610 THE INSCRIPTIONS AT COPAN. 
then the Confessionario at Tzalac in the east, in 1685; and finally the Vocabulario, 
dated at Dolores in the west, in 1695; and yet nearly the whole volume being derived 
from the libro grande of Padre Moran, doubtless written some 60 years before. 
For further Cholti linguistic material we have a Chol vocabulary of some 450 
words, by Juan Jossef de la Fuente Albores, dated “Casa y Curato de VS, Tila y 
Enero 26, 1789.” Tila appears to be the name of the place; this is printed by Ferraz, 
in Lenguas Indigenas de Centro América, 1892.’ 
Next we have the Berendt-Rockstroh comparative word-list of some 600 
words, printed by Stoll,? which is apparently from the western or Usumacinta 
district. In this connection Stoll says the Choles are now left only in five villages 
in the Department of Palenque—Palenque, Sabana, Salto de Agua, Tumbala, and 
Tila. Berendt speaks of the Usumacinta Lacandéns as reduced to a remnant near 
the Rio de la Pasion, and in a passage of doubtful significance seems to distinguish 
an eastern from a western branch, speaking different languages, one being Putum 
or Chol; he also speaks of the peaceful character of the eastern branch and the war- 
like character of the western branch. Finally we have a list of 100 words taken 
down for me in 1915, at Salto de Agua, near Ocosingo. 
The foregoing Cholti sources may be summarized as follows: (1) Padre 
Moran (1625-1695), 5,000 words; (2) Jossef de la Fuente Albores (1789), 450 
words; (3) the Berendt-Rockstroh List, 600 words; (4) the Gates List (1915), 
100 words. 
The foregoing is our material for the study of Cholti-Chorti, so far as known 
to me; and from its study we reach the following conclusions: 
First, and most important, Cholti and Chorti constitute but one language, 
with but a single distinction, to be discussed below; and the two combined almost 
constitute a branch to itself among the Mayance tongues, stretching from the 
Sensenti Valley in Honduras, including Copan and Quirigua, through the tierra 
caliente north of the Guatemalan highlands, a stretch of country some 40 leagues 
broad, quite to Ocosingo and Palenque, the Tulha and Nachan respectively of 
Ordonez. It is bounded on the south by the three southern Mayance branches, the 
Pokom, the Quiché, and the Mame, on the north by the Yucatecan Maya, and on 
the west by the Tzental district. Its closest affiliation is with the last; and it must 
either be treated as a separate branch altogether or as part of the Tzental or 
Chiapan branch. 
The ending tz in Cholti means mouth, speech, and reappears as chi, with this 
same value in Kekchi, Pokonchi, and Cakchiquelchi; the word appears as chi in 
Maya and in the Pokom and Quiché branches, and as ?z in all the dialects of the 
Tzental group, and.as ¢zi in the Mame-Ixil, except that in the Jacalteca and Chuje, 
on the northern Mame border, 7. ¢., nearest the Cholti (see fig. 91, 4e and 4f), it is 
again ¢1. The authority for the latter is Stoll in his treatise on the Ixil, but it is 
also confirmed by word-lists for Chuje and Tohoabal or Chanabal, in my own 
possession. (A Cholti & frequently becomes a Maya t; t, ch; ch, c; and c, k’.) 
Chol means farm or milpa, and is the same as Maya col; thus the word is given in 
the Moran manuscript, which begins, Arte de lengua Eholti, 6 lengua de Milperos. 
And the Moran vocabulary also defines two other words, which clear away two 
other long-standing linguistic confusions. Putun is given as manso, peaceable, and 
so exactly applies to the peaceful eastern Choles on their milpas, whence the term 
Putum, which in time was corrupted by copyists to Puctune and Punctunc, and 
possibly survives to- day 1 in the modern Poctun, a village of eastern Petén. And 
quelen 1 is defined as meaning hombre fuerte, strong man (vir, varén), whence its appli- 
cation to the warlike western people, in exactly the same way as we find the corre- 

1See Fernandez, 1892, pp. 43-48. *Stoll, 1884, pp. 45-70. 
