The most obvious derivation of Cintla is from the Nahuatl language, in which Cintla means a dried ear of maize; Cintlan, a place where dried ears are, a cornfield. Most of the places in Tabasco became known to the Spaniards under their Nahuatl appellatives through interpreters in that tongue, and because most of the territory had been subjected to the powerful sway of the Montezumas.
Still, Cintla may also be a Mayan word. It may be a nominal form from the verb tzen-tah, and would then have the signification, “a built-up place,” or one well stocked with provisions; or, it may be a patronymic from the Tzentals, the tribe which occupied this region at the time, as I shall proceed to show.
The Native Tribe.—There is no question but that the native tribe which took part in this combat belonged to the Mayan stock. All the accounts agree that Aguilar, the Spaniard whom Cortes found in Yucatan as a captive, and who had learned to speak the Mayan tongue, communicated with the natives without difficulty. This is conclusive as to their ethnic position.
Further evidence, if needed, is offered by the native names and words preserved in the accounts. The term for their large canoes, tahucup, is from the Maya tahal, to swim, and kop, that which is hollow, or hollowed out. The name potonchan, Aguilar translated as, “the place that stinks” (lugar que hiede). He evidently understood it as derived from the Maya verb tunhal, to stink, with the intensive prefix pot (which is not unusual in the tongue, as pot-hokan, very evident, etc.). The historian Herrera, on some authority not known to me, further explains this term as one of contempt applied to the people there, meaning rude and barbarous;[6-1] as we should say, using the same metaphor, “stinkards.”
Tabasco is said by Bernal Diaz to have been the name of the principal chief of the eight provinces or tribes, who together opposed the Spaniards. For this reason I would reject the derivation from the Nahuatl, proposed by Rovirosa,—tlalli, earth, paltic, wet or swampy, co, in,[6-2]—however appropriate it would be geographically; and also that from the Maya, tazcoob, “deceived,” referring to the deceptions practiced on the Spaniards,—which is defended by Orozco y Berra[6-3]; and I should accept that which I find suggested by Dr. Berendt in his manuscript work on Mayan geographical names. He reads Tabasco as a slightly corrupt form of the Maya T’ah-uaxac-coh, “our (or the) master of the eight lions,” referring to the eight districts or gentes of the tribe. This is significant and appropriate, the jaguar, the American lion, being a very common emblem in the ruins of Cintla.
The branch of the Mayan stock which occupied the litoral of the province of Tabasco at that time were those later known as the Tzentals (otherwise spelled Zendal or Tzeltal). By some writers they have been called the Chontals of Tobasco, chontal, as is well known, being merely a common noun in Nahuatl to express foreigners or barbarians. Their identity with the modern Tzentals of Chiápas has been established by the researches of Dr. Berendt.
The Tzental is a dialect closely akin to pure Maya, though it was believed by Dr. Berendt to present nearer relations than the Maya proper to the dialect of the Huastecas, a segregated idiom of the Mayan family, spoken near Tampico.
The Locality.—Until M. Désiré Charnay brought out the results of the Lorillard expedition in his handsome work, “The Ancient Cities of the New World,”[6-4] no one, so far as I know, had expressed any doubt that Cintla was situated near the mouth of the great river, the Rio de Tabasco, formed by the confluence of the Usumacinta and the Rio de Grijalva, and emptying into the bay of Campeche, 18° 35′, north latitude.
M. Charnay did not visit the ruins of Cintla nor the site of Potonchan, which I am about to describe; but he did make an examination of the ruins of Comalcalco, about thirty miles west of Cintla; and as they are of notable magnitude, he proceeds to argue that they represent the ancient Cintla, of the victory of Cortes.
The arguments on which he founds this contention may be briefly stated. They are that the accounts refer to two entrances to the river (dos bocas) while the Tabasco has but one; that the bar of Tabasco now admits vessels of 300 tons, whereas Cortes speaks of it as too shallow for his caravels; that Herrera says Cortes retired to a small island, whereas there is none in the Rio de Tabasco; that Herrera further speaks of a ford by which the soldiers of Cortes “crossed the river,” which would have been impossible in the Tabasco; and finally that the same writer mentions cacao plantations, though at present none exist near Frontera. For these reasons he thinks both Grijalva and Cortes entered the embouchure now known as the Barra de Dos Bocas, some twenty-five miles west of the mouth of the Rio de Tabasco.