1885.] ^41 [Brinton. 



the Spaniards in a friendly manner, and gave them considerable 

 gold.* 



Oviedo in his Historia de las Indias gives a few words of the 

 language as follows : 



mamea, hell. 



nam bi, dog. 



nam bue, tiger, 



the last two of which correspond to those in later vocabularies.! 



The Auditor Garcia de Palacio (1576) mentions the Mangue 

 as spoken in Choluteca, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, in the last 

 mentioned as introduced from elsewhere. J About a century later 

 a colony of Mangues, several hundred in number, were found by 

 Juan Vazquez de Coronado, almost at the extreme eastern end 

 of Costa Rica, in the Province of Pacaca.§ Those on the Pacific 

 Coast, about the Gulf of Nicoya, were accustomed to cross to the 

 ocean on the north for trading purposes, and to obtain salt.|| 

 They appear to have been a people of moderate cultivation, and 

 rather extended commercial connections. 



Affiliations. The Mangue is the mother tongue from which 

 the Chapanec (or Chiapanec) of Chiapas branched off. The 

 separation from the ancestral tribe, and the migration from 

 Nicaragua to Chiapas, were distinctly remembered by the Cha- 

 panec off-shoot when first encountered by the whites. Remesal, 

 in his well-known history, gives a brief but clear account of it. 



The date of this occurrence cannot be specifically stated, but 

 its occasion can be readily surmised. The Mangues at one time 

 occupied the whole coast from the entrance of the Gulf of 

 Nicoya to Fonseca bay. At a period which we may locate some 

 time in the fourteenth century, a large colony of Aztecs de- 

 scended the coast and seized the strip between Lake Nicaragua 

 and the Pacific, thus splitting the Mangues in two, and driving 

 a large portion of them out of their homes. Some of these wan- 

 derers remained with their relatives, but one body of them 

 marched north and west until they reached a lofty peak on the 



•Letter of Gil Gonzalez Davila to the Emperor Charles V, in Costa-Rica, Nic* 

 aragua y Panama en el Sialo xvi, por D. Manuel E. de Peralta, p. 9 (Madrid, 1833). 

 t historia General y Natural de Indias, Part iii, Lib, iii. 

 X Palacio, Carta, al Rey> Ed. Squier, p. 20. 



gSee the Report of Coronado in the collection of Peralta above quoted, p. 777. 

 1 Ibid, p. 701. 



PROC AMEK. PHILOS. SOC. XXIII. 122. 2E. PRINTED JANUARY 20, 1886. 



