Nahuatl

“ What I would now call attention to is the fact that in none of the dialects of the specifically Mexican or Aztecan stock of languages do we find the word nagual in the sense in which it is employed in the above extract, and this is strong evidence that the origin of Nagualism is not to be sought in that stock.
3. We do find, however, in the Nahuatl language, which is the proper name of the Aztecan, a number of derivatives from the same root, na, among them this very word, Nahuatl, all of them containing the idea “to know,” or “knowledge.” ”

“ Yet to him we probably owe the preservation of the writings of Ixtlilxochitl, Tezozomoc, and others who wrote in Spanish, and whose volumes have since seen the light in the collections of Bustamente, Lord Kingsborough, Ternaux-Compans, and elsewhere.
The Nahuatl MSS. have remained unedited. Few took an interest in their contents, fewer still in the language. The science of linguistics is very modern, and that even so perfect an idiom as the Nahuatl could command the attention of scholars for its own sake, had not dawned on the minds of patrons of learning. ”

“ Following this precedent I have ventured to search for further resemblances between Nahuatl and Quechua words, and one of the remarkable results I obtained was the discovery that the well-known Quechua name for colonists=Mitimaes, the meaning of which, in Quechua, is not forthcoming, seems to be connected in sound and meaning with the Nahuatl Ce-mitime=sons of one mother (Molina's dictionary) . It is superfluous to point out how appropriate this designation would have been for the colonists who invariably founded fresh centres of civilization on the plan of the central metropolis. ”

“ Nor in the Nahuatl language—although its very name is derived from it58-*—does the radical na appear in its simplicity and true significance. To the Nahuas, also, it must have been a loan.
It is true that de la Serna derives the Mexican naualli, a sorcerer, from the verb nahualtia, to mask or disguise oneself, “because a naualli is one who masks or disguises himself under the form of some lower animal, which is his nagual;”58-† but it is altogether likely that nahualtia derived its meaning from the custom of the medicine men to wear masks during their ceremonies. ”

“ No. VII. Ancient Nahuatl Poetry. Edited by Daniel G. Brinton, M. D. 176 pages. 1890.
In this volume twenty-seven songs in the original Nahuatl are presented, with translation, notes, vocabulary, etc. Many of them date from before the conquest and none later than the sixteenth century. The introduction describes the ancient poetry of the Nahuas in all its bearings.
No. VIII. Rig Veda Americanus. Edited by Daniel G. Brinton, M. D. 95 pages. 1890.
Presents the original text with a gloss in Nahuatl of twenty sacred chants of the ancient Mexicans. ”

“ I know no more instructive instance in the history of language to illustrate how original defects are amended in periods of higher culture by the linguistic faculty, than this precise point in the genesis of the Nahuatl tongue. The Nahuas, when they approached the upper levels of emotional development, found their tongue singularly poor in radicals conveying such conceptions. ”

“ Whatever their vices, they are equally so, or if similar, similar on account of like conditions of life. Climate, inheritance, and the vicissitudes of their fortunes, would have caused them to be somewhat diferent by this time, even if they had come from a common stock, but this is absolutely not the case, and long before the time of the Conquest, the characteristics of the Nahuatl race, which still cling to their present descendants, were as strongly marked as those of the Red Man, while they were widely remote from them. ”

“ Under the names Chontalli and Popoluca, both Nahuatl words indicating “foreigners,” ethnographers have included tribes of wholly diverse lineage. In (32) I have shown that some are Tzentals, others Tequistlatecas, Ulvas, Mixes, Zapotecs, Nahuas, Lencas and Cakchiquels, thus doing away with the confusion introduced by these inappropriate ethnic terms.
No. (33) is an article for the use of students of the Nahuatl language, mentioning the principal grammars, dictionaries and text-books which are available. ”

