rulers, masters, which the Spaniards corrupted into Mangues.[8] The invading Aztecs appear to have split this ancient tribe into two fractions, the one driven toward the south, about the Gulf of Nicoya, the other northward, on and near Lake Managua, and beyond it on Fonseca Bay.[9] Probably in memory of this victory, the Nicaraguans applied to them the opprobrious name Chololteca, "those driven out," from the Nahuatl verb choloa, and the suffix tecatl, which was corrupted by the Spanish to Chorotecas.[10]

The name does not by any means intimate that the Mangues came from Cholula in Mexico, as some ancient, and some modern, writers have hastily supposed;[11] nor is it a proof that they spoke an Aztec dialect, as Ternaux Compans has asserted.[12] So far is this from being the case, the Mangue has no sort of affinity with the Nahuatl, and must stand wholly asunder from it in the classification of American tongues. It has, indeed, a relative to the north, and a close one, the Chapanec or Chiapenec,[13] spoken by the inhabitants of three small villages in Chiapas, the largest of which has given its name to the province. These Chapanecs, by their traditions, still clearly remembered at the time of the Conquest, and preserved by the historian Remesal, migrated from Nicaragua to their more northern home. As they had no connection with the Aztecs, so, also, they were wholly without affinities with the great Maya stock, which extended far and wide over Central America, although the contrary has been recently stated.[14] In fact, among the five different languages which were spoken in the present province of Nicaragua at the time of the discovery, not one belonged to any branch of the Maya group.[15]

My present theme does not extend to a discussion of these various tongues, nor take me further into the ethnology of their locality. It has to do solely with these two nations, the Nicaraguans and the Mangues. The culture-level of the former was nearly as high as that found in the Valley of Mexico. They had a settled government, constructed edifices of stone, sculptured idols, utensils and ornaments out of the same material, were skilled in ceramics, deft in weaving cotton cloth and reed or grass mats, able in war, and thoughtful enough to puzzle their first European visitors with questions as to the stars and the earth, the beginning and the end of things.[16] Careful archaeologists in our own day have searched the territory they inhabited, and many museums contain specimens of what they accomplished in the direction of the arts, and testify to a respectable degree of intellectual advancement.[17]

We know less about the Mangues. They are mentioned as differing in religious rites from the Nicaraguans, and the impression is conveyed that they were in a more primitive condition, but yet with fair claims to be ranked among the cultivated nations of the new world. Among them, in fact, Dr. Berendt located one of the "centres of ancient American civilization," and considered the definite solution of their affiliations as one of the problems of the first order in the ethnology of America.[18] The Spanish historians relate that they had hieroglyphic books, like the Mexicans; that they were rather light in color, careful in dress, setting much store by their long hair, which they sedulously combed, and had an autocratic military government. Their country was thickly peopled, especially that portion of it between the lakes. The district of Managua was almost like a continuous town, so closely were the native houses placed together for nearly ten miles. In fact, it was called one city by the earliest explorers, and Oviedo, who takes pains to criticise these for their tendency to exaggeration, estimated the population of this limited district, at the time of the Conquest, at forty thousand souls.[19]

At present, scarcely any pure-blood remnants of either of these nations can be found, and both languages are practically extinct. When Mr. Squier visited Nicaragua, in 1850, he obtained, with great difficulty, a short vocabulary of the Nahuatl dialect, spoken on the island of Ometepec, in Lake Nicaragua; and, in 1874, Dr. Berendt, only at the cost of repeated efforts, succeeded in securing from a few survivors of advanced ages a moderately full collection of Mangue words and sentences.[20]

MAP OF THE LOCATION OF THE NAHUAS OF NICARAGUA AND THEIR NEIGHBORS.

To illustrate the practical identity of the Nahuatl of Nicaragua with that of Anahuac, and the Mangue of Nicaragua with that of Chiapas, I will insert two short lists of common words with their equivalents in those four dialects. The first is from Mr. Squier's works above referred to, the second from the manuscripts of Dr. Berendt now in my possession.

Comparison of the Nahuatl of Nicaragua and of Mexico.