18S1.] Uio [Brinton. 



Certainly tlie native writer of tlie Popol Vuli claims a common origin 

 with the ISTahuatl race. Like them he traces his descent from the mythical 

 seven caves, seven ravines or seven sons which are familiar in Aztec myth. 

 He quotes an ancient song which began with the words Karimcu, we see, 

 which ran like this : 



" Alas, in Tulan were we ruined, there we separated, there they re- 

 "maihed behind, our brothers, our kinsmen. We indeed have seen the 

 "sun, but they, where are they now, now that the day is breaking? 



"Thus did our ancestors chant to the priests, the Yaqui men. 



"Verily, the god named Tohil is the god of the Yaqui men, Yolcuat 

 "Quetzalcoat by name, when we separated in Tulan, in Zuiva. Thence 

 "indeed came we forth together; there was the common parent of our 

 "race whence we came. So said they one to another. 



" Then they called to remembjance their brothers, there, far off, behind 

 "them, the Yaqui men, where the day came, in Mexico, as it is now 

 "called." 



The "Yaqui men," yaqwi viiiak, was and still is the common term in 

 Kiche and Cakchiquel for the Aztecs ; yaqui itself being an adjective in 

 those dialects signifying polished, cultivated, civilized.* There was un- 

 doubtedly frequent commercial intercourse between the Aztec and neigh- 

 boring races, and among the descendants of the original seven brothers 

 were claimed to be such totally diverse races as the Otomis and Tarascos, 

 so that it is not surprising that the early Kiches in a measure accepted an 

 origin from the same prolific source. Tohil and Quetzalcoatl resemble each 

 other in vague outlines, and hence the scribe identified them just as Taci- 

 tus identified the Teutonic Thor with the Latin Vulcan. There is no real 

 similarity between the two. 



The name Chimalmat also appears in the Quetzalcoatl myth in the form 

 Chimalmatl. According to one account, she Avas the second wife of the 

 father of men, Iztac-mixcohuatl and the mother of Quetzalcoatl ; or she 

 was a virgin, and finding a cliaUMlmitl, a sacred green stone, swallowed 

 it, and becoming pregnant bore Quetzalcoatl ; or again she was the wife of 

 Camaxtli, god of hunting and fishing, and had by him five sons, one of 

 whom was Quetzalcoatl. f The name in Nahuatl is from cJiamalU, a shield, 

 and probably matlalin, dark green. We find her in the Popol Vuh as the 

 wife of Vukub Cakix, Seven Aras, the ara being the bird of brilliant 

 tropical plumage called in Aztec the Quetzal. Although her name can be 

 explained as a Kiche word, it is most probably a loan from Mexican 

 mytholog3^ 



The name tepeu which I have derived from a Maya root is found also in 



* The Yaqui tribe in Sonora has no connection witli this tradition, the identity 

 of names being accidental, and the meaning of the words different. Yaqui is 

 also an Aztec word meaning " departed or gone away to some other region," 

 emigi-ants (ido 6 partido para algnna parte, Molina, Vocabulurio Mexicano, s. v.). 



t These various myths are given in Toribio de Motilinia, Uistoria de los Indies 

 de Nueva Mpaua, EpistoLa Proimial, p. 10, and Geronimo de Meudieta, Historia 

 JEcclesiastica Indiana, Lib. ii, cap xxxiii. 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XIX. 109. 4c. PRINTED .TAX. 17, 1883. 



