In that same year, 1874, Dr. Berendt collected the last obtainable fragments of the Mangue. In his (printed) lecture before the American Geographical Society in 1876, he thus describes his efforts in this direction, and at the same time points out the localities where the Mangue speaking populations were located when they first came to the knowledge of the invading whites:—
“The Spaniards on entering the present State of Nicaragua from Nicoya bay, and then marching through the country, came into contact first with the southern section of the Chorotegas or Mangues, as they were also called; then with a Nahuatl tribe, whose capital and king are mentioned as bearing the name of Nicarao; and after these again with Chorotegas or Mangues, who, however, did not occupy the whole tract of land up to the Bay of Fonseca, but were again separated from the Chorotegas on the shores of that bay by another foreign tribe called Maribios. Thus we obtain the three sections into which the Chorotegas of Nicaragua were divided at the time of the Conquest. Now, their language seemed to me an object worthy of having some special attention bestowed upon it—not so much for its own sake, but in order that a better understanding might be arrived at of the ethnological features of Nicaragua, which, on account of an insufficient acquaintance with its actual condition as well as with the early writers, and of the rather precarious speculations and conjectures of modern authors based upon such scanty knowledge, have become greatly confused. Having studied the Chapanecan language on a former expedition, and wishing to compare it with the Chorotegan, I visited Nicaragua in the year 1874. I found that the Indian population near the Nicoya and the Fonseca bays had entirely disappeared, and in both districts only met with some local names belonging to the Chorotegan language. In the third district also, where descendants of the old stock are still living in twelve villages around the lakes of Masaya and Apoyo, I was informed that no other vestiges of the old idiom were left, the inhabitants speaking exclusively the Spanish language. I had, however, the good luck to ferret out some old people who still remembered words and phrases they had heard in their childhood; and I was enabled to collect material sufficient to convince myself and others of the identity of this Mangue or Chorotegan idiom with the Chapaneco language of Mexico. I was not a moment too early in obtaining this information, for the greater number of my informants died while I was staying in the country. I still hope that with the knowledge of the Chorotegan thus gained in Nicaragua and Chiapas, it may be possible to trace their history and descent backwards to one of the nations that were living in Anahuac in the earliest times of which our records speak.”
The materials were never published by Dr. Berendt, nor, indeed, did the many other projects which occupied him allow him the leisure to collate and arrange them. I have taken them from his original notes, often in pencil and not always perfectly legible. But I believe those here offered can be depended upon as accurate, and have special value as the sole remaining vestiges of an idiom now wholly extinct.
Synonyms. It will be seen that Berendt speaks of this people as the “Chorotegas or Mangues.” I have given the origin of these names in the Introduction to “The Güegüence, a Comedy-Ballet in the Nahuatl-Spanish Dialect of Nicaragua,” published as Number III, of “Brinton’s Library of Aboriginal American Literature” (Philadelphia, 1883). They adjoined on the north-east and south-west the Nahuatl-speaking tribe, who occupied the narrow strip of land between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific ocean.
“They were of one blood and one language, and called themselves Mánkeme, rulers, masters, which the Spaniards corrupted into Mangues. The invading Aztecs appear to have split this ancient tribe into two fractions, the one driven toward the south, about the Gulf of Nicoya, the other northward, on and near Lake Managua, and beyond it on Fonseca bay. Probably in memory of this victory, the Aztec Nicaraguans applied to them the opprobrious name, Chololteca, ‘those driven out,’ from the Nahuatl verb choloa, in its compulsive form chololtia, and the suffix, tecatl, people; which was corrupted by the Spaniards into Chorotegas.” (The Güegüence, Introduction, p. viii.)
In Squier’s work above referred to they are called “Chorotegans or Dirians.” The latter is from the Mangue diri, a hill or mountain, and was applied to that portion of them who dwelt in the hilly country south of Masaya.
The Spanish form of their native name is that which I should recommend for adoption in ethnological works.
Early Notices. The old historians and travelers, on whom we depend for our knowledge of Nicaragua, tell us practically nothing about this language, and little about the people who spoke it. The chieftain, called Nicoya, living on the bay of that name, was first visited by Captain Gil Gonzalez Dávila in 1523. The natives were estimated at about six thousand, who received the Spaniards in a friendly manner, and gave them considerable gold.[1]
Oviedo in his Historia de las Indias gives a few words of the language as follows:
| mamea, | hell. |
| nam bi, | dog. |
| nam bue, | tiger, |