CHOLO.TULE.WAFER'S DARIEN VOCAB.
Waterpaytoteedoola
Firetuboorcho
Sunpeseaipé
Moonhedechoneenee
Treepachruchowala (pl.)
Housedhéneka
Manmochinamastola
Womanwuènapundolapoonah
Thunderpámarra
Dog achu
Ear uwa
Eye ibia
Nose an uchuu
Mouth kagya
Father tautah
Mother naunah
Brother roopah
Go chaunah
Sleep cotchah
Fine mamaubah
One quenchaquahean
Two pocoadìv
Three pagwatree
Four pakeguacaher
Five aptalicooig
Ten ambedeh[XII'-14]

Although from a perusal of what has here been gathered we might wish to know more of the weird imaginings that floated through the minds of these peoples, and to follow further the interminable intermixture of tongues and dialects, spoken, grunted, and gestured between the Arctic Ocean and the Atrato River, we must content ourselves with what we have. I have gathered and given in this volume all that I have been able to find; and from the readiness with which the Americans were wont to adopt the dogmas and creeds of Europeans, supernatural conceptions supposedly superior to their own, and insist upon their being aboriginal, and from the rapid and bewildering changes that so quickly mar and destroy the original purity of tongues, there is little hope of our learning further from living lips, or of our ever being able to study these things from the scattered and degraded remnants of the people themselves.

CONCLUSION.

He who carefully examines the Myths and Languages of the aboriginal nations inhabiting the Pacific States, cannot fail to be impressed with the similarity between them and the beliefs and tongues of mankind elsewhere. Here is the same insatiate thirst to know the unknowable, here are the same audacious attempts to tear asunder the veil, the same fashioning and peopling of worlds, laying out and circumscribing of celestial regions, and manufacturing, and setting up, spiritually and materially, of creators, man and animal makers and rulers, everywhere manifest. Here is apparent what would seem to be the same inherent necessity for worship, for propitiation, for purification, or a cleansing from sin, for atonement and sacrifice, with all the symbols and paraphernalia of natural and artificial religion. In their speech the same grammatical constructions are seen with the usual variations in form and scope, in poverty and richness, which are found in nations, rude or cultivated, everywhere. Little as we know of the beginning and end of things, we can but feel, as fresh facts are brought to light and new comparisons made between the races and ages of the earth, that humanity, of whatsoever origin it may be or howsoever circumstanced, is formed on one model, and unfolds under the influence of one inspiration.

END OF THE THIRD VOLUME

FOOTNOTES

[II-1] In Vienna in 1857, the book now best known as the Popol Vuh was first brought to the notice of European scholars, under the following title: Las Historias del Origen de los Indios de esta Provincia de Guatemala, traducidas de la Lengua Quiché al Castellano para mas Comodidad de los Ministros del S. Evangelio, por el R. P. F. Francisco Ximenez, cura doctrinero por el real patronato del Pueblo de S. Thomas Chuila.—Exactamente segun el texto español del manuscrito original que se halla en la biblioteca de la Universidad de Guatemala, publicado por la primera vez, y aumentado con una introduccion y anotaciones por el Dr C. Scherzer. What Dr Scherzer says in a paper read before the Vienna Academy of Sciences, Feb. 20th, 1856; and repeats in his introduction, about its author, amounts to this: In the early part of the 18th century Francisco Ximenez, a Dominican Father of great repute for his learning and his love of truth, filled the office of curate in the little Indian town of Chichicastenango in the highlands of Guatemala. Neither the time of his birth nor that of his death can be exactly ascertained, but the internal evidence of one of his works shows that he was engaged upon it in 1721. He left many manuscripts, but it is supposed that the unpalatable truths some of them contain with regard to the ill-treatment of the Indians by the colonial authorities sufficed, as previously in the case of Las Casas, to ensure their partial destruction and total suppression. What remains of them lay long hid in an obscure corner of the Convent of the Dominicans in Guatemala, and passed afterwards, on the suppression of all the religious orders, into the library of the University of San Carlos (Guatemala). Here Dr Scherzer discovered them in June 1854, and carefully copied, and afterwards published as above the particular treatise with which we are now concerned. This, according to Father Ximenez himself, and according to its internal evidence, is a translation of a literal copy of an original book, written by one or more Quichés, in the Quiché language, in Roman letters, after the Christians had occupied Guatemala, and after the real original Popol Vuh—National Book—had been lost or destroyed—literally, was no more to be seen—and written to replace that lost book. 'Quise trasladar todas las historias á la letra de estos indios, y tambien traducirla en la lengua castellana.' 'Esto escribiremos ya en la ley de Dios en la cristiandad los sacaremos, porque ya no hay libro comun, original donde verlo, Ximenez, Hist. Ind. Guat., pp. 1, 4, 5. 'Voilà ce que nous écrirons depuis (qu'on a promulgué) la parole de Dieu, et en dedans du Christianisme; nous le reproduirons, parce qu'on ne voit plus ce Livre national,' 'Vae x-chi-ka tzibah chupan chic u chabal Dios, pa Christianoil chic; x-chi-k'-elezah, rumal ma-habi chic ilbal re Popol-Vuh,' Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh, p. 5. The evidence that the author was Quiché will be found in the numerous passages scattered through the narrative in which he speaks of the Quiché nation, and of the ancestors of that nation as 'our people,' 'our ancestors,' and so on. We pass now to what the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg has to say about the book. He says that Ximenes 'discovered this document, in the last years of the 17th century.' In 1855, at Guatemala, the abbé first saw Ximenez' manuscript containing this work. The manuscript contained the Quiché text and the Spanish curate's translation of that text. Brasseur de Bourbourg copied both at that time, but he was dissatisfied with the translation, believing it to be full of faults owing to the prejudices and the ignorance of the age in which it was made, as well as disfigured by abridgments and omissions. So in 1860 he settled himself among the Quichés and by the help of natives joined to his own practical knowledge of their language, he elaborated a new and literal translation, (aussi littérale qu'il a été possible de la faire). We seem justified then on the whole in taking this document for what Ximenez and its own evidence declare it to be, namely, a reproduction of an older work or body of Quiché traditional history, written because that older work had been lost and was likely to be forgotten, and written by a Quiché not long after the Spanish conquest. One consequence of the last fact would seem to be that a tinge of biblical expression has, consciously or unconsciously to the Quiché who wrote, influenced the form of the narrative. But these coincidences may be wholly accidental, the more as there are also striking resemblances to expressions in the Scandinavian Edda and in the Hindoo Veda. And even if they be not accidental, 'much remains,' adopting the language and the conclusion of Professor Max Müller, 'in these American traditions which is so different from anything else in the national literatures of other countries, that we may safely treat it as the genuine growth of the intellectual soil of America.' Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i., p. 328. For the foregoing, as well as further information on the subject see:—Brasseur de Bourbourg, Popol Vuh, pp. 5-31, 195-231; S'il existe des Sources de l'Hist. Prim., pp. 83-7; Hist. des Nat. Civ., tom. i., pp. 47-61; Ximenez, Hist. Ind. Guat., pp. 5-15; Scherzer, in Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien, 20th Feb., 1856; Helps' Spanish Conquest, vol. iv., pp. 455-6. Professor Müller in his essay on the Popol Vuh, has in one or two places misunderstood the narrative. There was no such creation of man as that he gives as the second, while his third creation is the second of the original. Again, he makes the four Quiché ancestors to be the progenitors of all tribes both white and black; while they were the parents of the Quiché and kindred races only. The course of the legend brings us to tribes of a strange blood, with which these four ancestors and their people were often at war. The narrative is, however, itself so confused and contradictory at points, that it is almost impossible to avoid such things; and, as a whole, the views of Professor Müller on the Popol Vuh seem just and well considered. Baldwin, Ancient America, pp. 191-7, gives a mere dilution of Professor Müller's essay, and that without acknowledgment.

