highlands. Trade of highland materials such as jade, feathers, obsidian,
and pyrite would have involved transport by porters out of the highlands to the
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