A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages Part 2

32. On the Chontallis and Popolucas. In the Compte Rendu du Congres des Americanistes, 1890.

33. The Study of the Nahuatl Language. In the _American Antiquarian_, January, 1886.

34. The Written Language of the Ancient Mexicans. In _Transactions_ of the American Philosophical Society, 1889.

35. The ancient phonetic alphabet of Yucatan. In _American Historical Magazine_, 1870.

36. The Graphic System and ancient Records of the Mayas. In _Contributions to American Ethnology_, Vol. V., Was.h.i.+ngton, 1882.

37. The Phonetic Elements in the Graphic Systems of the Mayas and Mexicans. In _American Antiquarian_, November, 1886.

38. On the "Ikonomatic" Method of Phonetic Writing. In _Proceedings_ of the American Philosophical Society, 1886.

39. A Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics. pp. 152. Boston, 1895.

40. What the Mayan Inscriptions tell about. In _American Archaeologist_, 1894.

41. On the "Stone of the Giants" near Orizaba, Mexico. In _Proceedings_ of the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, 1889.

42. On the Nahuatl version of Sahagun's Historia de la Nueva Espana, at Madrid. In the _Compte Rendu_ of the Congres International des Americanistes, 7^eme Session.

43. On the words "Anahuac" and "Nahuatl." In _American Antiquarian_, November, 1893.

44. On the so-called Alaguilac Language of Guatemala. In _Proceedings_ of the American Philosophical Society, November, 1887.

45. The Gueguence; a Comedy Ballet in the Nahuatl-Spanish Dialect of Nicaragua. pp 94. Philadelphia, 1883.

46. Ancient Nahuatl Poetry; Containing the Nahuatl Text of Twenty-seven Ancient Mexican Poems; With Translation, Introduction, Notes and Vocabulary. pp. 177. 1887.

47. Rig Veda America.n.u.s. Sacred Songs of the Ancient Mexicans, with a Gloss in Nahuatl. With Paraphrase, Notes and Vocabulary. pp. 95.

Ill.u.s.trated. Philadelphia, 1890.

48. A notice of some Ma.n.u.scripts of Central American Languages. In the _American Journal of Science and Arts_ (New Haven), March, 1869.

49. The Maya Chronicles. pp. 279. Philadelphia, 1882.

50. The Books of Chilan Balam, the Prophetic and Historic Records of the Mayas of Yucatan. In the _Penn Monthly_, March, 1882.

51. The Names of the G.o.ds in the Kiche Myths. pp. 38. In _Proceedings_ of the American Philosophical Society, 1881.

52. On the Chane-abal (Four-Language) Tribe and Dialect of Chiapas.

In the _American Anthropologist_, January, 1888.

53. A Grammar of the Cakchiquel Language of Guatemala. Translated from an Ancient Spanish MS., with an Introduction and numerous Additions. pp. 67. In _Proceedings_ of the American Philosophical Society, 1884.

54. The Annals of the Cakchiquels. The Original text, with a Translation, Notes and Introduction. pp. 234. Ill.u.s.trated.

Philadelphia, 1885.

55. On some Affinities of the Otomi and Tinne Stocks. International Congress of Americanists, 1894.

56. Observations on the Chinantec Language of Mexico and the Mazatec Language and its Affinities. In _Proceedings_ of the American Philosophical Society, 1892.

57. Notes on the Mangue dialect. In _Proceedings_ of the American Philosophical Society, November, 1885.

58. On the Xinca Indians of Guatemala. In _Proceedings_ of the American Philosophical Society, October, 1884.

59. The Ethnic Affinities of the Guetares of Costa Rica. In _Proceedings_ of the American Philosophical Society, December, 1897.

60. On the Matagalpan Linguistic Stock of Central America. In _Proceedings_ of the American Philosophical Society, December, 1895.

61. Some Vocabularies from the Mosquito Coast. In _Proceedings_ of the American Philosophical Society, March, 1891.

The _Popol Vuh_, or "sacred book" of the Quiches of Guatemala was published by the Abbe Bra.s.seur in 1861. The study (51) is an effort to a.n.a.lyze the names of the G.o.ds which it contains and to extract their symbolic significance.

