ENTERING CHOUAC-HA

At the end of 1542 or the beginning of 1543, Montejo started the march against Tixcontí and on to Chouac-Ha with his whole army. He sent scouts and made contact every so often with them.

This he did because he hadn't forgotten the difficult battle from 15 years earlier.

So the Nephew was received by the Caciques of the area in a cordial manner, laying down their arms. In the reports of Juan de Urriata, Francisco de Cieza and Sebastián Vázquez de Andrade it is written that Montejo and his men traveled all the lands to the north and found a beautiful lagoon of sweet water and extensive accomplishments in agriculture even to the point of irrigation. The most beautiful were the fertile plains of Conil and Yalahau. At one end of the lagoon was another group of residents also known as Chikin-Chel. It was an beautiful location with pastures all around with plentiful water teeming with fish.

They were able to harvest the corn two times per year and one of the largest industries was the cultivation of Pom from which the sacred copal was extracted. The copal was used throughout the Maya lands as incense on the altars of worship and as a medicine. The Chouac-Ha was an oasis in the Yucatan, but only inhabited by those born there.

The inhabitants of Chohuac-Ha were noted as being exceptional businessmen and very distinguished people culturally, so much so in fact that they surprised the Spanish by their manners and grace. Their homes and businesses were carefully cared for and many were built from wood and palm and looked quite different from the usual construction of the region.

The first stage of the conquest of this region was to organize the entire zone under their domination and this included Ekab, Chikinchel, Tazes and a few of the very northern areas of the Cupul.

Montejo decided to leave these people who were indifferent to the conquest and decided to leave Chouac-Ha with Cieza. He left with a contingent to go back to the province of Cochuá, with the villages of Tixtamay (Santa María), Kancabdzonot, Chikindzonot, all of which were south of the great Maya road from Yaxuná to Cobá, in this way they could cut off the Cupules of Tiholop, Cibac, Tixcacalcupul, etc.

VIOLENCE AND DESPERATION

Montejo, The Nephew, didn't like the situation where his progress was stopped in order to aid his cousin, the Junior, and decided to use scare tactics and terrorism to subdue the Caciques and mark the living slaves of the Maya which had been conquered. The warriors of Cochúa had a different idea and rebelled and put up a fierce resistance seeking freedom, the same type of resistance that had halted the progress of the Junior.

Bernaldino de Villagómez wrote in 1546: "The province of Cochua is rebelling, we have done as you have commanded and it has not yielded a dominance here. We have made the tools to enslave the Maya as commanded and made war in the appropriate places encountering resistance and rock walls the Maya use against us. This has cost us weeks until the main force of the Nephew arrived and made them leave into the jungles at the edge of the provinces of Uaymil-Chetumal and we have captured dozens of their fighters."

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