THE LINEAL MEASURES OF THE SEMI-CIVILIZED NATIONS
OF MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA.[397]
Positive progress in constructive art can be accurately estimated by the kind and perfection of the instruments of precision employed by the artists. A correct theory of architecture or of sculpture must have as its foundation a correct system of weights and measures, and recognized units and standards of gravity and extension. Where these are not found, all is guess-work, and a more or less haphazard rule-of-thumb.
In a study of the art-products of Mexico and Central America, it has occurred to me that we may with advantage call linguistics to our aid, and attempt to ascertain, by an analysis of the words for weights and measures, what units, if any, were employed by those who constructed the massive works in that region, which still remain for our astonishment. The tongues I shall examine are the Maya of Yucatan, its related dialect the Cakchiquel of Guatemala, and the Nahuatl or Aztec of Mexico. The most striking monuments of art in North America are found in the territories where these were spoken at the time of the Conquest. The Cakchiquel may be considered to include the Quiche and the Tzutuhil, both of which are closely associated to it as dialects of the same mother tongue.
THE MAYAS.
The generic word in Maya for both measuring and weighing, and for measures and weights, is at present ppiz, the radical sense of which is “to put in order,” “to arrange definite limits.” Its apparent similarity to the Spanish pesar, French peser, etc., seems accidental, as it is in Maya the root of various words meaning battle, to fight, etc., from the “order of battle,” observed on such occasions. Any weight or measure is spoken of as ppizib, to measure land is ppiz-luum, a foot measure ppiz-oc etc. But I am quite certain that the original scope of the word did not include weight, as there is no evidence that the ancient Mayas knew anything about a system of estimating quantity by gravity. If the word is not from the Spanish pesar, it has extended its meaning since the conquest.
The Maya measures are derived directly, and almost exclusively, from the human body, and largely from the hand and foot.
Oc, the foot; chekoc, the footstep, the print or length of the foot, is a measure of length. Other forms of the same are chekel, chekeb, chekeb-oc, etc.; and this abundance of synonyms would seem to show that the measure of a foot was very familiar and frequent. The verb is chekoc (tah, té), as in the phrase:
i. e. He measured by feet the church. From this was distinguished—
Xukab, paces or strides, a word confined to the paces of man. The verb is Xukab (tah, té), to step off, to measure by paces.
Quite a series of measures were recognized from the ground (or, as some say, from the point of the foot) to the upper portions of the body.
Hun cal coy u-xul (one to the neck of the ankle its-end), extending from the ground to the narrowest portion of the ankle.
Hun ppuloc u-xul (one calf-of-the-leg its-end), from the ground to the highest portion of the calf of the leg. The word xul means end or limit, and is used often adverbially, as in the phrase uay u-xul, literally “here its end,” or “thus far” (Span. hasta aqui).
Hun pixib, the distance from the ground (or point of the toes) to the knee-cap, from piix, the knee. Also called hun hol piix, from hol, head, the knee-cap being called “the knee-head.”
Hun hachabex, one girdle, from the ground to the belt or girdle, to which the skirt was fashioned (from hach, to tie, to fasten). The same measure was called hun theth, the word theth being applied to the knot of the girdle.
Hun tanam, from the ground to the border of the true ribs; from tanam, the liver. The Diccionario de Motul gives the example, hun tanam in ual, one tanam (is) my corn, i. e., my corn reaches to my chest. It adds that the measure is from the point of the foot to the chest.
Hun tzem, a measure from the ground to a line drawn from one mamma to the other.
Hun cal u-xul, one neck its-end, from the ground to the border (upper or lower) of the neck.
Hun chi, from the mouth, chi, to the ground.
Hun holom, one head, from the top of the head to the ground. This is also called hun uallah, one time the stature or height of a man, from a root meaning “to draw to a point,” “to finish off.” The Spanish writers say that one uallah was equal to about three varas, and was used as a square measure in meting corn fields.[398] The Spanish vara differed as much as the English ell, and to the writer in question could not have represented quite two feet. Elsewhere he defines the vara as half a braza or fathom. (See below, betan.)
The hand in Maya is expressed by the word kab, which also means the arm, and is more correctly therefore translated by the anatomical term “upper extremity.” This is not an uncommon example in American tongues. When it is necessary to define the hand specifically the Mayas say u cheel kab, “the branch of the arm,” and for the fingers u nii kab, “the points (literally, noses) of the arm” or upper extremity.
