(_Read before the American Philosophical Society, November 20, 1885._)
_Sources._ Nothing whatever has been published about the Mangue language,
except a list of ninety-five words, by Mr. E. G. Squier in his work,
“Nicaragua, its People, Scenery and Monuments.” Whence he obtained this
short vocabulary he does not state; but it is evidently the work of some
one only slightly acquainted with the character of the language. I do not
make any use of it in the present notes, except in a few instances for
comparison.
My authorities are, first, Don Juan Eligio de la Rocha’s _Apuntamientos de
la Lengua Mangue, MS._ The author was born in Granada, C. A., June 15,
1815. By profession a lawyer, his taste led him to the study of languages,
and he acquired a fluent knowledge of French, English and Italian. He was
appointed instructor in French and Spanish grammar in 1848 in the
University of Leon, C. A., and ten years later, 1858, published his
_Elementos de Gramática Castellana_ (Leon, 1858, small 4to, pp. 199). His
death occurred in 1873.
While living in Masaya in 1842, he became interested in the surviving
remnants of the Mangues, and undertook to collect materials for a study of
their language. Unfortunately, he never completed these investigations,
and many of the sheets on which he had recorded his notes were scattered.
A few of them, however, were in the hands of his brother, Doctor Don
Jesus de la Rocha, of Granada, who gave Dr. C. H. Berendt an opportunity
to copy them in 1874.
In that same year, 1874, Dr. Berendt collected the last obtainable
fragments of the Mangue. In his (printed) lecture before the American
Geographical Society in 1876, he thus describes his efforts in this
direction, and at the same time points out the localities where the Mangue
speaking populations were located when they first came to the knowledge of
the invading whites:--
“The Spaniards on entering the present State of Nicaragua from
Nicoya bay, and then marching through the country, came into contact
first with the southern section of the Chorotegas or Mangues, as
they were also called; then with a Nahuatl tribe, whose capital and
king are mentioned as bearing the name of Nicarao; and after these
again with Chorotegas or Mangues, who, however, did not occupy the
whole tract of land up to the Bay of Fonseca, but were again
separated from the Chorotegas on the shores of that bay by another
foreign tribe called Maribios. Thus we obtain the three sections
into which the Chorotegas of Nicaragua were divided at the time of
the Conquest. Now, their language seemed to me an object worthy of
having some special attention bestowed upon it--not so much for its
own sake, but in order that a better understanding might be arrived
at of the ethnological features of Nicaragua, which, on account of
an insufficient acquaintance with its actual condition as well as
with the early writers, and of the rather precarious speculations
and conjectures of modern authors based upon such scanty knowledge,
have become greatly confused. Having studied the Chapanecan language
on a former expedition, and wishing to compare it with the
Chorotegan, I visited Nicaragua in the year 1874. I found that the
Indian population near the Nicoya and the Fonseca bays had entirely
disappeared, and in both districts only met with some local names
belonging to the Chorotegan language. In the third district also,
where descendants of the old stock are still living in twelve
villages around the lakes of Masaya and Apoyo, I was informed that
no other vestiges of the old idiom were left, the inhabitants
speaking exclusively the Spanish language. I had, however, the good
luck to ferret out some old people who still remembered words and
phrases they had heard in their childhood; and I was enabled to
collect material sufficient to convince myself and others of the
identity of this Mangue or Chorotegan idiom with the Chapaneco
language of Mexico. I was not a moment too early in obtaining this
information, for the greater number of my informants died while I
was staying in the country. I still hope that with the knowledge of
the Chorotegan thus gained in Nicaragua and Chiapas, it may be
possible to trace their history and descent backwards to one of the
nations that were living in Anahuac in the earliest times of which
our records speak.”
The materials were never published by Dr. Berendt, nor, indeed, did the
many other projects which occupied him allow him the leisure to collate
and arrange them. I have taken them from his original notes, often in
pencil and not always perfectly legible. But I believe those here offered
can be depended upon as accurate, and have special value as the sole
remaining vestiges of an idiom now wholly extinct.
_Synonyms._ It will be seen that Berendt speaks of this people as the
“Chorotegas or Mangues.” I have given the origin of these names in the
Introduction to “The Güegüence, a Comedy-Ballet in the Nahuatl-Spanish
Dialect of Nicaragua,” published as Number III, of “Brinton’s Library of
Aboriginal American Literature” (Philadelphia, 1883). They adjoined on the
north-east and south-west the Nahuatl-speaking tribe, who occupied the
narrow strip of land between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific ocean.
“They were of one blood and one language, and called themselves
_Mánkeme_, rulers, masters, which the Spaniards corrupted into
_Mangues_. 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. Probably in memory of this victory, the
Aztec Nicaraguans applied to them the opprobrious name,
_Chololteca_, ‘those driven out,’ from the Nahuatl verb _choloa_, in
its compulsive form _chololtia_, and the suffix, _tecatl_, people;
which was corrupted by the Spaniards into _Chorotegas_.” (_The
Güegüence_, Introduction, p. viii.)
