86 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 4 
Santiago is strictly a village, despite its numbers ; 
virtually a homogeneous settlement, probably pre- 
serving something of its pre-Columbian “street” pat- 
tern. Solola, on the other hand, though only about 
half as populous, is a town.1*8 Both are built upon 
extremely limited terraces, the latter being slightly 
larger. 
We may say that in the first instance the Santiago 
settlement concentration is conditioned by a natural 
advantage of site, which is superior to any other in 
the municipio; this fact depends also upon an ap- 
parent gregarious tendency of the Santiago Atitecos, 
for they could very well settle along the shores north 
of their village. In the case of Solola, cool climate 
and abundance of streams favor their intensive garden 
culture, and the administrative center affords employ- 
ment to many, in addition to the fact that the site is 
ideally suited for a town. Were it not for the first 
two factors, however, namely, vegetable production 
and Government employment, both of which came in 
with the Spaniards, the concentration would undoubt- 
edly be highly reduced, though there was a pre-Co- 
lumbian town (called by the Nahua “‘Tecpanatitlan,” 
and so designated at first by the Spaniards; see 
McBryde, 1933, p. 112). Solola was described as 
a “big town” as early as 1586 (Ponce, 1873, vol. 1, 
p. 442). The population about this time ‘was given 
as 1,300 in the Capotitlan manuscript (Anon., Ms. 
1579, p. 10, £. 109). 
From the classification presented in the present 
study, a “town” has a total population of more than 
1,000, with over 500 Ladinos (p. 16). The figures are 
arbitrary, but this definition appears to be generally 
applicable. Even if further study should find the 
average number to be different, the principle would 
still hold. Indians in thousands will not make a 
town, but rather a large village, which may or may 
not be closely knit; e. g., Santiago Atitlan, San 
Pedro la Laguna, San Francisco el Alto, or San 
Andrés Xectl. Given a nucleus of Ladinos, there 
123 Some interesting variations have appeared in the representation of 
towns on maps of Guatemala; e.g., the American Geographical Society 
Millionth Map (Ciudad Guatemala sheet), compared with the standard 
Urrutia map of Guatemala. Both were apparently based upon the pre- 
ceding census (1921). But Urrutia, a native Guatemalteco, seems to 
have followed the Government classification of centers, as aldea, pueblo, 
villa, ciudad. The Americans followed the usual system (the only one 
possible without exhaustive study of population composition), basing 
their size distinction upon total published population figures. Conse- 
quently, a large village such as Santiago Atitlan is represented as a 
larger “town” than Solola, a distinction being made with symbols, 
however, between their administrative importance. Urrutia calls the 
former a pueblo, like all the other Lake villages, and classes Solold as 
a villa (it was officially promoted to a ciudad rank on August 7, 1924, 
the year after his map was published, for no apparent reason, except 
perhaps the installation of an electric light plant that year). 
is, with a large total population, a good-sized Indian 
community having town characteristics, such as 
Totonicapan, and Momostenango.¥** Their indus- 
trial pursuits here account in large measure for this 
phenomenon, however. Crafts and trades of various 
sorts, particularly pottery making, wood and leather 
working, and cotton weaving in the former, and wool 
weaving in the latter, involving marketing as well as 
manufacture, encourage the growth of towns. 
THE SPANISH TOWN PATTERN 
The rectangular settlement pattern introduced by 
the Spaniards is almost universal, especially in the 
larger centers of population (maps 20, 21). Garcia 
Pelaez quotes Remesal who writes that pre-Colum- 
bian villages and towns “are not arranged by streets 
and wards as in Europe” and are widely dispersed, 
a village of 500 or less, which was small, occupying 
a “league of ground” (Garcia Pelaez, 1851-52, vol. 1, 
pp. 171-172). By 1579, in Lowland towns “care 
was taken to orient the streets north-south and east- 
west, although the houses were interspersed irregu- 
larly,” according to an early account (Anon., Ms. 
1579, p. 13, f. 111). If this was correct, errors were 
made in determining north, or else street alinements 
have changed considerably. Towns today are gen- 
erally rectangular, but true orientation of the streets 
is exceptional. It is mainly in the more favorable 
sites of the piedmont that a common approach is made 
to orientation.*° Site limitations often determine 
alinement. The main streets of Solola, for example, 
follow the axis of the shallow trough in the terrace 
upon which it is built. Low ridges both east and west 
of the town have thus far checked lateral expansion 
to a great extent; the more thickly settled portion of 
the town coincides perfectly with the gently sloping 
central terrace. (See map 21 for cultural and physi- 
cal details of the town of Solola, and pl. 10, a.) Other 
towns, like Solola, have been built to conform to 
14 The 1921 census gives an Indian “urban population’? in Momo- 
stenango of 9,685, which is probably too high. Tax reduces the figure 
to 300 actually ‘in town,’ yet with some 8,000 clustered about the 
center. According to my estimate, there are over 5,000 living in what 
might be called the ‘‘town,” if the limits are drawn to include all of the 
settlement nucleus. The concept of ‘town,” difficult to define in Guate- 
mala, is not comparable with that in the United States. Perhaps the 
only criteria distinguishing a town from a village would be the presence 
of some well-prepared streets and sidewalks, stores with varied stocks, 
and one or more hotels, 
25 There is usually a strong deviation toward magnetic north 
(NNE.). The “true-north” arrow is incorrectly drawn on the original 
edition of my 1932 traverse map of SololA (McBryde, 1933, opposite p. 
152) so that it indicates almost true orientation, whereas the north- 
south streets run approximately N. 4° W. to S. 4° E. This is corrected 
in the present edition (map 21). 