The shortest measurements known to them appear to have been finger-breadths, which are expressed by the phrase u nii kab. The thumb was called u nā kab, literally “the mother of the hand” or arm, and as a measure of length the distance from the first joint to the end of the nail was in use and designated by the same term.
With the hand open and the fingers extended, there were three different measures or spans recognized by the Mayas.
1. The nāb, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the middle finger.
2. The oecnab, or little nāb, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the index finger. This is the span yet most in use by the native inhabitants of Yucatan (Dr. Berendt).
3. The chi nāb, or the nāb which extends to the edge, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the little finger (Pio Perez).
The kok was a hand measure formed by closing the fingers and extending the thumb. Measuring from the outer border of the hand to the end of the thumb, it would be about seven inches.
The cuc or noch cuc (noch is a term applied to a bony prominence, in this instance to the olecranon) was the cubit, and was measured from the summit of the olecranon to the end of the fingers, about eighteen inches.
The most important of the longer measures was the zap or zapal. It was the distance between the extremities of the extended arms, and is usually put down at a fathom or six feet.
The half of it was called betan or pātan, meaning “to the middle of the chest.” Canes and cords were cut of the fixed length of the zap and bore the name xapalche, zapsticks, as our yard-stiçk (che == stick), and hilppiz, measuring rods (hil, a species of cane, and ppiz, to measure, Dicc. Motul).
On this as a unit, the customary land measure was based. It was the kaan, one shorter, hun kaan tah ox zapalche, a kaan of three zap, and one longer, hun kaan tah can zapalche, a kaan of four zap. The former is stated to be thirty-six fathoms square, the latter forty-eight fathoms square. Twenty kaan made a vinic, man, that amount of land being considered the area requisite to support one family in maize.
The uncertainty about this measure is increased by the evident error of Bishop Landa, or more probably his copyist, in making the vinic equal to 400 square feet, which even in the most favored soils would never support a family. He probably said “400 feet square,” which in that climate would be sufficient. The kaan is said by Spanish writers to be equal to the Mexican mecate, which contains 5184 square feet. I acknowledge, however, that I have not reconciled all the statements reported by authors about these land measures.
Greater measures of length are rarely mentioned. Journeys were measured by lub, which the Spaniards translated “leagues,” but by derivation it means “resting places,” and I have not ascertained that it had a fixed length.
The Mayas were given to the drawing of maps, and the towns had the boundaries of their common lands laid out in definite lines. I have manuscripts, some dated as early in 1542, which describe these town lands. In most of them only the courses are given, but not the distances. In one, a title to a domain in Acanceh, there are distances given, but in a measure quite unknown to me, sicina, preceded by the numeral and its termination indicating measures, hulucppiz sicina, eleven sicinas.[399]
The maps indicate relative position only, and were evidently not designed by a scale, or laid off in proportion to distance. The distinguished Yucatecan antiquary, the Rev. Don Crescencio Carrillo, in his essay on the cartography of the ancient Mayas,[400] apparently came to the same conclusion, as he does not mention any method of measurement.
I do not know of any measurements undertaken in Yucatan to ascertain the metrical standard employed by the ancient architects. It is true that Dr. Augustus LePlongeon asserts positively that they knew and used the metric system, and that the metre and its divisions are the only dimensions that can be applied to the remains of the edifices.[401] But apart from the eccentricity of this statement, I do not see from Dr. LePlongeon’s own measurements that the metre is in any sense a common divisor for them.
From the linguistic evidence, I incline to believe that the oc, the foot, was their chief lineal unit. This name was also applied to the seventh day of the series of twenty which made up the Maya month; and there may be some connection between these facts and the frequent recurrence of the number seven in the details of their edifices.[402]
THE CAKCHIQUELS.
The root-word for measuring length is, in Cakchiquel, et. Its primitive meaning is, a sign, a mark, a characteristic. From this root are derived the verbal etah, to measure length, to lay out a plan, to define limits; etal, a sign, mark, limit; etabal, measuring field; etamah, to know, i. e., to recognize the signs and characters of things; etamanizah, to cause to know, to teach, to instruct, etc.
My authorities do not furnish evidence that the Cakchiquels used the foot as the unit of measurement, differing in this from the Mayas. They had, however, like the latter, a series of measurements from the ground to certain points of the body, and they used a special terminal particle, bem (probably from be, to go), “up to” to indicate such measurements, as vexibem, up to the girdle (vex, girdle, i, connective, bem, up to, or “it goes to”).