In Squier’s work above referred to they are called “Chorotegans or
Dirians.” The latter is from the Mangue _diri_, a hill or mountain, and
was applied to that portion of them who dwelt in the hilly country south
of Masaya.
The Spanish form of their native name is that which I should recommend for
adoption in ethnological works.
_Early Notices._ The old historians and travelers, on whom we depend for
our knowledge of Nicaragua, tell us practically nothing about this
language, and little about the people who spoke it. The chieftain, called
Nicoya, living on the bay of that name, was first visited by Captain Gil
Gonzalez Dávila in 1523. The natives were estimated at about six thousand,
who received the Spaniards in a friendly manner, and gave them
considerable gold.[1]
Oviedo in his _Historia de las Indias_ gives a few words of the language
as follows:
_mamea_, hell.
_nam bi_, dog.
_nam bue_, tiger,
the last two of which correspond to those in later vocabularies.[2]
The Auditor Garcia de Palacio (1576) mentions the Mangue as spoken in
Choluteca, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, in the last mentioned as introduced
from elsewhere.[3] About a century later a colony of Mangues, several
hundred in number, were found by Juan Vazquez de Coronado, almost at the
extreme eastern end of Costa Rica, in the Province of Pacaca.[4] Those on
the Pacific Coast, about the Gulf of Nicoya, were accustomed to cross to
the ocean on the north for trading purposes, and to obtain salt.[5] They
appear to have been a people of moderate cultivation, and rather extended
commercial connections.
_Affiliations._ The Mangue is the mother tongue from which the Chapanec
(or Chiapanec) of Chiapas branched off. The separation from the ancestral
tribe, and the migration from Nicaragua to Chiapas, were distinctly
remembered by the Chapanec off-shoot when first encountered by the whites.
Remesal, in his well-known history, gives a brief but clear account of it.
The date of this occurrence cannot be specifically stated, but its
occasion can be readily surmised. The Mangues at one time occupied the
whole coast from the entrance of the Gulf of Nicoya to Fonseca bay. At a
period which we may locate some time in the fourteenth century, a large
colony of Aztecs descended the coast and seized the strip between Lake
Nicaragua and the Pacific, thus splitting the Mangues in two, and driving
a large portion of them out of their homes. Some of these wanderers
remained with their relatives, but one body of them marched north and west
until they reached a lofty peak on the Rio Grande in Central Chiapas,
where they constructed a formidable fortress, and became the terror of
their Nahuatl-speaking neighbors.[6]
No connection has been demonstrated between the Mangue (or Chapanec), and
any other North American language, although owing to the liberal exertions
of M. Alphonse Pinart, we have now in print and easily procurable, a
grammar and a number of texts of the Chapanec dialect.[7]
A comparison, the partial results of which I have previously published,
proves that the differences between the Chapanec and Mangue are slight and
unimportant, and for purposes of collation with other stocks the two may
be looked upon as identical.
In the Introduction to “The Güegüence,” I pointed out some singular
coincidences between the Mangue and the Aymara of Peru. Further
examination of the two tongues has not added to the list given, and has
weakened the belief I entertained of some possible connection in the past
between them.
I take this occasion to point out an error which has crept into several
philological works, that of confounding the Mangue with the Nagrandan of
Nicaragua. Thus, Francisco Pimentel, in his work on the languages of
Mexico, falls into the capital mistake of declaring the Chapanec of
Chiapas to be allied to the Nagrandan of Nicaragua; and to prove his
assertion, gives a list of alleged Nagrandan words, all of which belong to
the Mangue tongue![8]
The same confusion marks an attempt of Mr. Hyde Clark, of London, to
bring into relation “the Masaya language of Nicaragua with the Sioux
language.” The words he quotes as from Masaya are all from the Nagrandan
of Subtiaba, near Leon. There is really no relationship between the
Nagrandan and Mangue, and although Dr. Latham has attempted to indicate
some few analogies,[9] they must be deemed quite accidental.
A comparison of about 125 words of the Mangue with the Mixteca, which I
find among the Berendt MSS., reveals only about half a dozen similarities,
all apparently accidental.
_Phonetics._ The Mangue words in this paper are principally in letters
with the Spanish powers, some of the semi-vowels being in smaller type.
The _h_ is pronounced as an aspirate, and is equivalent to the _j_, which
has its aspirated Spanish value.
All syllables are open; that is, they all end in a vowel sound. Thus
_nimbu_, water, is to be divided _ni-mbu_. In this respect it resembles
the Cherokee, the Japanese, etc.
