PANAMA AND ITS PEOPLE—BELL. 623 
Little of their origin is known, but Brinton (35) and others sug- 
gest they are probably descended from the Mayas of Yucatan. Ac- 
cording to Pinart, who made a collection of their idioms, the Dorachos 
did not believe in a God that abode in the skies, as the Guaymies 
have always done, but believed that the “ great spirit ” lived in the 
Volcan de Chiriqui, and when they were angered at the god they 
would avenge themselves by shooting their arrows toward the crater 
as a sign of their displeasure. They constructed tombs of “ flat 
stones laid together with much care in which they placed costly jars 
and urns filled with food and wine.” This was done for their great 
men, and for the lesser ones they dug trenches filled in with stones 
and in which gourds of maize or wine were substituted for the 
pottery (24, v. 4). The Dorachos were brave, honest, and intelli- 
gent and, in common with all isthmian tribes, fearless of death. 
From 1674-1681 war was made on these Indians by the governor 
of Costa Rica as they had descended, robbed, and killed travelers on 
the road then much frequented from Panama to Guatemala. The 
Indians who survived the years of exterminative war were gathered 
into the missions of Bugaba, Boqueron, San Francisco de Dolega, 
and Gualace. 
We now come to the Guaymies, who still inhabit the mountains of 
the Serrania de Tabasana range with their interlying valleys and the 
plains of the Atlantic coast. These Indians live practically in a 
savage state, occasionally descending into the towns of Veraguas and 
Chiriqui, and are especially seen about Remedios. With the Tala- 
mancans of Costa Rica, of whom Gabb (36) has written so inter- 
estingly, the Guaymies are thought to be a remote branch of the 
Chibchas nation by both Deniker and Brinton.t| Many Chibchas 
words are found in their dialect and especially is their affinity 
shown by their burial customs, their metal work, and the lack of 
anything like permanent temples or homes among them. ‘To the 
ancestors of the Guaymies (or Guaimies) are attributed the treasures 
of the Chiriqui and Veraguas tombs, which bear a close resemblance 
to the art of the main stock of the Chibchas. Pinart has given the 
number of the Guaymies as 3,000, but Valdés puts it at “no less than 
6,000,” (5) though in his description of their customs (to be given 
here later) Valdes evidently draws much from Pinart’s information, 
judged by the fact that in Deniker practically the same material is 
given in part, and there is accredited to Pinart. Reference is here 
made to Pinart’s “ Chiriqui” which the writer could not obtain. 
Pinart says in a note in his “ Vocabulario Castellano-Guaymie ” 
«A number of tribes in the state of Panama were either filially connected or 
deeply influenced by outposts of the Chibchas nations. These are the Guaymies 
in Veraguas, who possessed the soil from ocean to ocean, and the Talamancans 
of Costa Rica (385). 