These body measures, as far as I have found them named, are as follows:
quequebem, from the ground to the knee.
ru-vach a, from the ground to the middle of the thigh; literally “its front, the thigh,” ru, its, vach, face, front, a, the muscles of the thigh.
vexibem, from the ground to the girdle, vex.
qaalqaxibem, from the ground to the first true ribs.
kulim, from the ground to the neck (kul).
The more exact Cakchiquel measures were derived from the upper extremity. The smallest was the finger breadth, and was spoken of as one, two, three, four fingers, han ca, cay ca, ox ca, cah ca (ca=finger). This was used in connection with the measure called tuvic, the same that I have described as the Maya kok, obtained by closing the hand and extending the thumb. They combined these in such expressions as ca tuvic raqin han ca, two tuvics with (plus) one finger breadth.[403]
The span of the Cakchiquels was solely that obtained by extending the thumb and fingers and including the space between the extremities of the thumb and middle finger. It was called qutu, from the radical qut, which means to show, to make manifest, and is hence akin in meaning to the root et, mentioned above.
The cubit, chumay, was measured from the point of the elbow to the extremities of the fingers. We are expressly informed by Father Coto that this was a customary building measure. “When they build their houses they use this cubit to measure the length of the logs. They also measure ropes in the same manner, and say, Tin chumaih retaxic riqam, I lay out in cubits the rope with which I am to measure.”
The different measures drawn from the arms were:
chumay, from the elbow to the end of the fingers of the same hand.
hahmehl, from the elbow to the ends of the fingers of the opposite hand, the arms being outstretched.
telen, from the point of the shoulder of one side to the ends of the fingers of the outstretched arm on the other side.
tzam telen, from the point of the shoulder to the ends of the fingers on the same side. Tzam means nose, point, beak, etc.
ru vach qux, from the middle of the breast to the end of the outstretched hand.
hah, from the tips of the fingers of one hand to those of the other, the arms outstretched.
Another measure was from the point of the shoulder to the wrist.
The hah, or fathom, was one of the units of land measure, and the corn fields and cacao plantations were surveyed and laid out with ropes, qam, marked off in fathoms. The fields are described as of five ropes, ten ropes, etc., but I have not found how many fathoms each rope contained.
Another unit of land measure in frequent use was the maaoh. This was the circumference of the human figure. A man stood erect, his feet together, and both arms extended. The end of a rope was placed under his feet and its slack passed over one hand, then on top of his head, then over the other hand, and finally brought to touch the beginning. This gives somewhat less than three times the height. This singular unit is described by both Varea and Coto as in common use by the natives.
There were no accurate measures of long distances. As among the Mayas, journeys were counted by resting places, called in Cakchiquel uxlanibal, literally “breathing places,” from uxla, the breath, itself, a derivative of the radical ux, to exist, to be, to live, the breath being taken as the most evident sign of life.
There was originally no word in Cakchiquel meaning “to weigh,” as in a balance, and therefore they adopted the Spanish peso, as tin pesoih, I weigh. Nor, although they constructed stone walls of considerable height, did they have any knowledge of the plumb line or plummet. The name they gave it even shows that they had no idea what its use was, as they called it “the piece of metal for fastening together,” supposing it to be an aid in cementing the stone work, rather than in adjusting its lines.[404]
THE AZTECS.
In turning to the Mexicans or Aztecs, some interesting problems present themselves. As far as I can judge by the Nahuatl language, measures drawn from the upper extremity were of secondary importance, and were not the bases of their metrical standards, and, as I shall show, this is borne out by a series of proofs from other directions.
The fingers, mapilli, appear to have been customary measures. They are mentioned in the early writers as one equal to an inch. The name mapilli, is a synthesis of maitl, hand, and pilli, child, offspring, addition, etc.
The span was called miztetl or miztitl, a word of obvious derivation, meaning “between the finger nails,” from iztetl, finger nail. This span, however, was not like ours, from the extremity of the thumb to the extremity of the little finger, nor yet like that of the Cakchiquels, from the extremity of the thumb to that of the middle finger, but like that now in use among the Mayas (see above), from the extremity of the thumb to that of the index finger.[405]
There were four measures from the point of the elbow; one to the wrist of the same arm, a second to the wrist of the opposite arm, a third to the ends of the fingers of the same arm, and the fourth to the ends of the fingers of the opposite arm, the arms always considered as extended at right angles to the body. The terms for these are given somewhat confusedly in my authorities, but I believe the following are correct.
