INTRODUCTION.
§ 1. The Nahuas and Mangues of Nicaragua.
Among the outlying colonies of that important people whose chief seat was in the Valley of Mexico, and who are variously known as Aztecs, Mexicans or Nahuas, were several in Central America. "One of these," writes Mr. Squier, "occupied the principal islands in the Lake of Nicaragua, the narrow isthmus which intervenes between that lake and the Pacific, and probably a portion of the country to the southward, as far as the gulf of Nicoya. Their country was less than a hundred miles long, by twenty-five broad; yet here they preserved the same language and institutions, and practiced the same religious rites, with the people of the same stock who dwelt more than two thousand miles distant, on the plateau of Anahuac, from whom they were separated by numerous powerful nations, speaking different languages, and having distinct organizations."[1]
This Nahuatl tribe gave the name to the Province, Nicaragua, this being, according to some early authorities, the personal appellation of their chief at the epoch of their discovery, in 1522, and, according to others, their national name.[2] For no sufficient reasons, Mr. Squier applied to them the term Niquirans, and Dr. Berendt Nicaraos, but it seems better to retain, as distinctive for them, the name Nicaraguans, or, more specifically, "the Nahuas of Nicaragua." "Nicaragua" is undoubtedly a Nahuatl word, but, as the letter r is not found in that language, the precise original form is uncertain. Father Francisco Vasquez explained it as a compound of the Nahuatl nican, "here," and anahuacos, "here dwell those from Anahuac;"[3] or it may be from nican and nahua (plural form of nahuatl), "here dwell those speaking the Nahuatl tongue;" or, as a personal name of a chief, it may be ni calaquiya, "I entered into, or took possession."
How it happened that this fragment of the Aztec nation had become detached from the main body and resident so far from its central seat, has not been clearly explained. Mr. Squier and some others have maintained the hypothesis that the migration of all the Aztec tribes was from south to north, and that their scattered members in Central America were bands which had stopped on the road.[4] This opinion, however, is refuted by the evidence of language, and also by the unanimous traditions of the Aztecs themselves, both in Nicaragua and in Mexico.
The Nicaraguans had a very positive recollection that their ancestors came from Mexico, driven forth by scarcity of food, and that they wandered along the Pacific shore to the locality in which the Spaniards found them.[5] They remembered the names of their ancient home, or, rather, of their ancient kindred, and gave them as Ticomega and Maguateca, locating them toward the west ("hacia donde se pone el sol"). It is easy to recognize in these words the Aztec terminations signifying gens or tribe, mecatl and tecatl, which in the plural drop the tl. Nor can we be far wrong in identifying magua with the Aztec maque, upper, above, and tico with tiachcauh, elder brother, and in translating these names, the one as "the upper people," i. e., the dwellers on the lofty interior plateau, and "our elder brothers," i. e., the senior and ranking clans of their tribe, who remained in Anahuac.[6]
Besides these traditions, the Nicaraguans showed their close relationship to the Aztecs by a substantial identity of language, mythology, religious rites, calendars, manners and customs. We have, fortunately, an unusual mass of information about them, from an examination of their leading men by the chaplain Francisco de Bobadilla, in 1528, who took down their replies with as much accuracy as we could expect, and whose narrative has been preserved by the historian Oviedo. They also had retained a knowledge of the Mexican hieroglyphics, and wrote, in books of paper and parchment, their laws and ritual, their calendars and the boundaries of their lands.[7]
While this Aztec band thus acknowledged themselves to be intruders, such appears not to have been the case with their immediate neighbors to the northeast and southwest. These were of one blood and language, and called themselves mánkeme, rulers, masters, which the Spaniards corrupted into Mangues.[8] 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.[9] Probably in memory of this victory, the Nicaraguans applied to them the opprobrious name Chololteca, "those driven out," from the Nahuatl verb choloa, and the suffix tecatl, which was corrupted by the Spanish to Chorotecas.[10]
The name does not by any means intimate that the Mangues came from Cholula in Mexico, as some ancient, and some modern, writers have hastily supposed;[11] nor is it a proof that they spoke an Aztec dialect, as Ternaux Compans has asserted.[12] So far is this from being the case, the Mangue has no sort of affinity with the Nahuatl, and must stand wholly asunder from it in the classification of American tongues. It has, indeed, a relative to the north, and a close one, the Chapanec or Chiapenec,[13] spoken by the inhabitants of three small villages in Chiapas, the largest of which has given its name to the province. These Chapanecs, by their traditions, still clearly remembered at the time of the Conquest, and preserved by the historian Remesal, migrated from Nicaragua to their more northern home. As they had no connection with the Aztecs, so, also, they were wholly without affinities with the great Maya stock, which extended far and wide over Central America, although the contrary has been recently stated.[14] In fact, among the five different languages which were spoken in the present province of Nicaragua at the time of the discovery, not one belonged to any branch of the Maya group.[15]