1892.] 39 [Brinton. 



But how explain the extensive journey from Nicaragua to the 

 northern limits of the State of Oaxaca? Here an ancient tradition 

 of the Mangues comes to our aid. It was preserved by P'ather 

 Remesal in his History of Chiapas, and runs to the effect that at a 

 remote time a considerable number of the Mangues departed from 

 the shores of Lake Managua and journeyed to the north, into the 

 territory of the Zoques. Remesal construed this to explain the 

 origin of the Chapanecs of Chiapas; but the traditions of the latter 

 do not acknowledge this derivation, and it is probable that the 

 Mangues referred to some other division of their community. 

 This may well have been that which conveyed a mixed dialect of 

 Mangue and Costa Rican as far as the northern borders of Oaxaca. 



We have also early evidence that a band of the Mangues, num- 

 bering about four hundred souls, occupied a town in the midst of 

 the Costa Rican tribes, in the valley of Guaymi, fronting on the 

 Golfo Dolce. There they were found by the Spanish explorers in 

 1563.* Doubtless they absorbed more or less of the language of 

 their rulers, the Guaymis ; and the following identities between the 

 Mazatecan and the Guaymi vocabularies (published by Mr. Pinart 

 in the Revue d' Ethnographie, 1887) seem conclusive. 



If these identifications are correct, they enable us to trace the 

 influence of a South American linguistic stock as far into North 

 America as the northern border of Oaxaca — a discovery full of sig- 

 nificance for the history of the aboriginal culture of the central 

 portion of the continent. 



* Peralta, Costa Rica, Nicaragua y Panama en el Siglo XV J, p. 777 (Madrid, 1883). 