1. From the elbow to the wrist of the same arm; cemmatzotzopatzli, “a little arm measure,” from ce, a, one, ma from maitl, arm or hand, tzotzoca, small, inferior, patzoa, to make small, to diminish.
2. From the elbow to the wrist of the opposite arm, cemmitl, an arrow, a shaft, from ce, and mitl, arrow, this distance being the approved length of an arrow. We may compare the old English expression, a “cloth-yard shaft.”
3. From the elbow to the ends of the fingers of the same arm, cemmolicpitl, one elbow, ce, one, molicpitl, elbow. This is the cubit.
4. From the elbow to the ends of the fingers of the opposite arm.
The following were the arm measures:
Cemaçolli, from the tip of the shoulder to the end of the hand (ce, one, maçoa, to extend the arm).
Cemmatl, from the tip of the fingers of one hand to those of the other. Although this word is apparently a synthesis of ce, one, maitl, arm, and means “one arm,” it is uniformly rendered by the early writers una braza, a fathom.
Cenyollotli, from the middle of the breast to the end of the fingers (ce, one, yollotl, breast).
It is known that the Aztecs had a standard measure of length which they employed in laying out grounds and constructing buildings. It was called the octacatl, but neither the derivation of this word, nor the exact length of the measure it represented, has been positively ascertained. The first syllable, oc, it will be noticed, is the same as the Maya word for foot, and in Nahuatl xocopalli is “the sole of the foot.” This was used as a measure by the decimal system, and there were in Nahuatl two separate and apparently original words to express a measure of ten foot-lengths. One was:
Matlaxocpallatamachiualoni, which formidable synthesis is analyzed as follows: matla, from matlactli, ten, xocpal, from xocpalli, foot-soles, tamachiuia, to measure (from machiotl, a sign or mark, like the Cakchiquel etal) l, for lo, sign of the passive, oni, a verbal termination “equivalent to the Latin bilis or dus.”[406] Thus the word means that which is measurable by ten foot-lengths.
The second word was matlacyxitlatamachiualoni.
The composition of this is similar to the former, except that in the place of the perhaps foreign root xoc, foot, yxitl, foot, is used, which seems to have been the proper Nahuatl term.
As these words prove that the foot-length was one of the standards of the Aztecs, it remains to be seen whether they enlighten us as to the octacail. I quote in connection an interesting passage by the native historian, Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl in his Historia Chichimeca, published in Lord Kingsborough’s great work on Mexico (Vol. ix., p. 242). Ixtlilxochitl is describing the vast communal dwelling built by the Tezcucan chieftain Nezahualcoyotl, capable of accommodating over two thousand persons. He writes: “These houses were in length from east to west four hundred and eleven and a half [native] measures, which reduced to our [Spanish] measures make twelve hundred and thirty-four and a half yards (varas), and in breadth, from north to south three hundred and twenty-six measures, which are nine hundred and seventy-eight yards.”
This passage has been analyzed by the learned antiquary, Señor Orozco y Berra.[407] The native measure referred to by Ixtlilxochitl was that of Tezcuco, which was identical with that of Mexico. The yard was the vara de Burgos, which had been ordered to be adopted throughout the colony by an ordinance of the viceroy Antonio de Mendoza. This vara was in length 0.838 metre, and, as according to the chronicler, the native measurement was just three times this (411½ x 3 = 1234½, and 326 x 3 = 978), it must have been 2.514 metre. This is equal in our measure to 9.842 feet, or, say, nine feet ten inches.
This would make the octacatl identical with those long-named ten-foot measures, which, as I have shown, were multiples of the length of the foot, as is proved by an analysis of their component words.
This result is as interesting as it is new, since it demonstrates that the metrical unit of ancient Mexico was the same as that of ancient Rome—the length of the foot-print.
Some testimony of another kind may be brought to illustrate this point.
In 1864, the Mexican government appointed a commission to survey the celebrated ruins of Teotihuacan, under the care of Don Ramon Almaraz. At the suggestion of Señor Orozco, this able engineer ran a number of lines of construction to determine what had been the metrical standard of the builders. His decision was that it was “about” met. 0.8, or, say, 31½ inches.[408] This is very close to an even third of the octacatl, and would thus be a common divisor of lengths laid off by it.
