lives and property worth the effort, Mexico finally accepted. With both legal pretext and a convenient staging area in the western side of the Yucatán peninsula, Chan Santa Cruz was occupied by the Mexican army in the early years of the 20th century (Reed 1964). Mexican occupation did not end resistance by the indigenous Maya, who continued to conduct guerrilla attacks against the Mexicans under the leadership of General Francisco May. In 1935, May signed a formal peace treaty with the government of Mexico. Various treaties with Mexico were signed by the leaders of the indigenous state through the late 1930s and 1940s. These treaties, "Letters of General May", make very interesting reading today. Following General May's death, the remaining Maya officials initiated contacts with Washington, DC through the archaeologist and American spy, (Harris, Sadler 2003), Sylvanus Morley, (Sullivan 1992). Religion One of the notable aspects of the Maya free state was the reappearance of Maya religion in an indigenous form, sometimes called "The Cult of The Talking Cross". This was most probably a continuation of native beliefs, reemerging when the Spanish colonists' civil war released the Maya from the repressions of Yucatán's Hispanic population. The indigenous priests had maintained their ancient religious texts and their spiritual knowledge, as they continue to do today (Roys 1933, Thompson 1965). Maya sacred books When Friar Jacobo de Testera arrived, leading the first of the Franciscan Missions to the Maya in the second half of the 16th century, he began a Maya encyclopedia project. He intended to collect the prayers, orations, commentaries, and descriptions of native life as aids to the Spanish overthrow of Maya culture in general and the Maya religion, specifically. Diego de Landa's famous Relación de las cosas de Yucatán contains much of the Spanish explanatory text of this encyclopedia without quoting any of the indigenous texts (Tozzer 1941). The Maya elders who participated in this project, including Juan Na Chi Kokom, former leader of the Itza' state in eastern Yucatan, were most likely willing volunteers who thought the project was a way to preserve Maya culture and religion. After the project was anathematized by the Roman Church, the former Maya collaborators collected and reconstructed as much as they could. They assembled the materials into a loose collection of texts, which is now known as the Books of Chilam Balam (Roys 1933). The Books of Chilam Balam ('Spokesman of the