PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 677 



the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific. It has all imaginable climates 

 between that of the fresh and bracing region of San Jos6 and the heat 

 of the borders of Lake Nicaragua. 



The Guatusos cultivate largely the plantain, which is their principal 

 article of food, maize, cacao, zuca (mauioca), tobacco, sugar-cane, cotton, 

 agi (chile), &c. They make hammocks and nets of cabuya (agave). 

 They are robust, agile, well formed, and of good character. They are 

 pure Indians and not white, as has been claimed, although in some 

 cases was noticed a trace of white or negro blood. Their number cannot 

 yet be approximately calculated, but is not less than six hundred. 



I am now occupied in the study of their language, and hope to pub- 

 lish my results in the third volume of the " Documentos."* 



NOTE, BY J. F. BRANSFORD. 



Next after the Lacandones of Guatemala the Guatusos of Costa Eica 

 have been the most mysterious- Indians of Central America, and have 

 furnished material for numberless extraordinary stories by travelers in 

 that section. In finally settling the question of color, race, &c., Don 

 Leon Fernandez and the bishop of Costa Rica have done a service to 

 science, but they have given a dreadful blow to future writers of enter- 

 taining yarns about Costa Eica and Nicaragua. 



This tribe, spoken of as Guatusos or Pranzos, or Eio Frio Indians, in- 

 habit the valley between the main Cordillera, that strikes the San Juan 

 at Machuca, and the volcanic range, which, in northwest Costa Eica, is 

 near the Pacific. The valley is drained by the Eio Frio, which enters 

 Lake Nicaragua less than half a mile from the point where the San Juan 

 leaves it. 



In looking up the literature on this subject, as well as on all questions 

 concerning Central America, we turn naturally to Squier,t and are re- 

 warded with a summary of what was known of these people up to 1858. 



According to Mr. Squier, the first allusion to the fierce warriors of the 

 Eio Frio was in a report to the King of Spain about 1719, by Diego de 

 la Haya, governor of Costa Eica. Afterwards there was a legend that 

 they were de>cendants of Indians who withdrew from Esparza when it 

 was destroyed by buccaneers in the latter part of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. In 1750 Padre Zepeda, a Franciscan of Guatemala, spent sev- 

 eral months with the Guatusos, who treated him kindly. He claimed 

 to have seen more than five hundred houses. In 1756 the guardian of 

 the convent of Esparza reported the results of Zepeda's trip, and was 

 instructed to follow up the discoveries. He started, but got lost. In 

 1761 four men, spoken of as Sambos,| who were captured in the mount- 



* Colleccion de Documentos jyara la Historia de Costa Bica, por Don Leon Fernandez. 

 San Jos^, Costa Rica. 

 t The State of Central Ame7-ica, by E. G. Squier. New York, 1858; page 405. 

 t That they were really Sambos is of course hardly probable. 