I may here turn aside from my immediate topic to compare these metrical standards with that of the Mound-Builders of the Ohio valley.
In the American Antiquarian, April, 1881, Prof. W. J. McGee applied Mr. Petrie’s arithmetical system of “inductive metrology” to a large number of measurements of mounds and earthworks in Iowa, with the result of ascertaining a common standard of 25.716 inches.
In 1883, Col. Charles Whittlesey, of Cleveland, analyzed eighty-seven measurements of Ohio earthworks by the method of even divisors and concluded that thirty inches was about the length, or was one of the multiples, of their metrical standard.[409]
Moreover, fifty-seven per cent of all the lines were divisible without remainder by ten feet. How much of this may have been owing to the tendency of hurried measurers to average on fives and tens, I cannot say; but leaving this out of the question, there is a probability that a ten foot-length rule was used by the “mound-builders” to lay out their works.
It may not be out of place to add a suggestion here as to the applicability of the methods of inductive metrology to American monuments. The proportions given above by Ixtlilxochitl, it will be noted, are strikingly irregular (411½, 326). Was this accident or design? Very likely the latter, based upon some superstitious or astrological motive. It is far from a solitary example. It recurs everywhere in the remarkable ruins of Mitla. “Careful attention,” says Mr. Louis H. Aymé, “has been paid to make the whole asymmetrical. * * * This asymmetry of Mitla is not accidental, I am certain, but made designedly. M. Desiré Charnay tells me he has observed the same thing at Palenque.” These examples should be a warning against placing implicit reliance on the mathematical procedures for obtaining the lineal standards of these forgotten nations.[410]
Whatever the lineal standard of the Aztecs may have been, we have ample evidence that it was widely recognized, very exact, and officially defined and protected. In the great market of Mexico, to which thousands flocked from the neighboring country (seventy thousand in a day, says Cortes, but we can cut this down one-half in allowance for the exaggeration of an enthusiast), there were regularly appointed government officers to examine the measures used by the merchants and compare them with the correct standard. Did they fall short, the measures were broken and the merchant severely punished as an enemy to the public weal.[411]
The road-measures of the Aztecs was by the stops of the carriers, as we have seen was also the case in Guatemala. In Nahuatl these were called neceuilli, resting places, or netlatolli, sitting places; and distances were reckoned numerically by these, as one, two, three, etc., resting places. Although this seems a vague and inaccurate method, usage had attached comparatively definite ideas of distance to these terms. Father Duran tells us that along the highways there were posts or stones erected with marks upon them showing how many of these stops there were to the next market-towns—a sort of mile-stones, in fact. As the competition between the various markets was very active, each set up its own posts, giving its distance, and adding a curse on all who did not attend, or were led away by the superior attractions of its rivals.[412]
So far as I have learned, the lineal measures above mentioned were those applied to estimate superficies. In some of the plans of fields, etc., handed down, the size is marked by the native numerals on one side of the plan, which are understood to indicate the square measure of the included tract. The word in Nahuatl meaning to survey or measure lands is tlalpoa, literally “to count land,” from tlalli land, poa to count.
The Aztecs were entirely ignorant of balances, scales or weights. Cortes says distinctly that when he visited the great market of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, he saw all articles sold by number and measure, and nothing by weight.[413] The historian Herrera confirms this from other authorities, and adds that when grass or hay was sold, it was estimated by the length of a cord which could be passed around the bundle.[414]
The plumb-line must have been unknown to the Mexicans also. Their called it temetztepilolli, “the piece of lead which is hung from on high,” from temetzli, lead, and piloa, to fasten something high up. Lead was not unknown to the Aztecs before the conquest. They collected it in the Provinces of Tlachco and Itzmiquilpan, but did not esteem it of much value, and their first knowledge of it as a plummet must have been when they saw it in the hands of the Spaniards. Hence their knowledge of the instrument itself could not have been earlier.
The conclusions to which the above facts tend are as follows:
1. In the Maya system of lineal measures, foot, hand, and body measures were nearly equally prominent, but the foot unit was the customary standard.
2. In the Cakchiquel system, hand and body measures were almost exclusively used, and of these, those of the hand prevailed.
3. In the Aztec system, body measurements were unimportant, hand and arm measures held a secondary position, while the foot measure was adopted as the official and obligatory standard both in commerce and architecture.
