222 MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



are now greatly reduced, though still occupying nearly the same territory as 

 when Alvarado first attempted to subdue them. In certain districts, notably in 

 that of Totonicapam, they still energetically resist the intrusion of the Spanish 

 tongue, which, however, as the ofiicidl language, cannot fail, sooner or later, to 

 prevail in the towns, if not in the rural districts. The Quiche linguistic domain 

 comprises especial!}' the region of the Quezaltenango and Totonicapam Altos ; 

 but it also extends north and north-east towards the upper Usuraacinta and 

 Motagua basins, while southwards it reaches the sea along the Pacific slope of the 

 main range. For over sixty miles it holds the seaboard south of Retalulheu and 

 Mazatenango. Quiche, the language of the old rulers of the land, is one of the 

 few American idioms which possess, if not a literature, at least some original 

 documents. The Popol- Vuh, or " Book of History," written by an unknown 

 native soon after the conquest, to replace another national history which had been 

 lost, possesses great value for the study of Central American myths and legends. 

 It was translated into Spanish at the beginning of the eighteenth century by the 

 Dominican friar, Ximenes, and afterwards edited, with a French translation, by 

 Brasseur de Bourbourg. 



Cakchiquel, which is spoken on the plateau from Solola to Chimaltenango and 

 Antigua, that is, in the zone comprised between the Quiche and Pokoman domains, 

 is, like Quiche, also a literary language. Brasseur de Bourbourg has described a 

 document containing the history of the Cakchiquel nation from the creation of 

 the world, and in several passages harmonising with the Fopol- Vuh. Cakchiquel, 

 Quiche, and Tzutujil, which last is spoken in a small enclave south of Lake Atit- 

 lan, are described by Spanish grammarians as the " three metropolitan languages," 

 because each was at one time a court idiom current in a royal residence. All 

 closel}'' resemble each other, while the Mem, or Mamé, differs greatly from Quiche, 

 although also belonging to the same linguistic stock. This language of " Stam- 

 merers," as it was called by the Quiches and Oakchiquels, because of the difficulty 

 they had in understanding it, prevails throughout all the western districts of 

 Huehuetenango and San Marcos, as well as in the Mexican provinces of Soconusco 

 and Chiapas ; it forms a distinct group with Ixil, Aguacatan, and perhaps some 

 other dialects spoken by the little-known tribes of the upper Usumacinta basin. 



Nearly all the native languages current within the limits of Guatemala belong 

 to the Maya stock. Besides those already mentioned, almost the only other 

 exception is the Carib, which still survives amongst the fishers and woodmen, who 

 are descended from the West Indian Caribs removed by the English to the main- 

 land at the close of the last century. Stoll has endeavoured to draw up a 

 genealogical tree of the Maya languages, which is intended to show the order of 

 succession in which the various members branched off from the parent stem The 

 Huaxtecan of A^era Cruz would appear to have become first detached, and it has 

 diverged all the more that to the modifications introduced by time have been 

 added those derived from a totally different environment surrounded by popula- 

 tions of totally distinct speech and usages. Then the parent stem split into the 

 two great Maya and Quiche divisions, the former subsequently throwing off the 



