Brinton.] •^^ [Jan. 15, 



Nahiias. Their principal weapon is said to have been lances of un- 

 usual length which they handled with singular dexterity. 



Literature. — The first to reduce the Chinantec language to 

 writing was Brother Francisco Saravia. He was a native of Seville, 

 in Spain ; by trade a cabinetmaker, in that capacity he emigrated 

 to the City of Mexico, where he married and carried on a pros- 

 perous business. The death of his wife, when he was about 

 thirty-five years of age, led him to renounce the world, and in 1574 

 he joined the order of Dominicans. Having been assigned to the 

 province of Oaxaca, he devoted himself to studying the language of 

 the Chinantecs, and in collecting them from the caves and ravines 

 in which they lived into villages where they could cultivate the soil. 

 His success was great, and the natives regarded him with equal love 

 and reverence. For fifty years of his long life he labored among 

 them, and when he died in 1630, at the ripe age of a nonagenarian, 

 he left in the archives of his order a number of MSS. in and upon 

 the language. Of these we have the titles of a Catecismo, an Arte, a 

 Co7ifesionario and Sermones. Probably the most important was his 

 Gran Hotnilario Chinanteco, a copy of which he placed in every 

 one of the parishes under his care, so that the native sacristan could 

 read the homily when the priest should be prevented from attend- 

 ing. More interesting to the historian doubtless was his autobio- 

 graphical sketch of the tribe written under the title Noticia de la 

 Conversion de la Nacion Chinanteca y sucesos acaecidos en elia al 

 Autor. 



I do not know of a single copy of any of Saravia's writings; and 

 what is more remarkable. Father Nicholas de la Barreda, who pre- 

 cisely one hundred years after Saravia's death printed in Mexico 

 the only known book in the language, had never even heard of his 

 predecessor's labors, and states specifically in his Prologue that 

 he had not found so much as a word written or printed in this 

 tongue. 



Barreda himself is said to have been a native of Oaxaca, and 

 began his missionary work among the Chinantecs about 1708. 

 For a score of years he had been cura of San Pedro de Yolos, when 

 his book appeared — Doctrina Christiana en Lengtta Chinafiteca 

 (4to, Mexico, 1730). Of this only two copies are known to be 

 extant, fronn one of which I possess a careful MS. copy by the 

 hand of the late Dr. C. Hermann Berendt. This learned Ameri- 

 canist had commenced a study of the tongue, and left a few notes 



