Chapter V: Section 4: Didactic Literature

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.