2 
1831.) 347 (Brinton, 
INTRODUCTION, 
$I. The Cakchiquel Nation. 
The Cakchiquel language was, and continues to be, spoken by the na- 
tives in the vicinity of the city of Guatemala. It is a dialect of the Maya 
group of languages, and is very closely related to the Kiche and Tzutuhil 
dialects, and more remotely to the Chorti, Mam, Pokomam, Ixil, Pokon- 
chi and Kekchi, all yet-extant in that part of Central America. 
At the time of the Conquest, the Jakchiquels were divided into two 
States under the senior and junior branches of the same reigning house. 
The capital of the elder branch was called Putinamit, The City, par ea- 
cellence, or Ivimehe, the name of a tree, a species of Brosimium, fam. Arto- 
carpeacee, but it received from the Aztec invaders the name Tecpan 
Guatemala, The Royal House of Guatemala, by which it is usually en- 
tered on modern maps. The junior branch had its seat at Zolola, sit- 
uate ona lofty summit north of Lake Atitlan, a site called by 
the Aztecs, Tecpun Atitlan, the Royal House of Atitlan.* The whole of 
this district is elevated, and the climate temperate; but there were also a 
few Cakchiquel colonies in. the hot lands near the Pacific Coast, as at Patu- 
lul, Cozumelguapam (celebrated for the inscribed slabs lately discovered 
there) and other places. Here they were in immediate contact with the 
Pipiles, of Aztec descent, and speaking a slightly corrupted Nahuatl 
dialect. 
As the city of Guatemala was founded in the midst of a Cakchiquel- 
Speaking population, this language early attracted the attention of the 
missionaries. The first bishop, Francisco Marroquin, appointed to the See 
in 1584, was himself an earnest student of the tongue, and secured the 
publication of a doctrinal work in it. When in 1678 the University of 
Guatemala was formally founded, a chair of the Cakchiquel language was 
created, the first occupant of which was Fr. José Senoyo, a Dominican. 
In 1743 Guatemala was raised to the dignity of an Archbishopric, and 
thereafter it was customary to call the Cakchiquel “the metropolitan 
tongue,”’ la lengua metropolitana, or la lengua Guatemalteca. It was regu- 
larly taught in the University until the dissolution of the political depend- 
ence of Guatemala on the Spanish Crown (1822), since which event, I be: 
*¥For the full explanation of these and other Nahuatl names found in Guate- 
mala, see Buschmann, Ueber die Aztekischen Orisnamen, ?°VIIT, 
