On Certain Additions to the Ethnographical Philology of Central America, With Remarks Upon the So-Called Astek Conquest of Mexico
Read Before the Philological Society
May 12, 1854.
In Central America we have two points for which our philological data have lately received additions, viz. the parts about the Lake Nicaragua and the Isthmus of Darien.
For the parts about the Lake of Nicaragua, the chief authority is Mr. Squier; a writer with whom we differ in certain points, but, nevertheless, a writer who has given us both materials and results of great value. The languages represented, for the first time, by his vocabularies are four in number, of which three are wholly new, whilst one gives us a phenomenon scarcely less important than an absolutely fresh form of speech; viz. the proof of the occurrence of a known language in a new, though not unsuspected, locality.
To these four a fifth may be added; but; as that is one already illustrated by the researches of Henderson, Cotheal and others, it does not come under the category of new material. This language is that of the Indians of the Mosquito coast.—Respecting these Mr. Squier commits himself to the doctrine that they are more or less Carib. They may be this in physiognomy. They may also be so in respect to their civilization, or want of civilization; and perhaps this is all that is meant, the words of our author being, that “upon the low alluvions, and amongst the dense dank forests of the Atlantic coast, there exist a few scanty, wandering tribes, maintaining a precarious existence by hunting and fishing, with little or no agriculture, destitute of civil organization, with a debased religion, and generally corresponding with the Caribs of the islands, to whom they sustain close affinities. A portion of their descendants, still further debased by the introduction of negro blood, may still be found in the wretched Moscos or Mosquitos. The few and scattered Melchoras, on the river St. Juan, are certainly of Carib stock, and it is more than probable that the same is true of the Woolwas, Ramas, Toacas, and Poyas, and also of the other tribes on the Atlantic coast, further to the southward, towards Chiriqui Lagoon, and collectively denominated Bravos.”—Central America and Nicaragua, ii. pp. 308-309.
Nevertheless, as has been already stated, the language is other than Carib. It is other than Carib, whether we look to the Moskito or the Woolwa vocabularies. It is other than Carib, and admitted by Mr. Squier to be so. The previous extract has given us his opinion; what follows supports it by his reasons. “I have said that the Indians of the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua, the Moscos and others, were probably of Carib stock. This opinion is founded not only upon the express statements of Herrara, who says that ‘the Carib tongue was much spoken in Nicaragua,’ but also upon their general appearance, habits and modes of life. Their language does not appear to have any direct relationship with that of the Southern Caribs, but is, probably, the same, or a dialect of the same with that spoken around what is now called Chiriqui Lagoon, near the Isthmus of Panama, and which was originally called Chiribiri or Chraibici, from which comes Gomera’s Caribici, or Carib.” In a note we learn that “thirteen leagues from the Gulf of Nicoya, Oviedo speaks of a village called Carabizi, where the same language was spoken as at Chiriqui,” &c.
Of the Melchora we have no specimens. For each and every tribe, extant or extinct, of the Indians about the Chiriqui Lagoon we want them also. The known vocabularies, however, for the parts nearest that locality are other than Carib.
Let us, however, look further, and we shall find good reasons for believing that certain populations of the parts in question are called, by the Spaniards of their neighbourhood, Caribs, much in the same way that they, along with nine-tenths of the other aborigines of America, are called Indians by us. “The region of Chantales,” writes Mr. Squier, “was visited by my friend Mr. Julius Froebel, in the summer of this year (1851). He penetrated to the head-waters of the Rio Mico, Escondido, or Blue-fields, where he found the Indians to be agriculturalists, partially civilized, and generally speaking the Spanish language. They are called Caribs by their Spanish neighbours,” &c. But their language, of which Mr. Froebel collected a vocabulary, published by Mr. Squier, is, like the rest, other than Carib.
It may, then, safely be said, that the Carib character of the Moskito Indians, &c. wants confirmation.
Nicaragua. A real addition to our knowledge is supplied by M. Squier concerning the Nicaraguans. The statement of Oviedo as to the tribes between the Lake of Nicaragua and the Pacific, along with the occupants of the islands in the lake itself, being Mexican rather than indigenous, he confirms. He may be said to prove it; since he brings specimens of the language (Niquiran, as he calls it), which is as truly Mexican as the language of Sydney or New York is English.
The Mexican character of the Nicaraguan language is a definite addition to ethnographical philology. It may now be considered as settled, that one of the languages of the parts under notice is intrusive, and foreign to its present locality.
The remaining vocabularies represent four indigenous forms of speech; these (three of them of Mr. Squier’s own earliest publication, and one known before) being—
1. The Chorotegan or Dirian of Squier—This was collected by the author from the Indians of Masaya, on the northern frontier of the Niquiran, Nicaraguan, Mexican or Astek area.
2. The Nagrandan of Squier—This was collected by the author from the Indians of Subtiaba, in the plain of Leon, to the north of the Niquiran or Mexican area.
3. The Chontales, or Woolwa, of Froebel; Chontal being the name of the district, Woolwa, of the tribe.
4. The Mosquito (or Waikna) of the coast.
To these four indigenous tongues (the Mexican of Nicaragua being dealt with as a foreign tongue), what have we to say in the way of classification?