“ The culture hero of the Aztecs was Quetzalcoatl, and the leading drama, the central myth, in all the extensive and intricate theology of the Nahuatl speaking tribes was his long contest with Tezcatlipoca, "a contest," observes an eminent Mexican antiquary, "which came to be the main element in the Nahuatl religion and the cause of its modifications, and which materially influenced the destinies of that race from its earliest epochs to the time of its destruction." ”

“ Mayapan became the centre of Nahuatl worship. The calendar the invaders brought with them must have been the old honored division of the years into 365 days, with 20 months, and their cyclical period of not 20 but 52 years, and it is also known that about the year 1450, the political union of the Mayas was broken into several smaller divisions, some of which presumably would have held to the ancient cycle of 20 years; others may have adopted the Nahuatl cycle of 52 years, and possibly, may have introduced the cycle of 24 years spoken of by Señor Perez. ”

“ The language numbered about sixteen dialects, none very remote from the parent stem, which linguists identify as the Maya proper of the Yucatecan peninsula. While there are a number of verbal similarities between Maya and Nahuatl, the radicals of the two idioms and their grammatical structure are widely asunder. The Nahuatl is an excessively pliable, polysyllabic and highly synthetic tongue; the Maya is rigid, its words short, of one or two syllables generally, and is scarcely more synthetic than French. ”

“ This imaginary situation parallels the actual one in American linguistics. Not a single ancient form of speech has been preserved. Many living ones are inadequately known. The fact that some enthusiast has compiled a grammar of Nahuatl or Quechua or Eskimo does not necessarily mean that he has dissected out its whole structure. A book devoted to a language may be as superficial as it looks learned. And the man who really knew Nahuatl has usually concerned himself very little with Quechua. ”

“ This is the order of the Katuns since the four Katuns during which the Tutulxiu left their home and country Nonoual to the west of Zuiua, and went from the land and city of Tula, having agreed together to this effect.
[109] I have said nothing of the proper names in this paragraph. They are remarkable for the fact that three out of the four are unquestionably Nahuatl or Aztec, and hence they have given occasion for considerable theorizing in favor of the “Toltec” origin of the Maya civilization, and also of the Nahuatl descent of the princely family of the Tutulxiu. ”

“ It is well known that, under the rulership of Tizoc, the Mexicans extended their conquests into Guatemala. Buschmann has, moreover, proven that the foregoing names of the capitals, of what were at one time four provinces, are pure Nahuatl, which fact establishes the existence of Nahua supremacy in these regions. ”

“ While some of the Nahuatl races imagined that after death the common people would be transformed into insects, the chiefs into birds, the Aztecs conceived of graduated stages of happiness for mankind. Warriors slain in battle were immediately to dwell in the house of the sun; less distinguished souls went to live in the various planets. ”

“ It certainly could not in Maya; and in Nahuatl, tototl in composition would drop both its terminal consonants.
The remaining names, Nonoual, Zuiua, Tula-pan, clearly indicate their Nahuatl origin. Zuiua, which was erroneously printed in Pio Perez’s version as Zuina is Zuiva; Nonoual is Nonohual; Tulapan, literally “the standard of Tula,” refers to the famous city of the Toltecs, presided over by Quetzalcoatl. All these names are borrowed directly from the myth of this hero-god. ”

“ According to the census of 1880 there were 31,000 Indians in Mexico belonging to the Familia Chontal. [185] No such family exists. The word chontalli in the [147] Nahuatl language means simply “stranger,” and was applied by the Nahuas to any people other than their own. According to the Mexican statistics, the Chontals are found in the states of Mexico, Puebla, Oaxaca, Guerrero, Tobasco, Guatemala and Nicaragua. A similar term is popoloca, which in Nahuatl means a coarse fellow, one speaking badly, that is, broken Nahuatl. ”

“ In the last stages of the Toltec period, a development in religious thought led to the introduction of human sacrifice, a practice which appears to have been alien to the early Maya culture. This was adopted by the more recently arrived Nahuatl tribes; trouble and discontent arose in the Valley, and culminated with the rise of the Aztec and a wholesale migration of tribes who had preserved the Toltec blood and tradition in purer form. ”

