QUICHE  or KIcIds, a tribe of Central

American Indians of Mayan stock . They inhabited western Guatemala, where their descendants still survive . They were at the time of the conquest the most powerful of the three Mayan peoples in Guatemala, the other two being the Cakchiquel and the Zutugil . Their chronicles are said to date back to the 8th century . Their sacred book, the Popol Vuh, containing a mythological cosmogony, survives in a 17th-century manuscript written by a Christianized Guatemalan . To this tradition may be due the remarkable similarity of the Quiche creation story to that of the Old Testament . Their capital was Utatlan, near the site of the modern Santa Cruz Quiche, and was skilfully fortified . They had an elaborate system of government and religion . Records were kept in picture-writing . The Quiche were the first Indians met by Pedro de Alvarado in 1524 on his expedition into Guatemala . See further CENTRAL AMERICA and MEXICO; for the Popol Vuh see English edition by L . Spence (19o9); see also Nuttall, Ancient American Civilizations (Camb .

Mass., 1901), and W . Bollaert in Proc . Roy . Soc . Lit. vii . 1862 .