89 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [puLL. 44 
Peralta (1: 720) says their seat was north of the Rio Barranca and 
southeast from the Rio Zapandi (or Tempisque), the river which 
flows south and enters the Gulf of Nicoya at its extreme northwestern 
point. But the statement of Fernandez given above includes the 
western peninsula, as does that of Brasseur de Bourbourg, mentioned 
in the first reference to the Orotina. Oviedo (1m, 111) says, ‘‘The 
Indians of Nicoya and Orosi are of the language of the Chorotegas.”’ 
This apparently includes the area now embraced in the district: of 
Guanacaste, which includes the peninsula, and is probably what Squier 
based his conclusion on, the word ‘‘Chorotegas’” being used here in a 
generic sense, and hence including the Orotina. Peralta says (1:806, 
note) that in Nicoya (the peninsula) the Orotinan language was spoken, 
as conjectured by Orozco y Berra, following Oviedo and Torque- 
mada. The data seem to justify, therefore, outlining the Orotinan 
area as on the accompanying map. 
It appears from a later paper by Peralta, however, that he includes 
as Orotinan territory the area now embraced in the district of Guana- 
caste as marked on the writer’s map. This paper was prepared by 
Peralta as part of his report as commissioner of Costa Rica tothe 
Columbian Historical Exposition at Madrid in 1892. Not having 
access to the original paper, the writer here quotes from the extract 
given by Doctor Brinton (5: 40-42), one of the commissioners of the 
United States to that exposition. As Peralta’s paper bears on the 
ethnography of the entire territory of Costa Rica, the portion 
relating to the ethnographic distribution is quoted in full for the 
purpose of further reference: 
On the shores of the Pacific, in the peninsula of Nicoya, in all that territory which 
now constitutes the province of Guanacaste, and embracing all the vicinity of the 
gulf of Nicoya to the point of Herradura, lived the Chorotegas or Mangues, divided 
into various tribes or chieftancies, feudataries of the Cacique of Nicoya, to wit, Diria, 
Cangen, Zapanci, Pococi, Paro, Orotina, and Chorotega, properly so called, in the 
valley of the Rio Grande. By the side of these dwelt the immigrant Nahoas, who 
carried this far the arts and traditions of the Aztecs, and the cultivation of cacao, and 
obtained a supremacy over the previous inhabitants. The Chorotegas spoke the 
language of the same name, or the Mangue, a branch, if not the trunk and origin, of 
the Chiapanec. . .. The Nahuas, whose most important colonies controlled the 
isthmus of Rivas between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific, were established in Nicoya 
and spoke the Mexican or Nahuatl language. 
A Mexican colony also existed in the valley of Telorio (valley of the Duy, or of the 
Mexicans) near the Bay del Almirante, and inhabited the island of Tojar, or Zorobaro 
(now of Columbus), and the towns of Chicaua, Moyaua, Quequexque, and Corotapa, 
on the mainland, this being the farthest eastward in Costa Rica, or in Central America, 
to which the Nahuas reached, so far as existing evidence proves. 
Between the Lake of Nicaragua and the gulf of Nicoya, to the east of the volcano 
of Orosi and the river Tempisque, near longitude 85° west of Greenwich, dwelt the mys- 
terious nation of the Corobicies, or Corbesies, ancestors of the existing Guatusos. 
To the east of the same meridian were the Votos, occupying the southern shores of 
the Rio San Juan to the valley of the Sarapiqui. 
