Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printers’ errors have been corrected.
NOTES ON THE MANGUE;
An extinct Dialect formerly spoken in
Nicaragua.
BY
DANIEL G. BRINTON, M.D.,
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, November 20, 1885.)
NOTES ON THE MANGUE;
An extinct Dialect formerly spoken in
Nicaragua.
BY
DANIEL G. BRINTON, M.D.,
Professor of Ethnology and Archæology at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia.
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, November 20, 1885.)
PHILADELPHIA:
McCalla & Stavely, Printers, 237-9 Dock Street.
1886.
By Daniel G. Brinton, M.D.
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, November 20, 1885.)
Sources. Nothing whatever has been published about theMangue language, except a list of ninety-five words, by Mr. E.G. Squier in his work, “Nicaragua, its People, Scenery andMonuments.” Whence he obtained this short vocabulary hedoes not state; but it is evidently the work of some one onlyslightly acquainted with the character of the language. I do notmake any use of it in the present notes, except in a few instancesfor comparison.
My authorities are, first, Don Juan Eligio de la Rocha’sApuntamientos de la Lengua Mangue, MS. The author wasborn in Granada, C. A., June 15, 1815. By profession a lawyer,his taste led him to the study of languages, and he acquired afluent knowledge of French, English and Italian. He wasappointed instructor in French and Spanish grammar in 1848in the University of Leon, C. A., and ten years later, 1858, publishedhis Elementos de Gramática Castellana (Leon, 1858, small4to, pp. 199). His death occurred in 1873.
While living in Masaya in 1842, he became interested in thesurviving remnants of the Mangues, and undertook to collectmaterials for a study of their language. Unfortunately, he nevercompleted these investigations, and many of the sheets on whichhe had recorded his notes were scattered. A few of them, however,[4]were in the hands of his brother, Doctor Don Jesus de laRocha, of Granada, who gave Dr. C. H. Berendt an opportunityto copy them in 1874.
In that same year, 1874, Dr. Berendt collected the lastobtainable fragments of the Mangue. In his (printed) lecturebefore the American Geographical Society in 1876, he thusdescribes his efforts in this direction, and at the same timepoints out the localities where the Mangue speaking populationswere located when they first came to the knowledge of the invadingwhites:—
“The Spaniards on entering the present State of Nicaragua from Nicoyabay, and then marching through the country, came into contact first withthe southern section of the Chorotegas or Mangues, as they were alsocalled; then with a Nahuatl tribe, whose capital and king are mentionedas bearing the name of Nicarao; and after these again with Chorotegas orMangues, who, however, did not occupy the whole tract of land up to theBay of Fonseca, but were again separated