FEWKEs] THE NAME BORINQUEN 77 



nor ii. langTiage (en la lenyua). In this diary, as given l)y Las Casas, 

 he sa\-s that the Indian women taught the Spaniards to carry on trade 

 in their language, which is "one in all those islands (In qual es toda 

 una en todas estas islas de India)," referring, of course, only to those 

 discovered on the first voyage. 



We are told that the Catalan priest Fray Ramon Pane spoke one of 

 the Haitian dialects, and dou')tless other priests were familiar with dif- 

 ferent ones; hence it is a matter of surprise that no written specimen of 

 the language is extant — not even a jDaternoster or a printed page. 

 The early missionaries have left us no catechism or vocabularies such 

 as are valuable aids in the study of the aboriginal languages of Mexico. 

 The speech of prehistoric Porto Kico has passed out of practical use 

 without adequate record. While there is no person in the West Indies 

 who can now speak the Tainan language, there is a possibility of 

 gathering a fair vocabulary of this lost tongue, and thus inc-reasing 

 our knowledge of the general structure of the ancient West Indian 

 language, fi-om three sources: (1) Antillean words which occur in the 

 earlv histories of the islands, mostly names of caciques and of plants, 

 animals, and fhe like; (2) geographical place names, of which there 

 are many still in use, and others recorded on ancient maps" and 

 charts; (3) substantives and phrases of Indian origin that still survive 

 in folklore or the speech of natives. All three of these sources have 

 been used to a limited extent by native historians, by Seiior Coll y 

 Toste* and others in Porto Rico and l)y Bachiller y Morales'' in Cuba. 

 We have one or two vocabularies, like that of Brasseur de Bourbourg, 

 Brinton's Arawak Language of Guiana, and works, like that of Spinosa, 

 containing lists of exotic words, some of which are Indian survivals, 

 are of special value. When all the Antillean words gathered by these 

 methods are united in a vocabulary its size will astonish the linguist, 

 and b}' the use of such a list it may be possible to detect some of the 

 more important principles in the structure of the language. It is not 

 too much to hope that some manuscripts or some printed paternosters 

 or translations of church prayers, now hidden away in old Spanish 

 libraries or monasteries, may be brought to light in the course of 

 research, stinuilating a new interest in the linguistics of the Autillean 

 race. 



The language of ancient Borin(|uen was the same, with dialectic 

 variations, as the Tainan spoken in Haiti and Cuba, but it had many 



a For instance. Juan de la Cosa's map on oxhide, in JIadrid. The author has nsert for his study "i 

 this map the facsimile in color, published in 1S92, on the occasion of the Historical Exposiiion in 

 JIadrid. The original is now in the Museo Naval at Madrid. Cosa's map, which has been uilen 

 republished, is valuable for Indian names of the islands. See the chapters headed ".Tuan de laCosa'" 

 and " El Mapa de Juan de la Cosa," in Coll y Tostc's Colon en Puerto Rico. Padre Nazario, in an 

 article entitled "El Mapa Mundi de Juan de la Cosa," concludes that the map is apocryphal and not 

 the work of Co.sa. 



''CayetanoCoU y Toste, Colon en Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, 1894. This wori; contains an impor- 

 tant discussion of the letter of Doctor Chanca, with a reprint of the same. 



I' Cuba I'rimitiva, 2d ed., Habana, 1883; see also Vail y Spinosa, Compendio du la Xonsina. Puerto 

 Rico, IssT. 



