"It was strange and almost incredible that, with these extraordinary monuments before their eyes, the Indians never bestowed upon them one passing thought. The question, who built them? never by any accident crossed their minds. The great name of Montezuma, which had gone beyond them to the Indiands of Honduras, had never reached their ears, and to all our questions we received the same dull answer which first met us at Copan, "Quien sabe?" "Who knows?" They had the same superstitious feelings as the Indians of Uxmal: they believed that the ancient buildings were haunted, and, as in the remote region of Santa Cruz del Quiche, they said that on Good Friday of every year music was heard sounding amoung the ruins."
On the walls of this desolate edifice were prints of the "mano colorado," or red hand. Often as I saw this print, it never failed to interest me. It was the stamp of the living hand; it always brought me nearer to the builders of these cities, and at times, amid stillness, desolation, and ruin, it seemed as if from behind the curtain that concealed them from veiw was extended the hand of greeting. These prints were larger than any I had seen. In several places I measured them with my own, opening the fingers to correspond with those on the wall. The Indians said it was the hand of the master of the building.
The mysterious interest which, in my eyes always attached to this red hand, has assumed a more definite shape. I have been advised that in Mr. Catlin's collection of Indian curiosities, made during a long residence amoung our North American tribes, was a tent presented to him by the chief of the powerful but now extinct race of Mandans, which exhibits, amoung other marks, two prints of the red hand; and I have been farther advised that the red hand is seen constantly upon the buffalo robes and skins of wild animals brought in by the hunters on the Rocky Mountains, and, in fact, that it is a symbol recognised and in common use by the North American Indians of the present day. I do not mention these as facts within my own knowledge, but with the hope of attracting the attention of those who have opportunities and facilites for investigation; and I suggest the interesting consideration that, if true, the red hand on the tent and the buffalo robes points back from the wandering tribes in our country to the comparatively polished people who erected the great cities at the south; and if true that it is at this day used as a sign or symbol by our North American Indians, its meaning canbe ascertained from living witnesses, and through ages of intervening darkness a ray of light may be thrown back upon the now mysterious and imcomprehensible characters which perplex the stranger on the walls of the desolate southern buildings.
Thirty or forty years afterward, "when I," says the doctor Don Sanchez de Aguilar, "was cura of the said city, this demonio returned to infest some of my annexed villages, and in particular one village, Yalcoba, coming at midnight, or at one in the afternoon with a great whirlwind, dust, and noise, as of a hurricane; stones swept over the whole pueblo; and though the Indians promptly put out the fires of their kitchens, it did not avail them, for from the flames with which this demonio is tormented proceeded flashes like nightly comets or wandering stars, which set fire to two or three houses at once, and spread till there were not people enough to put out the fire, when I, being sent for to come and drive it away, conjured this demon, and, with the faith and zeal that God gave me, commanded him not to enter that village; upon which the fires and the whirlwinds ceased to the glory and honour of the Divine Majesty, which gave such power to the priests."