I. Among the numerous aboriginal peoples of Southern Mexico the Zapotecs of the state of Oajaca are the most numerous (about 265,000 individuals). These are the descendants of a once powerful people who had attained to nearly the same degree of civilisation as the Aztecs.
The Miztecs (Figs. [163] and [164]), who occupy the eastern part of the state of Oajaca and the adjacent regions of Guerrero, have dwindled to a few thousand individuals. They appear to be of fairly pure Central American race, are very short, brachycephalic, and have a dark brown skin and projecting cheek-bones.[627]
FIG. 162.—Young Creole woman of Martinique.
(Phot. Coll. Anthr. Soc. Paris.)
In the east of Oajaca and in Chiapa, on the frontier of Guatemala, are found the Zoques, the Mixes, and the Chapanecs, with whom it is customary to connect the Chontals and the Popolucas. But these two vocables signify in Nahuatlan merely “stranger” and “one who speaks badly or stammers.”[628] Among the tribes of Oajaca and Tabasco, described under the name of Chontals, some speak a dialect peculiar to themselves, the Tequistlatecan, allied to the Yuma language (Brinton), while others speak the Maya dialects.[629]
FIG. 163.—Miztec Indian (Mexico), Central American race.
(Phot. D. Charney, Coll. Mus. Nat. Hist. Paris.)
II. The peoples composing the Maya group appear to have come in post-quaternary times (by sea?), and in a state of civilisation already well advanced,[630] into the Yucatan peninsula. Thence they spread into Guatemala and the surrounding regions of Salvador and Honduras, where at the present day they form the bulk of the population. The ancient Maya civilisation resembled that of Mexico, the sanguinary creeds of the latter excepted; their writing was of a perfect hieroglyphic type. Besides the Mayas properly so called of Yucatan, the principal tribes of this group are: the Tsendals or Chontals of Mexico, already mentioned above; the Mopans of Northern Guatemala; the Koïtches or Quichés farther south, the only Indian people possessing an aboriginal written literature; the Pokomams of the district around the town of Guatemala; the Chortis on the territory where the ruins of Copan stand; and a long way off, isolated from the rest of their kinsmen, in the Mexican province of Tamaulipas, the Huaxtecs (p. [537]). In spite of linguistic differences, all the Guatemalans or Indians of Guatemala resemble each other physically; they are short, thick-set, with high cheek-bones, prominent and often convex nose.[631] Some characteristic habits, as for instance geophagy, are common to all these populations.