1S93.J -"^1- [Brinton. 



form of the Calendar, because these emigrants carried it with 

 them, and preserved it until the advent of the Europeans. Such 

 facts incline us to accept the statement of the Quiche astrono- 

 mers to the effect that they had been regularly keeping their 

 national annals by this time measurement for at least eight hun- 

 dred years before the advent of the Spaniards in 1524. * 



The Ma3^an dialects of which I can avail m^-self are the Maya 

 proper of Yucatan; the Tzental of Chiapas; and the Quiche 

 and Cakchiquel of Guatemala. The last two differ very slightly 

 from each other, and may be considered as one language. The 

 Tzentals and Zotzils were closely allied branches of the stock, 

 who inhabited a considerable portion of Chiapas and Tabasco 

 when this region was first explored by the Spaniards. Early 

 writers often call the Tzentals, " Tzendals " and " Zeldals," 

 through a corruption of their proper name, which is Tzental, 

 there being no d in their alphabet. The Zotzils called themselves 

 Keren, " ^^oiing men," which the Spaniards changed into Que- 

 lenes. » 



Garcia de Palacio, writing in 1576, includes both under the 

 compound name, Zeldal-Quelen, as one language. f They have 

 from time to time been spoken of erroneously as Chiapanecs. 

 These, whose right name is Chapanecs, are linguistically in no 

 way related to the Mayan stock. 



The Tzental dialect Is not distant from the pure Maya. In 

 his scheme of the divarication of the stock. Dr. StoU places it, 

 indeed, as the branch nearest allied to the tongue spoken in 

 Yucatan. [j; I am inclined, however, from my own studies of 

 these dialects, to accept as correct the uniform traditions of the 

 Cakchiquels, Quiches and Tzutuhils of Guatemala, who traced 

 their ancestry to the same parentage as that of the Tzentals and 

 Zotzils ; thus bringing the dialects of Chiapas into closer rela- 

 tionship to those of Guatemala than to those of the Peninsula 

 of Yucatan. § 



* "Demas de ochocicntos anos," Herrera, Historia de las Indias Occidentales, Dec. iii, 

 Lib. iv, cap. 18. 



t Carta al Fey, p. 20 (Ed. Squier). 



t Dr. Otto Stoll, Ethnographie dcr Republik Guatemala, s. 84 (Zurich, 1884). The form 

 "Tzotzil" adopted by this writer is not so correct as " Zotzil." 



§ I do not inchide the Choi among the proper dialects of the Tzental territory. It is ol 

 modern introduction, from the upper valley of the Usumacinta river. 



