Untitled - Smithsonian Institution

THOMAS] INDIAN LANGUAGES OF MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 63
Orozco y Berra (1: 169) says the language is peculiar to Chiapas, and
this conclusion is followed by most recent authorities. As we have
seen, Juarros includes Palenque in the area in which this language was
spoken. Brasseur de Bourbourg (1 : i, 63-64) hesitates between Tzental
and Maya (proper), but the inscriptions agree better with the former
than with the latter. According to the statement of Stoll (2:84),
Doctor Berendt affirms that later the language spoken there was
Choi, and this corresponds with Orozco y Berra's map and with
Sapper's conclusion (2). It is therefore an undecided question how
far northward the Tzental territory extended at the date of discovery.
If Sapper's districting of the ruin -types (2: map viii) could be
accepted as a correct mapping of ethnic divisions, the Choi formerly
extended over the Chontal area, the Palenque region, and the section
occupied by the western Lacandon. This evidence is not of a char-
acter to be satisfactory in deciding this question, however, especially
as Brinton,and apparently Berendt also, consider them relatively late
comers to this region. The writer has been unable to fuid data
on which to base a conclusion regarding tliis .
question,
but is
inclined to agree with Sapper in considering the ruins of the middle
and lower Usumacinta valley as more nearly allied to those of Copan
and Quirigua than to those of the intermediate Peten region. In this
comparison, which must be close, details as well as general forms
must be appealed to. These bHng the ruins of Quirigua (which are
ascribed by him to the Choi) and those of Copan (which he ascribes
to the Chorti tribe) nearer to those of Palenque, Piedras Negras
(see Mahler), and Menche m the Usumacinta valley than to those of
the Peten region. This question will be further discussed, however,
under Choi. The writer has followed Orozco y Berra chiefly, though
not exactly, in outlining the area of the Tzental language.
Chol
The authorities differ widely as to the area over which this idiom
was spoken. Orozco y Berra (1:167) says the Choi constituted a
tribe established from remote times in Guatemala, which was divided
into two factions by the incursions of the Maya. One of these divisions,
he says, is encountered in eastern Chiapas, and the other, very
isolated, in Vera Paz. He maps only the western division, as the
other division lay beyond the Mexican boundary. Sapper, in his
map V, which relates to present conditions, limits them to a small
area in northern Chiapas, but in his map viii, showing the areas of
the ruin-types, the Choi type is in two sections, of which the western
covers eastern Tabasco and northeastern Chiapas extending into
northwestern Guatemala; the eastern division includes the extreme
northeastern corner of Guatemala and a strip of Honduras along its