[II-2] The original Quiché runs as follows: 'Are u tzihoxic vae ca ca tzinin-oc, ca ca chamam-oc, ca tzinonic; ca ca zilanic, ca ca lolinic, ca tolona puch u pa cah. Vae cute nabe tzih, nabe uchan.—Ma-habi-oc hun vinak, hun chicop; tziquin, car, tap, che, abah, hul, civan, quim, qichelah: xa-utuquel cah qolic. Mavi calah u vach uleu: xa-utnquel remanic palo, u pah cah ronohel. Ma-habi nakila ca molobic, ca cotzobic: hunta ca zilobic; ca mal ca ban-tah, ca cotz ca ban-tah pa cah. X-ma qo-vi nakila qolic yacalic; xa remanic ha, xa lianic palo, xa-utuquel remanic; x-ma qo-vi nakilalo qolic. Xa ca chamanic, ca tzininic chi gekum, chi agab.'

This passage is rendered by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg thus: 'Voici le récit comme quoi tout était en suspens, tout était calme et silencieux; tout était immobile, tout était paisible, et vide était l'immensité des cieux. Voilà donc la première parole et le premier discours. Il n'y avait pas encore un seul homme, pas un animal, pas d'oiseaux, de poissons, d'écrevisses, de bois, de pierre, de fondrières, de ravins, d'herbe ou de bocages: seulement le ciel existait. La face de la terre ne se manifestait pas encore: seule la mer paisible était et tout l'espace des cieux. Il n'y avait encore rien qui fît corps, rien qui se cramponnât à autre chose: rien qui se balançât, qui fît (le moindre) frôlement, qui fît (entendre) un son dans le ciel. Il n'y avait rien qui existât debout; (il n'y avait) que l'eau paisible, que la mer calme et seule dans ses bornes; car il n'y avait rien qui existât. Ce n'était que l'immobilité et le silence dans les ténèbres, dans la nuit.' Popol Vuh, p. 7.

And by Francisco Ximenez thus: 'Este es su ser dicho cuando estaba suspenso en calma, en silencio, sin moverse, sin cosa sino vacio el cielo. Y esta es la primera palabra y elocuencia; aun no habia hombres, animales, pájaros, pescado, cangrejo, palo, piedra, hoya, barranca, paja ni monte, sino solo estaba el cielo; no se manifestaba la faz de la tierra; sino que solo estaba el mar represado, y todo lo del cielo; aun no habia cosa alguna junta, ni sonaba nada, ni cosa alguna se meneaba, ni cosa que hiciera mal, ni cosa que hiciera "cotz," (esto es ruido en el cielo), ni habia cosa que estuviese parada en pié; solo el agua represada, solo la mar sosegada, solo ella represada, ni cosa alguna habia que estuviese; solo estaba en silencio, y sosiego en la obscuridad, y la noche.' Hist. Ind. Guat., pp. 5-6.