4. The Aztec terms for their lineal standard being apparently of Maya origin, suggest that their standard was derived from that nation.
5. Neither of the three nations was acquainted with a system of estimation by weight, nor with the use of the plumb-line, nor with an accurate measure of long distances.
One might think it a difficult task to manufacture a new language “from the whole cloth;” but, in fact, it is no great labor. We have but to remember that within the last dozen years more than a dozen “world-languages” have been framed and offered for acceptance, and we at once perceive that a moderate knowledge of tongues and some linguistic ingenuity are all that is required.
It is an innocent amusement so long as no fraudulent use is made of the manufactured product; but the temptation to play a practical joke, and to palm off a deception on overeager linguists, is as great in languages as it is in archæology—and every antiquary knows how suspiciously he has to scrutinize each new specimen.
A curious hoax, which deceived some of the best linguists of Europe and America, was perpetrated about a decade ago by two young French seminarists, Jean Parisot and A. Dejouy. Interested by reading Châteaubriand, and by various publications on American languages which appeared in France about that time, they made up a short grammar and a list of words of what they called the Tansa language, from a name they found in Châteaubriand’s Voyage en Amerique, and into this invented tongue they translated the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, an Algonkin hymn published in Paris, and other material.
At first, the two students pursued this occupation merely as an amusement, but it soon occurred to them that more could be made of it; so M. Parisot sent a batch of the alleged “fragments” of the “Tansa” to the publishers, Maisonneuve et Cie, Paris, for publication. The manuscripts were passed over to M. Julien Vinson, editor of the Révue de Linguistique, who addressed the young author for further particulars. M. Parisot replied that these pieces were copies of originals obtained many years before by his grandfather, from what source he knew not, and on the strength of this vague statement, they duly appeared in the Révue.
Their publication attracted the attention of the eminent French linguist, M. Lucien Adam, who had long occupied himself with American tongues, and he entered into correspondence with M. Parisot. The latter’s stock meanwhile had considerably increased. He and his friend had published at Epinal, apparently privately, a small pamphlet, with an introductory note in bad Spanish, containing a number of “songs” in the “Taensa,” as they now called their language. They claimed in the note that the songs had been obtained by a traveler in America, in the year 1827 or 1828, “in the Taensa town, on the banks of the Mississippi or the Alabama”(!)[415]
With this abundant material at hand, young Parisot replied cheerfully to M. Adam, and supplied that scientist with “copy” from the alleged ancestral MSS. quite enough to fill a goodly volume of grammar, songs, lexicon, and the various paraphernalia of a linguistic apparatus, all of which eager M. Adam and his collaborator, Mr. A. S. Gatschet, the expert linguist attached to our Bureau of Ethnology, received in good faith and without a suspicion of the joker who victimized them; and what is more singular, without having a doubt excited by the many and gross blunders of the young seminarist.
Their joint work reached the United States in 1883, and for two years was received both here and in Europe as a genuine production. My attention was first attracted to it in 1883, and then I referred to it as a “strange” production; but I did not give it a close examination until the close of 1884. This examination led me to prepare the following article, which was published in the American Antiquarian for March, 1885:
THE TAENSA GRAMMAR AND DICTIONARY.
The student of American languages is under many obligations to the editors and publishers of the Bibliothéque Linguistique Américaine, nine volumes of which have been issued by the firm of Maisonneuve et Cie., Paris. Most of these contain valuable authentic original material, from approved sources, and edited with judgment. The exception to this rule is the volume last issued, which from its character deserves more than a passing criticism.
This volume bears the following title: Grammaire et Vocabulaire de la Langue Taensa, avec Textes Traduits et Commentés par J. D. Haumonté, Parisot, L. Adam. Pp. 19, III. It contains what professes to be a grammar of the Taensas Indians, who lived near the banks of the lower Mississippi, in the parish of that name in Louisiana, when it was first discovered, but who have long since become extinct. Following the grammar are the “Texts,” a remarkable series of native songs in the alleged Taensa tongue, with a French translation, accompanied by a commentary and a vocabulary.
All this array has been received by scholars without question. It looks so extremely scientific and satisfactory that no one has dared assail its authenticity. Moreover, the book appears with an historical introduction by Mr. Albert S. Gatschet, of our Bureau of Ethnology, and one of the editors is M. Lucien Adam, a gentleman who stands at the head of European Americanists. Mr. Gatschet, moreover, fully recognizes the authenticity of the whole in his latest work, and up to the present I know of no one who has doubted it, either in this country or in Europe.
