1869.] ^ [Brinton. 



the tribes native in Cuba and Haiti, as well as tbose on the Bahamas, 

 and those resident on the lesser Antilles before the arrival of the Caribs 

 were Arrowacks, and came from South America. 



The most important dialects of the Maya are the Yucatecan, the Qui- 

 che, the Cakchiquel, the Tzendal, the Pokonchi, the Huastecan and the 

 Zahlopahkap. They are as closely allied one with another as the Ro- 

 manic tongues of modern Europe, and have many points in common 

 which give them peculiar interest, in fact the very highest interest, 

 among American aboriginal languages. 



Not merely were they the dialects of the most cultivated branch of all 

 the red race, from wliicli indeed the civilization of the whole Northern 

 Continent probably proceeded, but they exhibit certain linguistic traits, 

 allying them strangely to the more perfected tongues of the Old World. 

 So strong are these resemblances that of recent writers Brasseur and 

 Bastian both incline to hold them akin to the Aryan family, and possibly 

 largely influenced by Scandinavian immigration in the eleventh century. 

 This however is a baseless hypothesis. ' 



The traits referred to are : 1st. Their less marked polysynthetic struc- 

 ture, approaching at times to a plainly inflectional character ; 2d. Their 

 harmonic repetition of vowels like that in Scythian tongues, the suffixes 

 added to change the grammatica,l character of words often varying their 

 vowel to agree Avith that in the terminal syllable of the root ; 3rd. The 

 pronominal affixes of the verbs, which are added to the verbal root to 

 express the relation of the action, and form a regular conjugation pre- 

 cisely as was the case in the primitive Aryan tongue ; 4th. The genesis 

 of the pronomis, which as recently carefully investigated by M. H. de 

 Charency has disclosed laws of grovv^th of very general interest. 



In these languages also, is found the only native x\merican literature. 

 The Mayas used a phonetic alphabet as well as ideographic writing, and 

 thvis preserved their chronicles and traditions for many centuries anterior 

 to the discovery. At the Conquest, their chief literary monument, called 

 the Book of the Mats («. e. of the nobles, who sat on mats while the com- 

 mon people occupied the floors) , the Popol Vuh, was written in Roman 

 Characters in the Quiche dialect. This with several other similar works 

 has been published in the original and with translations in Spanish and 

 French. 



As the Maya group may thus be considered the key to the civilization, the 

 mythology, the literature, and earliest possible history of the red race, it 

 is most desirable that any valuable manuscripts which throw light upon it 

 shall be published. Two such exist in the Library of the American Phi- 

 losophical Society, both short, both of the highest value, both unique 

 and entirely unknown to scholars. Ozie of these is a grammar covering 

 54 small 4to pages of the Cakchiquel dialect, the other still shorter, em- 

 braced on 33 small pages, and is the only existing grammar of the Choi 

 or Putum dialect, spoken by the Lacandones, among the mountains of Vera 