Dr. Berendt stated that the Chapanec dialect was the most difficult of any
American language he had ever studied, on account of the obscurity and
uncertainty of its sounds. It is greatly syncopated, and terminal
syllables are often pronounced in so low a tone that they escape the
unpracticed ear. The vowels are not distinct, and many of the consonants
are “alternating” as it is called, that is, one may be substituted for
another without altering the meaning of the word. Thus, evil spirit
(_demonio_) may be either _tixämbi´_ or _sisaⁱmbᵘi_, these two being the
same word pronounced indifferently, either way, by the same individual.
This is by no means without parallel in American languages.
The curious frequency in the Mangue of the “resonants” _n_ and _m_ will
strike every observer. This is also the case in the Chapanec. Albornoz
regards it as a phonetic phenomenon only, and remarks, “Whenever a word
begins with _b_, _g_, _y_ or _d_, an _n_ must be written before it, which
is pronounced with the word itself.” Dr. Berendt calls it an “article”
which appears as _n_, _na_, _ni_, or _m_, especially before the letter
_b_. As such, I may suggest its similarity to the Nahuatl _in_, and the
Othomi _na_, both of which are demonstratives worn down almost to
articles.
There is a similar resonant nasal in various South American tongues,
especially the Tupi-Guarani dialects of Brazil. It appears most frequently
before the consonants _b_ and _d_. Its peculiarity is that it is not an
expiratory sound, but a soft _inspirate_, and as such is claimed by Dr.
Nogueira to be a phonetic phenomenon confined exclusively to American
tongues.[10] I have been unable to decide from the descriptions within my
reach of the Chapanec phonetics, whether the initial resonant is an
inspirate, and I would call the attention of travelers to this interesting
point.
In addition to this simple resonant prefix there are a number of particles
beginning either with _n_ or _m_, which are added to indicate the absolute
or independent form of the noun, that is, to characterize it when not
attached to a personal possessive pronoun. Of these Albornoz gives
fourteen for the singular, and seven for the plural. This will explain the
striking prevalence of words beginning with these letters in the
vocabulary.
Accent is of the utmost importance in both these dialects, and the
identity to the eye of various words as _nyujmi_, ear and smoke, arises
from absence of proper accent marks in my authorities. The words for bird,
snake and flower are the same; but Albornoz gives this very example to
illustrate the importance of accent, _nolō_, a snake, _nolô_, a flower.
Unfortunately, none of my authorities employ any accentual mark but the
acute, and this appears to be syllabic. A vowel written above the line of
the word, in Berendt’s MSS., signifies a semi-vowel.
_Structure._ The general structure of the Mangue was clearly polysynthetic
and incorporative in a marked degree. In its grammar it was no doubt
identical in all essential points with the Chapanec, about which, as above
mentioned, we have considerable information in published sources. Nominal
and verbal forms are defined by the categories of animate and inanimate
genera, a distinction which is to a certain extent purely grammatical, as
for instance, a book is considered animate, and a table inanimate
(Albornoz, _Gram._, cap. xiii). The first person plural has an inclusive
and exclusive form. Adjectives usually, but not always, follow the nouns.
Plurals are frequently formed by simply lengthening the terminal vowel
sound.
_The Vocabulary._ The words in the vocabulary have been obtained from the
Rocha and Berendt MSS. Where these two authorities differ the variants are
indicated by the affixed initials, R. and B. All words quoted for the sake
of comparison from Squier, are marked by an affixed S. The observations,
explanations and other remarks attached to the words and phrases are my
own. The comparative expressions taken from the Chapanec (marked, _Chap._)
are from the printed works above mentioned, or from MS. vocabularies of
various authorship in my possession.
All of Rocha’s words are from the dialect of Masaya; but Dr. Berendt
obtained some at the villages of Masatepec, Niquindomo, and Namotiva´, and
this explains the occasional variants given. The differences, however,
between the speech of these localities was evidently slight.
_Vocabulary: English--Mangue._
Achiote, nariyu. (The _Bixa orellana_, a fruit tree; _achiote_ is
Nahuatl).
Aguacate, nirimo´, narimu. (Fruit of the _Persea gratissima_).
Ancestor, kopo´. The same as _old_, q. v.
Ancestress, kapoi. Apparently a feminine form of _kopo_, old.
Anona, naria´. Fruit of the _Anona squamosa_.
Ant, an, náju, naᵃ.
Ara, lapa; _Chap._ txapa. The _Ara macao_, of ornithologists.
Arm, ndiro. Compare _hand_, and _finger_. Properly “the upper extremity.”
S. deno. _Chap._ guluᵘa.
Armpit, ngisa. Compare, _beard_. Perhaps “hair of the armpit.”
Armadillo (_Dasypus_), nyuku´. Compare _lizard_.
Ashes, nitsu, nisú.