It is, therefore, only after a great deal of consideration and hesitation that I now give publicity to the opinion I have long entertained, that a gross deception has been somewhere practiced in the preparation of this book, and that it is not at all what it purports to be. Let it be understood that I distinctly exculpate the gentlemen I have named from any share in this; they can only be charged with the venial error of allowing their enthusiasm for knowledge to get the better of their critical acumen.
I shall proceed to give with as much brevity as possible the reasons which have led me to reject the pretended character of this work.
And first I may note that both the history of the alleged original manuscript and the method in which it has been presented are to the last degree unsatisfactory. About the former, M. Haumonté tells us that among the papers of his grandfather, who died as mayor of Plombères, in 1872, he found a manuscript in Spanish, without date or name of author, and that it is this manuscript “translated and arranged,” which is the work before us. M. Adam adds that for his part he had revised this translation and advised the omission of certain passages not “profitable to science.” I have been informed by a private source that M. Adam was not shown the original Spanish manuscript, although he asked to see it. We are deprived therefore of any expert opinion as to the age of the manuscript, or its authorship.
We naturally ask, how did this manuscript come to be in Spanish? No one has been able to point out in the voluminous histories of the Spanish Missions a single reference to any among the Taensas. Moreover, this tribe was constantly under French observation from its first discovery by La Salle in 1682, until its entire destruction and disappearance about 1730–40, as is minutely recorded by Charlevoix, who even adds the name of the planter who obtained the concession of their lands. With the knowledge we have of the early Louisiana colony, it would have been next to impossible for a Spanish monk to have lived with them long enough to have acquired their language, and no mention to have been made of him in the French accounts. That a Spaniard, not a monk, should have attempted it, would have excited still more attention from national distrust.
This preliminary ground of skepticism is not removed by turning to the grammar itself. As M. Adam remarks, the language is one “of extreme simplicity,” such simplicity that it excites more than the feeling of astonishment. How much liberty M. Haumonté allowed himself in his translation he unfortunately does not inform us; but I suppose that he scarcely went so far as to offer original opinions on the pronunciation of a language which no man has heard spoken for more than a century. If he did not, then the writer of the original manuscript must have been a pretty good linguist for his day, since he explains the pronunciation of the Taensa by the French, the English, the German, and the Spanish!! (p. 4). I suppose the references on p. 11, to the Nahuatl, Kechua and Algonkin tongues are by the translator, though we are not so told; at any rate, they are by some one who has given a certain amount of study to American languages, and could get up one not wholly unlike them. There is, however, just enough unlikeness to all others in the so-called Taensa to make us accept it “with all reserves,” as the French say. That an American language should have a distinctively grammatical gender, that it should have a true relative pronoun, that its numeral system should be based on the nine units in the extraordinarily simple manner here proposed, that it should have three forms of the plural, that its verbs should present the singular simplicity of these,—these traits are indeed not impossible, but they are too unusual not to demand the best of evidence.
But the evidence which leaves no doubt as to the hum-buggery in this whole business is found in the so-called “Cancionero Taensa,” or Taensa Poems. There are eleven of these, and according to M. Adam, “they give us unexpected information about the manners, customs and social condition of the Taensas.” If he had also added, still more unexpected information about the physical geography of Louisiana, he would have spoken yet more to the point. For instance, our botanists will be charmed to learn that the sugar maple flourishes in the Louisiana swamps, and that it furnished a favorite food of the natives. It is repeatedly referred to (pp. 31, 34, 45, 67). They will also learn that the sugar cane was raised by the Taensas, although the books say it was introduced into Louisiana by the Jesuits in 1761 (p. 45). The potato and rice, apples and bananas, were also familiar to them, and the white birch and wild rice are described as flourishing around the bayous of the lower Mississippi! It may be urged that these are all mistranslations of misunderstood native words. To this I reply, what sort of editing is that which not only could commit such unpardonable blunders, but send them forth to the scientific world without a hint that they do not pretend to be anything more than guesses?
But no such apology can be made. The author of this fabrication had not taken the simplest precaution to make his statements coincide with facts. How dense was his ignorance of the climate of Louisiana is manifested in the pretended “Calendar of the Taensas,” which is printed on p. 41 of his book. He tells us that their year began at the vernal equinox and consisted of twelve or thirteen months named as follows: