20 JOHN EEADE ON 



ments are nearly all aboriginal, tliougli allowance must be made for Spanish and even 

 Negro influence. They do not differ greatly from primitive instruments everywhere. 



Between the Nahua colony of Nicaragua and the body of the race in Mexico, there 

 intervenes an area covered by various tribes, but of which those of Maya and Quiche 

 speech are by far the most important. " Maya was the patrial name of the natives of 

 Yucatan," writes Dr. Brinton. It was heard of as early as the year 1503-4, during Colum- 

 bus's fourth voyage. The late Dr. Berendt enumerated no less than sixteen affiliated tribes, 

 including the Chantais of Tabasco, the Tzeudals to the soixth of them, the Chols on the 

 Upper TJsumacinta, the Kichés and the Cakchiquels in or close to Guatemala, and the 

 Huastecs on the Pantico in Mexico. These languages are said to differ from each other, 

 and from the central Maya, no more than the Neo-Latin tongues do from Latin and from 

 each other. One legend of the Mayas, pointing to their arrival from the east under the 

 leadership of a hero-god, Itzamna, Dr. Brinton explains as a solar myth. Another, which 

 indicates an immigration from Mexico, under a hero named Cuculcau, he deems worthy of 

 attention, as it is mentioned in the native chronicles, and was maintained by intelligent 

 aborigines at the time of the Conquest. The connecting point is found in the Huastec 

 branch, north of Vera Cruz, which, it is suggested, may have been the rearguard of a great 

 Maya migration from the north southward. There are also traditions common to both 

 Mayas and Nahuas or Aztecs. The Mayas were, in some respects, the superior race. They 

 were a literary people, making use of tablets, and employing hieroglyphics which, how- 

 ever, are still a puzzle to the learned. Dr. Valentini's view of the Landa alphabet is now 

 generally held by scholars and, indeed, the bishop did not claim for it the character which 

 has been so frequently attributed to it.' 



" The Maya Chronicles," edited by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, forms the first volume of 

 Brinton's " Library of Aboriginal American Literature." The first of the records which gives 

 it its title was x^ublished as an appendix to the second volume of John L. vStepheus's "Inci- 

 dents of Travel in Yucatan," a work which began a new era in American archaeological 

 research. The others were not previously published. The " Chronicles " are entirely apart 

 from the Maya hieroglyphic rolls, the fourth of which was recently published in Paris, 

 under the editorial superAdsiou of M. de Rosny They were composed after the Conquest, 

 by natives who had been taught the language of the conquerors, and who availed them- 

 selves of the alphabet to write the Maya language. Gathering whatever knowledge of 

 the past remained in the memories of old men, or could be deciphered from the ancient 

 codices, they committed them to the custody of the litera scripta. Some of the histories 

 thus compiled in Maya date as far back as 1542, by which time some of the natives had 

 become adepts in the use of the pen. They all, wherever prepared, bore the name of 

 " Books of Chilan Balam," which was the designation of a class of priests. They are 

 generally anonymous. It was from them that Senor Pio Perez, who first made the revela- 

 tion to the world, derived his knowledge of the Maya system of computing time. Dr. 

 Carl Hermann Berendt made a large collection of such manuscripts which, after his death, 

 came into the hands of Dr. Brinton. Some of these, with the document already mentioned 

 as appearing in the work of Stephens, are comprised in " The Maya Chronicles." The 

 Maya text is accompanied by a translation and copious notes, historical and ethnological. 



' The Laiula Alphabet a Spanish fabrication, by Philipp J. J. Valentini, Proc. Am. Ant. Soc, 1880. 



