NO. I HONDURAS STRONG, KIDDER, AND PAUL I9 



Squier (1859, pp. 603-619) gives a brief but vivid picture of a 

 fiesta at Comayagua in which Indians from the nearby mountains 

 performed dances accompanied by much ceremonial drinking and 

 native ritual. The deer and the ocelot were the symbols of the two 

 main dancing groups. Their musical instruments consisted of flutes, 

 the Panspipe, the marimba, and a covered pot with a string drawn 

 through the bottom. At this fiesta, the Indians, the majority of whom 

 were probably Lenca, visited the numerous ruined towns in the 

 vicinity of Comayagua that had been occupied at the time of the 

 Conquest. He also described an extremely isolated village of the 

 Guajiquero Lenca and gives an amusing account of the difficulties 

 involved in securing linguistic or ethnographic information from the 

 Indians. As anyone knows who has attempted work with Honduras 

 Indians, the repression of almost half a millennium combined with 

 linguistic barriers is not an easy thing to overcome. However, it is 

 obvious from Squier's account that a wealth of native custom and 

 belief still survives among the more isolated groups. 



Such survivals, combined with the extremely haphazard nature 

 of previous research among the living Indians, indicate that there 

 is much more information available in Honduras for the trained 

 ethnologist and linguist than has been generally realized. 



EARLY HISTORIC CONTACTS IN NORTHWESTERN HONDURAS 



The fourth voyage of Columbus gives us our first historic glimpse 

 of conditions on the Honduras mainland. Having visited the Bay 

 Islands, Columbus landed at Punta de Caxinas (the Cape of Hon- 

 duras) on August 14, 1502. The chroniclers of this voyage give a 

 brief but vivid picture of the advanced agricultural life and the 

 thriving coastal trade then existing on the north coast of Honduras.' 



In 1524 Gil Gonzalez named Puerto Caballos (later to become 

 Puerto Cortez) and established a settlement at San Gil de Buena 

 Vista. From this base he sailed down the coast and marched over- 

 land into the Olancho valley, where he met and defeated a force under 

 Hernando de Soto that had been exploring this region from Nica- 

 ragua. Returning to Puerto Caballos he was informed of the arrival 

 of a Spanish fleet under Cristobal de Olid. 



It is of interest that again Honduras becomes a buffer area and 

 battleground between two earlier established southern and northern 



' Pertinent historical and ethnographic information regarding the Bay Islands 

 and the adjacent mainland have been given elsewhere (Strong, 1935, pp. 7-19). 

 The following historical resume of the Ulua region is primarily condensed from 

 Bancroft, History of Central America, vols, i and 2, 1883. Other sources are 

 cited as they occur. 



