608 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
Gathering the foregoing material together and eliminating the spurious 
Stephens list, which we have seen is Pokoman and not Chorti at all, we have the 
following Chorti vocabularies: (1) Galindo (1834), 51 words; (2) Ruano Suarez 
(1892), 1,500 words; (3) Peccorini (1909), 150 words. 
The foregoing data delimit the Chorti region very satisfactorily, except that 
they leave us entirely without definite information as to whether it extended over 
to the Motagua River and the coast, 1. ¢., including Quirigua; this northern limit 
is of some importance, because it is the boundary between the Chorti and the Chol, 
or Cholti, which we have to examine next. 
The Chol region has been the subject of much discussion and uncertainty, but 
I am sure the delimitation in the linguistic map in Stoll’s Ethnographie is closely 
accurate; its boundaries, however, also go over into Chiapas, which Stoll’s map does 
not include. The restriction of Chol to a small district around Golfo Dulce, as 
mapped in Thomas and Swanton, is unquestionably wrong. (See Thomas, IgI1, 
map.) 
Passing over the various abortive efforts at entry and pacification of this great 
region, stretching from Golfo Dulce to Laguna de ‘Términos and west of the Usu- 
macinta River, during the first century after the Spanish Conquest, we come with 
the year 1625 to an effort which, though equally fruitless in its direct objects, yet 
resulted in the first and only real foundation for our present study. In that year 
40 soldiers were sent under the alcalde of Verapaz to open a road to Laguna de 
Términos, with them going the Dominican, Francisco Moran; and in the same year 
possession in the King’s name was taken of 18 towns in the “ province of Manché,” 
or the eastern part of the above region. San Miguel is given as capital of chi 
province, and another of these 18 towns was San Lucas de Zalac de el Chol; 7 other 
towns are mentioned as added to these, not counting 19 other unreduced towns of 
the ‘“‘barbaros,”’ all of which are named, and one of which called Axiza was said 
to have 10,000 souls.!. By 1639, however, little of the reduction remained, and a 
number of new petitions were presented, including one by Padre Moran himself, 
and another, inspired by his representations, by Diego de Vera Ordonez de Villa- 
quiran, to whom was then conceded the task, with title of governor and captain- 
general of the new province, which was to be called “ Prospero (alias el Lacandon).” 
A long detailed relation of events up to this time was made in a printed report to 
the Council of the Indies by the Relator Leon Pinelo, only one copy of which, with 
the accompanying printed title issued to de Vera, is known to have survived. 
Among other things it mentions one printed and also one manuscript memorial 
on the subject, presented by Padre Moran to His Majesty in 1637; and also that 
Moran stated there were 100,000 souls, apparently referring, says Leon Pinelo, to 
Manché and Lacandon alone, while Diego de Cardenas gives the number as 500,000, 
referring probably to the entire unsubdued district. What seems beyond doubt, 
from the very scanty descriptions given of places like Puchutla, for example, is 
that the whole region must have been not only populous, but with a very consider- 
able status of culture. 
Padre Moran left compiled a libro de quartilla grande alto, which he col- 
lected from “many of the friars.” This contained a most excellent grammar, a 
Doctrina, and a fine vocabulary of some 5,000 words, and it was unquestionably 
extensively used by his successors, though the original has disappeared. 
By 1675 practically nothing of the work of pacification of the region seems to 
have survived. In that year the Dominican Provincial Gallegos set out with Padre 


1This is doubtless one of the many variants for Itza or Ahitza, the capital of the Itza nation from 1450 circa 
to 1697. (See Means, 1917, Appendix 1.) This settlement was located on an island in the Lake of Peten Itza and 
was conquered by Martin de Urstia in 1697. (See op. cit., pp. 179-185.) The Isagoge historico (p. 371) speaks of 
Cortés’s passage “por las montaitas del Ahiza.” 
