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 Abbé Brasseur in 1861. The study (51) is an effort to analyze the names of the gods 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 In (57) and also in the introduction to (45) I have shown, from unpublished sources, its close relationship to the Mangue of Nicaragua.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 analysis 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 In (53) I gave a translation of an unpublished grammar of it, the MS.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 principal 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 manuscript material which I have accumulated on the languages of this section of the continent was obtained