509 



[Brinton. 



Fig. 1. — Tamuoc. 



ployed by these native American scribes, I will present and 

 analyze several typical examples from Aztec manuscripts. 



Beginning with proper' names drawn from other languages, 

 we find that the Nahuas had a number of such, which, of course, 

 had no meaning in their own tongue. One of their documents 

 speaks of the town of the Huastecas, called by that tribe Tam- 

 uch, which means in their tongue " near the scorpions," and by 

 the Aztecs, in imitation, Tamuoc* As the Huasteca is a Maya 

 dialect, totally distinct from the Nahuatl, this word had no sense 

 to the ears of the Aztecs. To convey its sound, they portrayed 

 a man holding in his hands a measuring stick, 

 and in the act of measuring. Now, in Nahuatl, 

 the verb " to measure " is tamachiua ; the meas- 

 uring stick is octocatl ; and, to make the latter 

 plainer, several foot-prints, xoctli, are painted 

 upon the measuring stick, giving an example 

 of the repetition of the sound, such as we have 

 already seen was common among the Egyptian 

 scribes. 



In another class of proper names, in their own tongue, 

 although the}' had a meaning in the Nahuatl, the scribe preferred 

 to express them by ikonomatic instead of ikonographic devices. 

 Thus, Ilapachtepec, means, literally, "badger 

 hill," or " badger town," but in place of depict- 

 ing a badger, the native writer made a drawing 

 of a hand grasping a bunch of Spanish moss,the 

 Tillandsia itsneoides. The hand or arm in Na. 

 huatl is maitl, the moss pa chtli ; and taking the 

 first syllables of these two words we obtain ma 

 pack: the word tepee, locative form of tepetl 



hill or village, is expressed by the usual conven- 



,.,,., . . . Fig. 2.— Mapachte- 



tional ideographic or determinative sign. pec> 



In other names, the relative position of the objects are signifi- 

 cant, reminding us of the rebus of a well known town in Mas- 

 sachusetts, celebrated for its educational institutions : 



& 

 Mass. 



* Tarn, near; uch, scorpion. Diccionario Huasteca- Espaflol, MS., In my posses- 

 sion. This and most of the other instances quoted are to be found in Lord 

 Kingsborough's great work on Mexico, and also in Dr. Penafiel's Caldlogo Alfa- 

 betieo de los Nombres de Lug ares per •teneciente sal Idioma Nahuatl (Mexico, 1885). 



