HARTMAN: ARCHEOLOGICAL RESEARCH § ON THE PACIFIC COAST OF COSTA RICA 9 
them, and still others he took because they pleased him and in order to leave many 
children. As to deflowering the virgins, he said, that he simply did it in order to 
do a favor to them and their parents, for immediately the other Indians were more 
willing to marry them. To all this I replied, what seemed best to me, giving him 
to understand his error, and how all this was a very graye sin, and it was not the 
work of a Christian, but of an unbeliever, and he accepted what I told him and said 
that I gave him good advice and that he would improve little by little. But in 
fact his name corresponded to his works and his works to his name Nambi, which, 
as I have said, signifies ‘dog.’”’ 
The above brief extracts contain in the main almost all the meager ethnological 
information regarding the early inhabitants of Nicoya, which the first historians of 
these parts of Costa Rica have furnished us. 
As the few aborigines of pure, or almost pure, Indian blood, who still survive 
on the peninsula and near the pueblos of Nicoya and Matamboro have been almost 
completely absorbed by the mixed Spanish population, and have lost nearly all 
their primitive customs and ideas, even their language, the student of their history 
is now limited almost exclusively to the study of the objects hidden in the burial- 
grounds and mounds. 
The language has long since been practically extinct in these parts. During my 
sojourn on the peninsula in 1897 I obtained, however, from one of the older Indians 
in the pueblo of Nicoya by the name of Martin Luz, then a man apparently about 
sixty years old, a few words of salutation, the only ones he could recall. His grand- 
parents, who died ata very old age had still spoken the language when he was a 
young boy, and he informed me that a priest in the pueblo, whose name he could 
not remember, had made a vocabulary of the idiom. The native words noted down 
with the translations, as understood and given me by this Indian were: “ Ka-pe- 
manche,” buenos dias, which salutation always was answered with the expression 
“ K4-pe-hue-jo,” “Su-su-mt-rio,” como estémos? ‘“ Ni-mun-gis pa-ni-ki,” como esta la 
familia? “Sid,” Adios! Other words and expressions can probably still be had 
from old Indians in these parts, but time never allowed me to make further inquiries 
in regard to the matter. 
II. Previous InvesTiGATIons oN THE PEnrnsuLA or Nicoya. 
The first archeological material from the peninsula of Nicoya, procured by any 
scientific institution, consisted of a number of objects, which were included in the 
general Costa Rican collection of antiquities, consisting of about one thousand speci- 
mens, which by purchases from natives was brought together by the German Consul 