It is safe to say that the Nagrandan, Dirian, and Woolwa, are more like each other than they are to the Mosca, Mosquito, or Waikna. And this is important, since, when Froebel collected the Woolwa vocabulary, he found a tradition of their having come originally from the shores of Lake Managua; this being a portion of the Dirian and Nagrandan area. If so; the classification would be,—
a. Dirian, Nagrandan, and Chontal, or Woolwa (Wúlwa)
b. Mosquito, or Waikna.
The value of these two divisions is, of course, uncertain; and, in the present state of our knowledge, it would be premature to define it. Equally uncertain is the value of the subdivisions of the first class. All that can be said is, that out of four mutually unintelligible tongues, three seem rather more allied to each other than the fourth.
Besides the vocabulary of the Nagrandan of Mr. Squier, there is a grammatical sketch by Col. Francesco Diaz Zapata.
Veragua—We pass now from the researches of Mr. Squier in Nicaragua to those of Mr. B. Seemann, Naturalist to the Herald, for the Isthmus of Panama. The statement of Colonel Galindo, in the Journal of the Geographical Society, that the native Indian languages of Honduras, Nicaragua, San Salvador, and Costarica, had been replaced by the Spanish, has too implicitly been adopted; by no one, however, more so than the present writer. The same applies to Veragua.
Here, Dr. Seemann has supplied:—
1. The Savaneric, from the northernmost part of Veragua.
2. The Bayano, from the river Chepo.
3. The Cholo, widely spread in New Grenada. This is the same as Dr. Cullen’s Yule.
Specimens of the San Blas, or Manzanillo Indians, are still desiderated, it being specially stated that the number of tribes is not less than four, and the four languages belonging to them as different.
All that can at present be said of the specimens before us is, that they have miscellaneous, but no exact and definite affinities.
Mexicans of Nicaragua. From the notice of these additions to our data for Central America in the way of raw material, we proceed to certain speculations suggested by the presence of the Mexicans of Nicaragua in a locality so far south of the city of Mexico as the banks and islands of the lake of that name.
First as to their designation. It is not Astek (or Asteca), as was that of the allied tribes of Mexico. Was it native, or was it only the name which their neighbours gave them? Was it a word like Deutsch (applied to the population of Westphalia, Oldenburg, the Rhine districts, &c.), or a word like German and Allemand? Upon this point no opinion is hazarded.
Respecting, however, the word Astek (Asteca) itself, the present writer commits himself to the doctrine that it was no native name at all, and that it was a word belonging to the Maya, and foreign to the Mexican, class of languages. It was as foreign to the latter as Welsh is to the language of the British Principality; as German or Allemagne to the High and Low Dutch forms of speech; as barbarus to the languages in contact with the Latin and Greek, but not themselves either one or the other.
On the other hand, it was a Maya word, in the way that Welsh and German are English, and in the way that Allemand is a French one.
It was a word belonging to the country into which the Mexicans intruded, and to the populations upon which they encroached. These called their invaders Asteca, just as the Scotch Gael calls an Englishman, a Saxon.
a. The form is Maya, the termination-eca being common whereever any form of the Maya speech is to be found.
b. It is too like the word Huasteca to be accidental. Now, Huasteca is the name of a language spoken in the parts about Tampico; a language separated in respect to its geographical position from the other branches of the Maya family, (for which Guatemala and Yucatan are the chief localities) but not separated (as is indicated in the Mithridates) from these same Maya tongues philologically. Hence Huasteca is a Maya word; and what Huasteca is, Asteca is likely to be.
The isolation of the Huasteca branch of the Maya family indicates invasion, encroachment, conquest, displacement; the invaders, &c. being the Mexicans, called by themselves by some name hitherto undetermined, but by the older occupants of the country, Astek.
It is believed, too, though this is more or less of an obiter dictum, that nine-tenths of the so-called Mexican civilization, as indicated by its architecture, &c., was Maya, i. e. was referable to the old occupants rather than to the new invaders; standing in the same relation to that of the Mexicans, strictly speaking, as that of Italy did to that of the Goths and Lombards.
Whence came these invaders? The evidence of the phonetic part of the language points to the parts about Quadra and Vancouver’s Island, and to the populations of the Upper Oregon—populations like the Chinuk, the Salish, the Atna, &c. Here, for the first time, we meet with languages where the peculiar phonesis of the Mexican language, the preponderance of the sound expressed by tl, reappears. For all the intermediate parts, with one or two exceptions, the character of the phonesis is Maya, i. e. soft, vocalic, and marked by the absence of those harsh elements that characterize the Mexican, the Chinuk, and the Atna equally. The extent to which the glossarial evidence agrees with the phonetic has yet to be investigated, the doctrine here indicated being a suggestion rather than aught else.
So is the doctrine that both the Nicaraguan and Mexican invasions were maritime. Strange as this may sound in the case of an ordinary American population, it should not do so in the case of a population deduced from the Chinuk and Salish areas and from the archipelago to the north of Quadra’s and Vancouver’s Island. However, it is not the fact itself that is of so much value. The principle involved in its investigation is weightier. This is, that the distribution of an allied population, along a coast, and at intervals, is primâ facie evidence of the ocean having been the path along which they moved.
Note (1859)
For exceptions to the doctrine here suggested see Notes on the last paper.