The Chane-abal dialect of Chiapas (52) is a mixed jargon, the component elements of which I have endeavored to set forth from MS. material collected by Dr. Berendt.

Another language of Chiapas is the "Chapanecan." In (57) and also in the introduction to (45) I have shown, from unpublished sources, its close relations.h.i.+p to the Mangue of Nicaragua.

The Mazatec language of Oaxaca, is examined for the first time in (56) from material supplied me by Mr. A. Pinart. It is shown to have relations with the Chapanecan and others with Costa Rican tongues.

The article on the Chinantec, (56) a little-known tongue of Oaxaca, is an a.n.a.lysis of its forms and a vocabulary from the _Doctrina_ of Father Barreda and notes of Dr. Berendt.

The Cakchiquels occupied most of the soil of Guatemala at the period of the Conquest, and their tongue was that chosen to be the "Metropolitan"

language of the diocess. In (53) I gave a translation of an unpublished grammar of it, the MS. being one in the archives of the American Philosophical Society. In some respects it is superior to the grammar of Flores.

The higher culture of the tribes of Central America and Mexico gives a special interest to the study of their languages, oral and written; for with some of them we find moderately well-developed methods of recording ideas.

Much of this culture was intimately connected with their astrological methods and these with their calendar. This remarkable artificial computation of time, based on the relations of the numerals 13 and 20 applied to various periods, was practically the same among the Mayas, Nahuas, Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Chapanecs, Otomis and Tarascos--seven different linguistic stocks--and unknown elsewhere on the globe. The study of it (30) is exclusively from its linguistic and symbolic side.

It is strange that nowhere in North America was any measure of weight known to the natives. Their lineal measures were drawn chiefly from the proportions of the human body. They are investigated in (31).

Under the names _Chontalli_ and _Popoluca_, both Nahuatl words indicating "foreigners," ethnographers have included tribes of wholly diverse lineage. In (32) I have shown that some are Tzentals, others Tequistlatecas, Ulvas, Mixes, Zapotecs, Nahuas, Lencas and Cakchiquels, thus doing away with the confusion introduced by these inappropriate ethnic terms.

No. (33) is an article for the use of students of the Nahuatl language, mentioning the princ.i.p.al grammars, dictionaries and text-books which are available.

The numbers (34), (35), (36), (37), (38), (39), (40) and (41), are devoted to the methods of writing invented by the cultured natives of Mexico and Central America in order to preserve their literature, such as it was. The methods are various, that of the Nahuas not being identical with that of the Mayas. The former is largely phonetic, but in a peculiar manner, for which I have proposed the term of "ikonomatic,"

the principle being that of the rebus. That this method can be successfully applied to the decipherment of inscriptions I demonstrated in the translation of one which is quite celebrated, the "Stone of the Giants" at Orizaba, Mexico (41). The translation I proposed has been fully accepted.[16-1]

The "Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics" (39) was intended as a summary of what had been achieved up to that time (1895) by students in this branch. It endeavored, moreover, to render to each student the credit of his independent work; and as, unfortunately, some, notably in Germany, had put forward as their own what belonged to others of earlier date, the book naturally was not very well treated by such reviewers. Its aim, however, to present a concise and fair statement of what had been accomplished in its field up to the date of its publication was generally conceded to have been attained.

Much of the considerable ma.n.u.script material which I have acc.u.mulated on the languages of this section of the continent was obtained from the collections of the late Dr. Carl Hermann Berendt and the Abbe E. C.

Bra.s.seur (de Bourbourg).

When in Spain, in 1888, I found in the Royal Library the MS. of the earlier portion of Sahagun's "History of New Spain" in Nahuatl. I described it in (42).

The term "Anahuac" has long been applied to the territory of Mexico. Dr.

E. Seler, of Berlin, published an article a.s.serting that this was an error, and devoid of native authority. In (43) I pointed out that in this he was wrong, as early Nahuatl records use it in this sense.

The Alaguilac language of Guatemala, long a puzzle to linguistics, is shown in (44) to be an isolated dialect of the Nahuatl.