1S95.J ^""^ [Briuton. 



The Matagalpan Linguistic Stock of Central America. 



By Daniel G. Brinion, M.D. 



{Read before the American Philosophical Society, December 6, iSpS-) 



Geographical. — A peculiar native idiom prevails — or fifty years 

 ago did prevail — among the aboriginal population of that portion of 

 the State of Nicaragua where are situated the city of Matagalpa 

 and the towns of San Ramon, Muymuy, Sebaco and others in the 

 department of Matagalpa ; and in the towns of Telpaneca, Palaca- 

 guina, Yalaguina, Condega, Tologalpa, Somato Grande and others 

 of the department of Segovia. That at one time it extended into 

 the former department of Chontales is proved by the numerous geo- 

 graphical names which remain and by the traditions of those 

 who yet speak it. 



The people who use this idiom seem to have had no collective 

 name of their own. They have been called by the Spanish writers, 

 and by others who have followed them, " Chontales " and " Popo- 

 lucas." It is now fully recognized by competent ethnographers 

 that these terms have not, and never did have, any ethnic signifi- 

 cance. They are borrowed from the Nahuatl language (spoken by 

 the Aztecs and others), in which they are common nouns, chontalli 

 meaning a rude, rustic person ; popolocatl, a stranger or foreigner. 

 Many different tribes, who did not speak Nahuatl, were so called 

 both in Mexico and Central America. 



Mr. E. G. Squier, in his description of the tribes and languages 

 of Nicaragua, gives the location of a tribe of "Chontales," and 

 adds a short vocabulary of their language,* which enables us to as- 

 sign them without hesitation to the Ulvan linguistic stock, one 

 widely different from which I present in this paper. 



In the later work by Don Pablo Levy on Nicaragua, the author 

 informs us that the Chontales spoke Maya and were descendants of 

 the Phoenicians. f 



In the Correspondenzblatt der deutschen Anthropologischen Gesell- 

 schaft, for September, 1874, is an article based on the researches of 

 Dr. Carl Hermann Berendt, which distinctly repudiates the use of 

 the term Chontal in an ethnic sense, and states that the Chontales 

 and Popolucas at Nicaragua speak various tongues, having nothing 



* Squier, Nicaragua, Its People, Scenery, Monuments, Vol. i, p. 314 (New York, 1856). 

 ^ Notas sobre la Repubtica de Nicaragua, pp. 7, 208 (Paris, 1873). 



