The Annals of the Cakchiquels — Daniel G. Brinton
Brinton. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title : The Annals of the Cakchiquels Editor : Daniel G. Brinton Author : Francisco Hernández Arana Xajilá Contributor : active 16th century Francisco Díaz Gebuta Quej Release date : March 8, 2007 [eBook #20775] Language : English, Mayan Languages Other information and formats : www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20775 Credits : Produced by David Starner, Julia Miller, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. This file is gratefully uploaded to the PG collection in honor of Distributed Proofreaders having posted over 10,000 ebooks. *** START OF They are marked and the corrected text is shown in the popup. A list of these errors is found at the end of this book. The following less-common characters are found in this book: ă (a with breve), ā (a with macron). If they do not display correctly, please try changing your font. [i] LIBRARY OF Aboriginal American Literature. No. VI. EDITED BY D. G. BRINTON [ii] [iii] BRINTON’S LIBRARY OF ABORIGINAL AMERICAN LITERATURE. NUMBER VI. THE ANNALS OF THE CAKCHIQUELS. THE ORIGINAL TEXT, WITH A TRANSLATION, NOTES AND INTRODUCTION. BY DANIEL G. BRINTON 1885, Philadelphia [iv] [v] PREFACE. Both for its historical and linguistic merits, the document which is presented in this volume is one of the most important in aboriginal American Literature. Written by a native who had grown to adult years before the whites penetrated to his ancestral home, himself a member of the ruling family of one of the most civilized nations of the continent and intimately acquainted with its traditions, his work displays the language in its pure original form, and also preserves the tribal history and a part of the mythology, as they were current before they were in the least affected by European influences. The translation I offer is directly from the original text, and I am responsible for its errors; but I wish to acknowledge my constant obligations to the manuscript version of the late Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg), the distinguished Americanist. Without the assistance obtained from it, I should not have attempted the task; and though I differ frequently from his renderings, this is no more than he himself would have done, as in his later years he spoke of his version as in many passages faulty. For the grammar of the language, I have depended on the anonymous grammar which I edited for the American Philosophical Society in 1884, [vi] copies of which, reprinted separately, can be obtained by any one who wishes to study the tongue thoroughly. For the significance of the words, my usual authorities are the lexicon of Varea, an anonymous dictionary of the 17th century, and the large and excellent Spanish-Cakchiquel work of Coto, all of which are in the library of the American Philosophical Society. They are all in MS., but the vocabulary I add may be supplemented with that of Ximenes, printed by the Abbé Brasseur, at Paris, in 1862, and between them most of the radicals will be found. As my object in all the volumes of this series is to furnish materials for study, rather than to offer finished studies themselves, I have steadily resisted the strong temptation to expand the notes and introductory matter. They have been limited to what seemed essentially necessary to defining the nature of the work, discussing its date and authorship, and introducing the people to whom it refers. [vii] CONTENTS. PAGE PREFACE , v INTRODUCTION, 9 Ethnologic Position of the Cakchiquels , 9 Culture of the Cakchiquels , 13 The Capital City of the Cakchiquels , 21 Computation of Time , 28 Personal and Family Names , 32 Tribal Subdivisions , 33 Terms of Affinity and Salutation , 34 Titles and Social Castes , 35 Religious Notions , 39 The Cakchiquel Language , 48 The Annals of Xahila , 53 Synopsis of the Annals , 60 Remarks on the Printed Text , 62 The Annals of the Cakchiquels , by a Member of the Xahila Family, 66-194 Notes , 195-200 Vocabulary , 209 Index of Proper Names , 229 [viii] [9] THE ANNALS OF THE CAKCHIQUELS. INTRODUCTION. Ethnologic Position of the Cakchiquels. The Cakchiquels, whose traditions and early history are given in the present work from the pen of one of their own authors, were a nation of somewhat advanced culture, who occupied a portion of the area of the present State of Guatemala. Their territory is a table land about six thousand feet above the sea, seamed with numerous deep ravines, and supporting lofty mountains and active volcanoes. Though but fifteen degrees from the equator, its elevation assures it a temperate climate, while its soil is usually fertile and well watered. They were one of a group of four closely related nations, adjacent in territory and speaking dialects so nearly alike as to be mutually intelligible. The remaining three were the Quiches, the Tzutuhils and the Akahals, who dwelt respectively to the west, the south and the east of the Cakchiquels. These dialects are well marked members of the Maya linguistic stock, and differ from that language, as it is spoken [10] in its purity in Yucatan, more in phonetic modifications than in grammatical structure or lexical roots. Such, however, is the fixedness of this linguistic family in its peculiarities, that a most competent student of the Cakchiquel has named the period of two thousand years as the shortest required to explain the difference between this tongue and the Maya. 10-1 About the same length of time was that assigned since the arrival of this nation in Guatemala, by the local historian, Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzman, who wrote in the seventeenth century, from an examination of their most ancient traditions, written and verbal. 10-2 Indeed, none of these affined tribes claimed to be au