radicis cortice unius unciæ pondere tuso, atque devorato, multa ante oculos observare phantasmata, multiplices imagines ac monstrificas rerum figuras, detegique furem, si quidpiam rei familiaris subreptum sit.” Hist. Plant. Nov. Hispan., Tom. iii, p. 272. The chacuaco and its effects are described by Father Venegas in his History of California, etc.
19
“In Mictlan Tetlachihuique, in Nanahualtin, in Tlahuipuchtin.” Paredes, Promptuario Manual Mexicano, p. 128 (Mexico, 1757). The tlahuipuchtin, “those who work with smoke,” were probably diviners who foretold the future from the forms taken by smoke in rising in the air. This class of augurs were also found in Peru, where they were called Uirapircos (Balboa, Hist. du Perou, p. 28-30).
20
Von Gagern, Charakteristik der Indianischer Bevölkerung Mexikos, s. 125.
21
Historia Antigua de Mexico, Tom. ii, p. 25. Francisco Pimentel, in his thoughtful work, Memoria sobre las Causas que han originado la Situacion Actual de la Raza Indigena de Mexico (Mexico, 1864), recognizes how almost impossible it is to extirpate their faith in this nagualism. “Conservan los agueros y supersticiones de la antigüedad, siendo cosa de fe para ellos, los nahuales,” etc., p. 200, and comp. p. 145.
22
On these terms consult the extensive Dictionnaire de la Langue Nahuatl, by Rémi Simeon, published at Paris, 1887. It is not impossible that tona is itself a compound root, including the monosyllabic radical na, which is at the basis of nagual.
23
Sahagun, Historia de Nueva España, Lib. iv, passim, and Lib. x, cap. 9.
24
See Ch. de Labarthe, Révue Américaine, Serie ii, Tom. ii, pp. 222-225. His translation of naualteteuctin by “Seigneurs du gènie” must be rejected, as there is absolutely no authority for assigning this meaning to naualli.
25
Anales de Cuauhtitlan, p. 31. The translator renders it “palo brujo.”
26
Les Anciennes Villes du Nouveau Monde, pp. 146-148, figured on p. 150. On its significance compare Hamy, Decades Americanæ, pp. 74-81.
27
The Native Calendar of Central America and Mexico (Philadelphia, 1893).
28
Eduard Mühlenpfordt, Mexico, Bd. i, s. 255.
29
The word is derived from tlatoa, to speak for another, and its usual translation was “chief,” as the head man spoke for, and in the name of the gens or tribe.
30
The interesting account by Iglesias is printed in the Appendix to the Diccionario Universal de Geographia y Historia (Mexico, 1856). Other writers testify to the tenacity with which the Mixes cling to their ancient beliefs. Señor Moro says they continue to be “notorious idolaters,” and their actual religion to be “an absurd jumble of their old superstitions with Christian doctrines” (in Orozco y Berra, Geografia de las Lenguas de exico, p. 176).
31
For instance, J. B. Carriedo, in his Estudios Historicos del Estado Oaxaqueño (Oaxaca, 1849), p. 15, says the nahualt was a ceremony performed by the native priest, in which the infant was bled from a vein behind the ear, assigned a name, that of a certain day, and a guardian angel or tona. These words are pure Nahuatl, and Carriedo, who does not give his authority, probably had none which referred these rites to the Zapotecs.
32
Juan de Cordova, Arte en Lengua Zapoteca, pp. 16, 202, 203, 213, 216.
33
Quoted in Carriedo, ubi suprá, p. 17.
34
Hist. de las Indias Oc., Dec. iii, Lib. iii, cap. 12.
35
So I understand the phrase, “figuras pintadas con zifras enigmaticas”
36
Popoluca was a term applied to various languages. I suspect the one here referred to was the Mixe. See an article by me, entitled “Chontales and Popolucas; a Study in Mexican Ethnography,” in the Compte Rendu of the Eighth Session of the Congress of Americanists, p. 566, seq.
37
Constit. Diocesan, p. 19.
38
Constitut. Diocesan, Titulo vii, pp. 47, 48.
39
Rather with the Quetzalcoatl of the Nahuas, and the Gucumatz of the Quiches, both of which names mean “Feathered Serpent.” Mixcohuatl, the Cloud Serpent, in Mexican mythology, referred to the Thunder-storm.
40
In his Tzental Vocabulary, Father Lara does not give this exact form; but in the neighboring dialect of the Cakchiquel Father Ximenes has quikeho, to agree together, to enter into an arrangement; the prefix zme is the Tzental word for “mother.”
