ON THE CHANE-ABAL (FOUR-LANGUAGE) TRIBE AND DIALECT OF CHIAPAS.

BY DANIEL G. BRINTON, M. D.,

Professor of American Archæology and Linguistics in the University of Pennsylvania.

Of the numerous branches of the Mayan linguistic stock that remaining the least known is the Chane-abal, Chanabal, or Chañabal, spoken in a remote corner of the Mexican State of Chiapas. The explanation of this ignorance is easy enough when we consider how small is the tribe, how isolated its locality, and how indifferent the ordinary traveler is to ethnological and especially linguistic subjects. I am gratified, therefore, to be able to offer sufficient material about this people and their tongue to dispel various errors found in the authors, and to assign to both their correct ethnologic positions.

Name and Synonyms.-In his "Geographical Description of Chiapas," Pineda describes the city of Comitan in these words: "Its population is a mixture of whites and natives; the latter speak four languages besides the Spanish, and on this account their maternal tongue is called Chañabal, and is compounded of the Zotzil, Casdal, Maya, and Trokek.'*

This extraordinary statement has given some trouble to later writers. Nowhere else do we hear of any such languages as the Casdal and the Trokek. Orozco y Berra, indeed, was so affected by their solitary appellations as to exclaim, "These languages have disappeared, and their names alone remain to recall those ancient tribes, once possessors of the land, who gave way to the later nations who precipitated themselves upon the territory of Chiapas," etc.† Pimentel also classifies these among the extinct languages of Mexico, and after him various later writers.

*Descripcion Geográfica de Chiapas y Soconusco. Por Emeterio Pineda, p. 58. (Mexico, 1845.)

172.

Geografia de las Lenguas de México. Por Manuel Orozco y Berra, pp. 21,

Cuadro Descriptivo de las Lenguas Indigenas de México. Por Francesco Pimentel. Tomo III, p. 280.

In view of the dissemination of this opinion by such well-known authors on Mexican linguistics, it is worth while saying that Casdal is nothing more than a blunder for Cakchiquel and Trokek for Zoque, and both Cakchiquel and Zoque are well-known tongues, still spoken by thousands of active citizens. This will be evident by a study of the vocabulary I present, and suggests itself, indeed, from the names themselves.

Another error of Pineda is to assign the name Chañabal to the language spoken at Comitan; and this, too, is repeated by Orozco y Berra, Pimentel, and others down to the Count de Charencey and Mr. Pilling. The proper form is Chane-abal, which is shortened to Chanabal in the writings of Father Ximenez, who is the first to mention the tongue (about 1720), and in the Bibliography of the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg.

The name Chane-abal means, as Pineda says, "four languages," chane being the numeral four, and abal, literally, word or words, and, by extension, language.

As synonyms, Orozco y Berra gives the names Jojolabal, Jocolabal, and Comiteco.† Evidently the two former are modifications of the same, and both are corruptions of the term tohol-abal, which means, to speak clearly, distinctly, or the clear, distinct language.

I find a note in the late Dr. Berendt's papers on these names, to this effect: "The two names which the people who speak this tongue themselves give to it are Chaneabal and Toholabal, and, in preference, the latter. They do not say Chañabal nor Chanabal, but distinctly Chaneabál. The words tohol abal mean 'to speak straightly, clearly, or distinctly;' and they do speak it in this

manner.

The term Comiteco is merely an adjective in Spanish form from the place name Comitlan, itself a Nahuatl word, compounded of comitl, vase or vases, and tlan, at: the place of pots," doubtless referring to some ancient active industry in pottery which was there carried on. In general, the natives refer to themselves as "Comitecos,' ," whether they reside directly in Comitan or not.

See

*In his Arte de las Tres Lenguas, Cakchiquel, Quiché y Zutuhil, quoted by Brasseur, Hist. des Nations Civilisées du Mexique, Tome I, p. 10, note. also Brasseur, Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatemalienne, pp. 36, 119.

Geografia de las Lenguas de México, p. 167.

Comp. Buschmann, Ueber die aztekishen Ortsnamen, s. 807.

Bibliography.-The sources of our knowledge of the Chane-abal may be briefly stated.

The oldest is comparatively recent. It is a Confesionario y Doctrina Christiana, in the dialect of Comitan, translated by a Dominican, Father Domingo Paz, in 1775.*

A second Confesionario was prepared in 1813 by Manuel Camposeca, apparently a native, for the use of Father Benito Correa, also in the Comitan dialect. Both these were secured by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg and formed part of his library at its sale. The Abbé also stated in a letter published in the New York Tribune, November 21, 1851, that he had obtained a manuscript grammar of the tongue, but of this I do not find any mention in his later writings. The Confesionario of Camposeca has been published by the Count de Charencey in the Revue de Linguistique, July 15, 1887.

