Farther north the plains and uplands continued to be inhabited by a multitude of wild tribes speaking an unknown number of stock languages, and thus presenting a chaos of ethnical and linguistic elements comparable to that which prevails along the north-west coast. Of these rude populations one of the most widespread are the Otomi of the central region, noted for the monosyllabic tendencies of their language, which Najera, a native grammarian, has on this ground compared with Chinese, from which, however, it is fundamentally distinct. Still more primitive are the Seri Indians of Tiburon island in the Gulf of California and the adjacent mainland, who were visited in 1895 by W. J. McGee, and found to be probably more isolated and savage than any other tribe remaining on the North American Continent. They hunt, fish, and collect vegetable food, and most of their food is eaten raw, they have no domestic animals save dogs, they are totally without agriculture, and their industrial arts are few and rude. They use the bow and arrow but have no knife. Their houses are flimsy huts. They make pottery and rafts of canes. The Seri are loosely organised in a number of exogamic, matrilineal, totemic clans. Mother-right obtains to a greater extent perhaps than in any other people. At marriage the husband becomes a privileged guest in the wife's mother's household, and it is only in the chase or on the war-path that men take an important place. Polygyny prevails. The most conspicuous ceremony is the girls' puberty feast. The dead are buried in a contracted position. "The strongest tribal characteristic is implacable animosity towards aliens.... In their estimation the brightest virtue is the shedding of alien blood, while the blackest crime in their calendar is alien conjugal union[897]."
Early Man in Yucatan.
It is noteworthy that but few traces of such savagery have yet been discovered in Yucatan. The investigations of Henry Mercer[898] in this region lend strong support to Förstemann's views regarding the early Huaxtecan migrations and the general southward spread of Maya culture from the Mexican table-land. Nearly thirty caves examined by this explorer failed to yield any remains either of the mastodon, mammoth, and horse, or of early man, elsewhere so often associated with these animals. Hence Mercer infers that the Mayas reached Yucatan already in an advanced state of culture, which remained unchanged till the conquest. In the caves were found great quantities of good pottery, generally well baked and of symmetrical form, the oldest quite as good as the latest where they occur in stratified beds, showing no progress anywhere.
The caves of Loltun (Yucatan) and Copan (Honduras), examined by E. H. Thompson and G. Byron-Gordon, yielded pre-Mayan débris from the deep strata. Perhaps this very ancient population was of the same race as the little known tribes still living in the forests of Honduras and San Salvador[899].
The Maya to-day.
Since the conquest the Aztecs, and other cultured nations of Anahuac, have yielded to European influences to a far greater extent than the Maya-Quiché of Yucatan and Guatemala. In the city of Mexico the Nahuatl tongue has almost died out, and this place has long been a leading centre of Spanish arts and letters[900]; yet the Mexicans yearly celebrate a feast in memory of their great ancestors who died in defence of their country[901]. But Merida, standing on the site of the ancient Ti-hoó, has almost again become a Maya town, where the white settlers themselves have been largely assimilated in speech and usages to the natives. The very streets are still indicated by the carved images of the hawk, flamingo, or other tutelar deities, while the houses of the suburbs continue to be built in the old Maya style, two or three feet above the street level, with a walled porch and stone bench running round the enclosure.
One reason for this remarkable contrast may be that the Nahua culture, as above seen, was to a great extent borrowed in relatively recent times, whereas the Maya civilisation is now shown to date from the epoch of the Tolan and Cholulan pyramid-builders. Hence the former yielded to the first shock, while the latter still persists to some extent in Yucatan. Here about 1000 A.D. the cities of Chichen-Itza, Uxmal and Mayapan formed a confederacy in which each was to share equally in the government of the country. Under the peaceful conditions of the next two centuries followed the second and last great Maya epoch, the Age of Architecture, as it has been termed, as opposed to the first epoch, the Age of Sculpture, from the second to the sixth century A.D. During this earlier epoch flourished the great cities of the south, Palenque, Quirigua, Copan, and others[902]. Despite their more gentle disposition, as expressed in the softer and almost feminine lines of their features, the Mayas held out more valiantly than the Aztecs against the Spaniards, and a section of the nation occupying a strip of territory between Yucatan and British Honduras, still maintains its independence. The "barbarians," as the inhabitants of this district are called, would appear to be scarcely less civilised than their neighbours, although they have forgotten the teachings of the padres, and transformed the Catholic churches to wayside inns. Even as it is the descendants of the Spaniards have to a great extent forgotten their mother-tongue, and Maya-Quiché dialects are almost everywhere current except in the Campeachy district. Those also who call themselves Catholics preserve and practise many of the old rites. After burial the track from the grave to the house is carefully chalked, so that the soul of the departed may know the way back when the time comes to enter the body of some new-born babe. The descendants of the national astrologers everywhere pursue their arts, determining events, forecasting the harvests and so on by the conjunctions of the stars, and every village has its native "Zadkiel" who reads the future in the ubiquitous crystal globe. Even certain priests continue to celebrate the "Field Mass," at which a cock is sacrificed to the Mayan Aesculapius, with invocations to the Trinity and their associates, the four genii of the rain and crops. "These tutelar deities, however, have taken Christian names, the Red, or God of the East, having become St Dominic; the White, or God of the North, St Gabriel; the Black, or God of the West, St James; and the 'Yellow Goddess' of the South, Mary Magdalene[903]."
Transitions from North to South America.
To the observer passing from the northern to the southern division of the New World no marked contrasts are at first perceptible, either in the physical appearance, or in the social condition of the aborigines. The substantial uniformity, which in these respects prevails from the Arctic to the Austral waters, is in fact well illustrated by the comparatively slight differences presented by the primitive populations dwelling north and south of the Isthmus of Panama.