The more civilized American tribes had made considerable advances in
some of the natural sciences, and in none more than in practical
astronomy. By close observation of the heavenly bodies they had
elaborated a complicated and remarkably exact system of chronology. They
had determined the length of the year with greater accuracy than the
white invaders; and the different cycles by which they computed time
allowed them to assign dates to occurrences many hundreds of years
anterior.
Although there are local differences, the calendars in use in Central
and Southern Mexico and in Central America were evidently derived from
one and the same original. A great deal has been written upon them, but
for all that many questions about them remain unanswered. We do not know
the Maya method of intercalation; we do not understand the uses of the
shorter Mexican year, of 260 days; we are at a loss to explain the
purpose of doubling the length of certain months, as prevailed among the
Cakchiquels; we are in the dark about the significance of the names of
many days and months; we cannot see why the nations chose to begin the
count of the year at different seasons; and there are ever so many more
knotty problems about this remarkable system and its variations.
What we imperatively need is a supply of authentic aboriginal calendars,
accurately reproduced, for purposes of comparison. Boturini collected a
number of these, which he describes, and long before his day some
specimens had been published by Valades and Gemelli Carreri.[48] They
were, in ancient times, usually depicted by circular drawings, called by
the Spaniards, Wheels (_ruedas_). After the Conquest they were
written out, more in the form of our almanacs. One such, in the Maya
tongue, with a translation, was contributed to Mr. Stephens' _Travels
in Yucatan_, by the eminent Maya scholar, Don Juan Pio Perez.[49]
Several others were in his collection, and are accessible. Dr. Berendt
succeeded in securing _fac similes_ of Kiche and Cakchiquel
calendars, written out in the seventeenth century, and these are now in
my possession. I fear we have no perfect examples of the Zapotec
calendar, nor of that of the Tarascos of Michoacan, although an
anonymous author, most of whose MS. has been preserved, reduced the
latter to writing, and it may some day turn up.[50] The Aztec calendars
collected by Boturini would, were they published, give us sufficient
material, probably, to understand clearly the methods of that tribe.
One momentous purpose which the calendar served was for supplying omens
and predictions; another was for the appointment of fasts and festivals,
for the religious ritual. The calendar arranged for these objects was
called, in the Nahuatl, _tonalamatl_, "the book of days," and in
Maya _tzolante_, "that by which events are arranged." So intimately
were all the acts of individual and national life bound up with these
superstitions, that an understanding of them is indispensable to a
successful study of the psychology and history of the race.
After the Conquest some of the notions about judicial astrology, then
prevalent in Europe, crept into the native understanding, and notably,
in the _Books of Chilan Balam_ we find forecastes of lucky and
unlucky days, and discussions of planetary influence, evidently borrowed
from the Spanish almanacs of the seventeenth century.
Most of the Aborigines of the Continent possessed a keen sense of
locality, and often a certain rude skill in cartography. The relative
position of spots and proportionate distances were approximately
represented by rough drawings. They knew the boundaries of their lands,
the courses of streams, the trend of shores, and could display them
intelligently. These maps, as they are called, present a very different
appearance from ours. Those of the Aztecs are rather pictured diagrams,
something like those we find in fifteenth century books of travel. A
fair specimen, though of date later than the Conquest, was published not
long since, in Madrid.[51]
The Maya maps are even more conventional. A central point is taken,
usually a town, around which is drawn either a circle or a square, on
the four sides of which are placed the figures of the four cardinal
points, and within the figures are the various symbols which denote the
villages, wells, ponds, and other objects which are to be designated.
Specimens of some of these, all after the Conquest, however, have been
published by Mr. Stephens and Canon Carrillo,[52] and others are found in
the various _Books of Chilan Balam_.
Very few strictly scholastic works seem to have been produced by the
natives. Nearly all those which I have seen for use in the Mission
schools appear to be the productions of the white instructors,
generally, of course, aided by some intelligent native. I have in my
possession an _Ortografia en Lengua Kekchi_, picked up by Dr.
Berendt in Vera Paz, which was the work of Domingo Coy, an Indian of
Coban (MS. pp. 32). But on examination it proves to be merely an
adaptation of a _Manual de Ortografia Castellana_, in use in the
schools, and not an original effort. For all that, it is not without
linguistic value. In Mexico a useful little book of instruction in
Nahuatl has been prepared by the licentiate Faustino Chimalpopoca
Galicia, a scholar of indigenous extraction.[53] An older work, of a
similar character, by Don Antonio Tobar, a descendant of the Montezumas,
is mentioned by bibliographers, but never was printed, and has probably
perished.[54]
It has always been part of the policy of both Catholic and Protestant
missions to permit the natives to enter the career of the church; in the
territories of both confessions instances are moderately numerous of
priests and preachers of half or full Indian blood. Most of these
educated men, however, rather shunned the cultivation of their maternal
tongues, and preferred, when they wrote at all, to choose that of their
white brethren, the Spanish, Portuguese or English. The extensive
theological literature which we possess, printed or in manuscript, in
American tongues, and in many it is quite ample, is scarcely ever the
result of the efforts of the Christian teachers of indigenous
affiliations.
A notable exception was the licentiate Bartolome de Alva, a native
Mexican, descended from the Tezcucan kings, who composed, in Nahuatl and
Spanish, a _Confessionario_, which was printed at Mexico in 1634.
It contains some interesting references to the mythology and
superstitions of the natives.[55]
The Indian Elias Boudinot and other Cherokees have printed many essays
and tracts in that tongue, but whether original or merely translated I
do not know. The sermons of the native Protestant missionaries to their
fellows were probably extempore addresses. At any rate, I have not seen
any in manuscript or print. A volume of the kind exists, however, in
manuscript, in the Library of the _Instituto Historico_ of Rio
Janeiro, which it would be very desirable to have printed. It is the
_Sermones e Exemplos em lengua Guarani_, by Nicolas Japuguay, cura
of the Parish of San Francisco in 1727.[56] But when it is edited, let us
hope that it will be a more favorable example of critical care than the
_Crestomathia da Lingua Brasilica_, edited by Dr. Ernesto Ferreira
Franca (Leipzig, 1859), which, according to Professor Hartt, is "badly
arranged, carelessly edited, and disfigured by innumerable typographical
errors."[57]
A curious variety of religious literature is what are called the
Passions, _Las Pasiones_, which are found among the natives of the
Isthmus of Tehuantepec. These prose chants took their rise at an early
period among the sodalities (_cofradias_), organized under the name
of some particular saint. Each of these societies possessed a volume,
called its Regulations (_Ordenanzas_), containing, among other
matters, a series of invocations, founded on the history of the Passion
of Christ. During Holy Week, certain members of the fraternity, called
_fiscales_, gather in the church, around one of their number, who
reads a sentence in a loud voice. The fiscales repeat it in a chanting
tone, with a uniform and monotonous cadence. It is probable that these
chants are the compositions of the Indians themselves. Dr. Berendt
obtained several copies of these, some in the Chapaneca of Chiapas, and
others in the Zoque of the Isthmus, which are now in my hands.