“ Hence the question arises, was it original with the immigrating Nahuatl tribes who came from the higher northern countries as is reported, and did they succeed in forming such a consolidation with the Maya races as to mingle both under the same hierarchical government, or did the contrary take place? The most prevalent opinion makes the Nahuas the inventors of the general system of chronology, but later students begin to express themselves in favor of its Maya origin. On a more fitting occasion we are desirous to present our reasons for taking the latter view. ”

“ As history, it is valueless; but as indicative of a long and early intercourse between the Maya and Nahuatl speaking tribes, it is of great interest. As this question will also recur in reference to various later passages in the Maya chronicles, I will discuss it here.
One of the earliest historians of Yucatan, the Doctor Don Pedro Sanchez de Aguilar, states that six hundred years before the Spanish conquest the Mayas were vassals of the Aztecs, and that they were taught or forced by these to construct the extraordinary edifices in their country, such as are found at Uxmal and Chichen Itza. ”

“ It is noteworthy that in Nahuatl, the name for head=quaitl, is singularly like quauitl=tree, and also recalls the word for serpent=coatl, facts which may have somewhat guided the choice and association of these symbols. The native metaphors recorded by Olmos, moquauhtia=an honored person or lord who has vassals or dependents, and atlapalli=literally, leaf=a person of the lower class, a worker, initiate us still further into the meaning of the native symbolism and prove the antiquity of this, since the designation of a chief as a tree and a vassal as a leaf was in current use. ”

“ Although the Mayan civilization was established outside the limits of the present Mexico, it is necessary to know something of it in connection with the other tribes who built up the civilization of Anahuac.
The Mayas are thought to have been the earliest of the Nahuatl family to migrate from their northern home. Their language differs from the other Nahua dialects, and so do their traditions, monuments, and hieroglyphics, but these differences were probably caused by the difference in time in the departure of these races from their common starting-point. ”

“ The full analysis of this suggestive and authentic astronomical figure will reveal the secret of most of the rich symbolism and mythology of the American nations. It is easy to see how from it was derived the Nahuatl doctrine of the nahua ollin, or Four Motions of the Sun, with its accessories of the Four Ages of the world. The Tree of Life, so constantly recurring as a design in Maya and Mexican art, is but another outgrowth of the same symbolic expression for the same ideas. ”

“ Pausing here for a moment, we note the curious fact that in the Zuñi name for the twins we find koa, resembling the Nahuatl coatl=twin or serpent; that the name of one brother Ehk-ona recalls the Mexican ec-atl=air, wind or breath, and the Maya ik=air, wind, breath, courage, spirit. The allotment of two quarters to each and the image of a spider employed to express their descent from heaven have counterparts in Nahuatl lore.
The “Twain” ... guided men upwards to become the fathers of six kinds of men (yellow or tawny, grey, red, white, mingled and black) .... ”

“ This idea gains strength when we note that although tribes of distinctly Nahuatl origin are found in Nicaragua, only one small tribe of that stock, the Pipiles, is to be found within the area marked as that of Maya inscriptions, and this tribe is located on the Pacific seaboard.
It seems probable that the Mayas and the so-called Toltecs were originally the same people, but whether the migration from Mexico to the valleys of the Usumacinta and Motagua was merely owing to the natural expansion of the race or to expulsion by force there is no evidence to show. ”

“ The Maya verb tepal=to govern or reign, or to be “one who mediates,” appears to be allied to the above Nahuatl words and it is not unlikely that the employment of the flint-knife or tecpatl as an emblem of office had been suggested by the fact that its Nahuatl name resembles, in sound, the above words formed with tecpan, and also the Maya verb tepal. ”

“ The native languages furnish strong indications that, in ordinary tribal life, the separation of the sexes must have been generally enforced from remote antiquity and that male and female communities existed in various portions of the continent. It is well known that, to this day, the Nahuatl tongue spoken by the men is different from that spoken by the women, and that the same duality of language prevails among other American tribes. ”