110 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY Ibull.2S 



were known/' My suspicion turns to Tabasco or the neighboring- 

 Chiapas. In ancient times the former was a famous commercial cen- 

 ter, and the industrial centers can not have been far from there. 



If we sum up what the authentic discoveries from the territory of 

 Vera Paz, the lands of Qu'ekchi and Pokonchi, teach us, it follows with 

 certainty from the abundance and variet}^ of objects and from their 

 artistic conception and peculiar manner of decoration that the ancient 

 inhabitants of these regions were a people of advanced civilization, 

 and that their culture was of the same peculiar stamp to be met with 

 in the monuments of Copan and Quirigua, although in an entirely dif- 

 ferent degree of grandeur. At the same time it seems that we must 

 conclude from various evidences that the active intercourse existing 

 between Laguna de Terminos and Honduras in ancient times, to which 

 doubtless the above-named places owed their prosperity, also made 

 itself felt in the valleys of Vera Paz by influencing their progress 

 and by stinmlating and developing them. 



It would be a grateful task to determine whether for the other Maya 

 tribes of GuatemaUi, who were especially prominent in its political 

 development, the Quiche and Cakchiquel, the Mame in the north, the 

 Pokomam in the south, a similar close connection with those brilliant 

 centers of Maya culture can be determined, and, on the other hand, to 

 make plain the possible differences which existed. Unfortunately, 1 

 have not the material to do so. I can only sa}^ this, that the few origi- 

 nals and copies from those regions with which I am familiar are in fact 

 of a different character, and have not the artistic perfection which 

 we see in the finds from Vera Paz. Circular bowls, 6 cm. deep and 

 16 cm. in diameter, are characteristic of Amatitlan, a locality in the 

 Pokomam territory. These vessels have a broad, flat, turned-over 

 rim, and their outer surface has two or three rows of long teeth (see 

 c, figure 25). A toothed vessel of another form somewhat higher and 

 smaller, and with rather long feet, was obtained by Consul-General 

 Sarg in Nebah — that is, in the Ixil (Mame) territory. Shoe vessels, 

 which are properly called xe lahuh, "foot of the ten", seem to be 

 peculiar to the place called Quetzaltenango, in the Quiche territory; 

 J, figure 25, is a copy of one of these vessels. This differs from the 

 familiar shoe vessels of Nicaragua chiefly in the pointed tip. 



1 know of a few beautiful potter}^ heads and a fragment of a finely 

 smoothed vessel from Saculeu, which is in the department of Huehue- 

 tenango, and thus belongs also to the Mame territory. On these are 

 seen the signs reproduced in a, figure 26. The ornament on the left 

 side, an eye with a double (upper and lower) eyebrow, also appears 



"Toad figures with the same indenterl warts on the sides of the neck as shown in the vessel (a, fig. 

 24), I have also seen in large vessels from Yucatan and in little pottery pipes of the Strebel collec- 

 tion which came from the region south of the city of Vera Cruz, on the boundary of Mistequilla, where 

 excavations have recently been begun by him. 