In 1871 the Abbé Brasseur announced the above as the only extant monuments of the tongue. The late Orozco y Berra, however, had in his possession a translation of the Lord's Prayer into Chaneabal, which was published by Pimentel in his work already quoted.

My own special facilities for the study of the tongue are derived from two manuscripts. One of these is entitled Vocabulario Comparativo de las Lenguas Zoque de Tuxtla, Zotzil de San Bartholomé de los Llanos, Chaneabal de Comitan, per Don José Maria Sanchez, Cura de Ocosocoantla. It is the original, in-folio, not dated, but apparently about 1850 or 1860, and contains 261 words and phrases in Chane-abal. The second is a small quarto of 25 pages, containing a vocabulary of about 500 words, obtained by the late Dr. Karl Hermann Berendt in Tuxtla Gutierrez in 1870. His informants were a Spanish Mexican lady, Doña Agnede de Figueroa, and two of her servants, all of whom had passed years in Comitan and spoke its dialect fluently. The Cura Sanchez expresses the sounds with the Spanish alphabet, while Dr. Berendt employs that which he had devised for this group of tongues.

Geographical Distribution.-The Chane abal is confined to the partido of Chiapas, known as the Partido de la Frontera, on account of its proximity to Guatemala. This partido includes Comitan,

* Confesionario y Doctrina Christiana en Lengua Chanabal de Comitan y Tachinulla en las Chiapas. See Brasseur, Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatemalienne, p. 119.

Zapaluta, Chicomucelo, and Socoltenango. In the last Zotzil is the prevailing tongue-in the others, Chane-abal.* According to the census of 1862 the natives speaking the latter numbered about 13,000, which is approximately the figure obtained by Pineda twenty years before, and probably remains to-day nearly the same. On the north they adjoin the territory of the Zotzils and Tzendals, while both to the east, south, and west they are separated by wide uninhabited areas from the Maya dialects of Guatemala and the Nahuas, etc., of Soconusco. The statement advanced by Brasseur that the Chane-abal is spoken in the extreme north of the province of Huehuetenango, in Guatemala, remains unsupported by evidence; and the town or place called Tachinulla, in the title of Paz's Confesionario, is not mentioned on any map nor by any other author.

Ethnological Traits.—Pineda gives this tribe the credit of being the most industrious of any in the department of Chiapas. They devote themselves to raising stock, to agriculture, to the manufacture of basket work, straw and cotton goods, to distilling brandy from the maguey, and to hunting. Formerly there were mining industries in this locality, and a mysterious rumor continues among the whites that the Indians still know rich mines of gold and silver, but that they keep them secret, and send the precious metals they obtain far into Guatemala to be sold.

Physically, Dr. Berendt describes them of small stature, less robust than the Tzendals and Zotzils, darker in hue, and with a more pronounced mongoloid expression. Pineda says that the climate. is less favorable to the growth of the men than of the women, and hence that the latter appear to best advantage.

Mentally, they are inoffensive and mild in disposition, not prone to quarrels, but of active intelligence.

Their country is rather level, with numerous streams and swamps, and is in consequence not healthy, especially to Europeans.

* All these places are mentioned by Remesal, in 1617, as under the jurisdiction of the Dominican Convent of Copanabastla. Historia de Chiapas y Guatemala, p. 748.

Compare Brasseur, Arch. de la Com. Scientif. du Mexique, Tome I, p. 130, and Stoll, Ethnographie der Republik Guatemala, p. 88. Berendt, in his Geografía de las Lenguas Maya-Kiche, MS., gives no support to the assertion.

Phonetics.-The phonetics of this dialect reveal at once its close relationship to the Mayan linguistic stock. It has the well-known "cut" letters, the "consonantes heridas" of Spanish authors, k'k, p'p, t't, t'ts, t'tx, which may be described as a repetition of the sound of the single letter, with a slight hiatus between the two. There are also the gutturals, the ch', as ch in the German Buch, and hs, and the soft x, like sh in shore.

The vocabulary prepared by Dr. Berendt was written by him in his own "Analytical Alphabet for Mexican and Central-American Languages, ," which contains a number of letter forms not obtainable in type. In transcribing it I have indicated the cut letters. and gutturals by an apostrophe, as kk' and ch'. The other principal peculiarities of this alphabet are: ts = German x; tx= the English ch in church; ks = the English x in tax. their Continental sound, but when one is written above the line it is to be pronounced in one syllable with the vowel following and without losing its independent character.

The vowels have

Comparisons.-A feature of much interest in Dr. Berendt's vocabulary is the extensive analogies he has indicated between the Chane-abal and other dialects of the Mayan group. tinguished by the following initials:

These are dis

All the above are dialects of the Mayan group. Affinities of tongues beyond this group are indicated by

* This alphabet was published, lithographed in fac-simile, by the American Ethnological Society, in 1869.