18 ARCH^OLOGICAL AND ETHNOLOGICAL 



Chaguapa I had the pleasure of seeing them cutting down the bushes growing on 

 the pasture-ground. 



The inhabitants of Honduras are almost entirely ignorant of the ancient remains 

 and languages of the country. This is the more surprising as it must be supposed 

 that Honduras was not less populous than the other states of Centra'l America. 

 The information I received was exceedingly meagre, and only the site of ancient 

 Olancho was pointed out to me. I did not visit it because of its great difficulty 

 of access. If I did not meet with any archteological objects I had at least the 

 opportunity of enlarging my ethnological knowledge by becoming acquainted with 

 various tribes of the aborigines, and obtaining vocabularies of their languages. 



The first aborigines I met belonged to the tribe of the Xicagues. Some descend- 

 ants of this tribe are settled in the hamlet Rio Comayagua. Further on, in the 

 .department of Yoro, I met two Xicagues, Avho seemed to have been little affected 

 by civilization and were yet in a primitive state. In Yoro, the capital of the 

 department of that name, were twenty Xicagues working for their curador ; and 

 from others who came to the town I collected a vocabulary of their language. 



The Xicagues differ in the form of their bodies from all other tribes of Central 

 America. Their stature, on the average, being equal to that of Europeans, is 

 greater than that of the other tribes Their skin is of a lighter color, and their 

 features resemble more closely those of the Caucasians, having a more pleasant 

 and intelligent expression than any other tribe of this region known to me. 

 Both of the sexes wear a kind of apron, made of the inner bark of the Caoutchouc 

 tree. That of the women reaches around the waist and the ends hang down from 

 the hips to the knees ; that of the men is but a foot wide, with a slit in the middle, 

 through which they put the head, the front and back part reaching from the shoul- 

 ders down to the knees. These two flaps are attached to the body by a strap of 

 the same material fastened around the waist. By another narrower strap, tied 

 around the head, they secure the long black hair, parted in front and floating down 

 to the shoulders. 



It was but recently that the Xicagues were christened and collected into perma- 

 nent settlements. This was effected by the efforts of a Spanish missionary, who 

 gloried in having erected, during the eight years of his labors before my arrival, 

 twenty-two cliurches, near which he induced many thousands of Indians whom he 

 had christened to settle. His converts belong to the tribes of the Xicagues, 

 Peschkas (Germ, spell.), and Moskitos, living in Honduras and Nicaragua. It 

 was in Nicaragua and amongst the Moskitos that he first commenced his mis- 

 sionary labors. 



The Xicagues are under great obligation to this man, who has liberated tliem 

 from a kind of slavery, in which many of them were kept in spite of the laws of 

 the country by which slavery was abrogated. Like all other primitive people the 

 Xicagues were improvident. They did not cultivate the soil, nor raise animals, at 

 least no large ones, as cattle or horses. When they desired one of these they 

 pawned their freedom for it, and as they were never able to pay, many of them 

 were held in perpetual slavery on that account. The missionary succeeded in put- 

 ting a stop to this mode of traffic by securing the appointment by the government 



