80 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull.28 



seventeenth century in the savannas north of the Paso San Andres, 

 neig-hhors of the Ah Itza, or Itzaex. The Maya word queh, ''deer", 

 is contained in the name; it is ahiiost a direct translation of the Mexi- 

 can mazateca, or mazatlan. That we have to do with a race closely 

 akin to the Maya also appears from the two names of cities, already men- 

 tioned, which Cortes left us. Tiac would mean in Maya "city of the 

 tortoise" and Yasuncabil somethino- like " o-reen earth". ^'^ The fortifi- 

 cations skillfully constructed by the inhabitants of this territory prove 

 that they had to protect themselves against constant hostile disturb- 

 ances. Bernal Diaz believes that he heard the word "Lacantun" used 

 as the name of these enemies. It will, however, remain undecided 

 whether this name, which was familiar in the place where he wrote, 

 did not come into his mind or to his pen by error The description of 

 the fortilied cit}' of the Mazateca in the middle of a lagoon reminds 

 one very strongly of the city built on a rock in the Laguna del 

 Lacandon, which the expedition of Licenciado Pedro Ramirez de 

 Quinones conquered and destroj^ed.^ 



There still remain the ancient inhabitants of the mountains to the 

 south and above the road traveled by Cortes. Those to the west 

 were designated the Lacandons, and those in the country about the 

 Rio de la Pasion, to the east, were called Chols. 



Lacandon is more a geographic than an ethnographic designation. 

 And, if we are to believe Doctor Berendt,' at least two dilierent races 

 must be included under this name even to-day. On the east are the 

 Maya-speaking Lacandons, who live scattered on the lower Rio de la 

 Pasion, and also west of the Usumacinta, on the Lacan ha, the river 

 of Lacan, that is, the Rio Lacandon, and on the west the Lacandons 

 speaking the Putum, or Choi, language, whose chief locations are said 

 to be found in Pet ha, in Chiapas. This account, which was repeated 

 by both Stoll and Sapper in earlier articles, is now contradicted by 

 Doctor Sapper, who recently traveled through the boundary region 

 between Guatemala and Chiapas. He informed me by letter that he 

 had met Mayas speaking Lacandon on the road from Tenosique to 

 Ococingo, and that there were no western Lacandons speaking Choi, 

 and that the ancient Lacandons, who were for a long time the terror 

 of the Spanish settlements in Chiapas, Guatemala, and on the lower 

 Usumacinta, spoke, in part at least, the Maya proper, as appears from 

 a few words which have come down to us. Against these Lacandons 

 a succession of costly campaigns was made, almost entirely in vain. 

 Thus the Lacandons who met the column of Melchior Rodriguez, in 

 1695, when it was advancing from Itzatan toward the north and 



alt is interesting that the name which Gomara mentions for the second of these two cities, Xuuca 

 Cahitl, is doubtless, at least in its first part, a translation into Mexican, for xoxouhca in Mexican 

 means the same as the Maya yax, that is, "green ". 



'' Villastitierre y Sotoumyor, v. 1, chap. 12. 



cBerendt, Report of Explorations in Central America, 1867, p. 415. 



