APPENDIX XII. 
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SEVERAL BRANCHES OF THE MAYANCE! 
LINGUISTIC STOCK. 
WILLriaM GaTESs. 

In the following pages I have endeavored to set forth three points, as follows: 
(1) To indicate the probable nature of the tongue spoken at Copan during tke 
Old Empire, based upon all the evidence now available, including much new unpub- 
lished material in my own collection of Mayance manuscripts and rare, if not 
unique, copies of early published grammars, texts, doctrinas, reports, and the like. 
(2) To establish by means of geographical, phonological, grammatical and 
vocabulary comparisons, the proper relation of that language to the other members 
of the Mayance linguistic stock. 
(3) To collate briefly this evidence with the historical and chronological data 
worked out by Morley, the stylistic data accumulated by Spinden, and certain 
native traditional and historical data as yet only partly published. 
In figure g1 the distribution of the several Mayance linguistic branches is 
shown. This map is based upon Stoll’s ethnographic map of Guatemala? and 
Thomas’s linguistic map of Mexico and Central America,’ together with certain 
emendations of my own, indicated by unpublished material in my collection. 
The most important new contribution to the subject brought out by this 
study is the proof of the essential unity of the Cholti and the Chorti dialects as 
members of the same linguistic branch, a condition absolutely demanded by the 
archeological evidence, but one which heretofore it has been impossible to admit 
on the linguistic side, because of the incorrect filiation of the Chorti with the Pokom 
group through Stephens’s curious error in 1839, when he collected 21 Pokoman 
words from a Pokoman Indian in Chorti territory, 1. e., at Zacapa. 
On the basis of this word-list, Stoll later filated Chorti with the Pokom 
branch, thereby creating a gap between the archzologic and linguistic evidence 
which it has been impossible to account for. The true position of the Chorti, 7. ¢., 
filiated with the Cholti, however, clears up this discrepancy and for the first time 
brings these two lines of evidence into agreement with each other. 
Our earliest information as to the language spoken in the vicinity of Copan 
comes from Palacio (1576), who after recounting the tradition that people from 
Yucatan had anciently conquered the provinces of Ayajal (probably Tayasal), 
Lacandon, Verapaz, Chiquimula, and Copan, adds that “‘it is certain that the Apay 
language, which is spoken here, is current and understood in Yucatan and the 
aforesaid provinces.” 
In the name Apay we probably have the same as in Payaquf, given in Jsagoge* 
as applying to the Corregimiento of Chiquimula, “in which are the edifices of 
Copan.” The authority here is a manuscript probably quoted in the unpublished 
part of Fuentes, but which I have not by me while writing, to verify. The great 
Balam Quiché, ninth king of Utatlan, is there given as the first king of those of 


1Gates uses the term “ Mayance” to designate the entire family of Maya dialects, drawing his analogy from 
the use of the word Romance in European linguistics to indicate the modern representatives of the old Roman 
or Latin linguistic stock. However, he still follows the general usage in speaking of “the Maya civilization, Maya 
art,” etc. 
2See Stoll, 1884, map. 3See Thomas, 1911, map. 4See Isagoge historico, 1892, p. 348. 
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