Notes Upon the Ethnography of Southern Mexico, Part 2

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Putman Memorial Publication Fund, 1902 - Indians of Mexico - 109 pages
 

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Page 69 - Bartolom£ wear little camisas and wide drawers of home-spun cotton, into which bird, animal, human and geometrical patterns are woven with bits of bright colored worsteds. We observed no cases of pinto among the Chamula Indians whom we measured; the disease is common at San Bartolome". In counting, the Indians assist themselves by touching the fingers of one hand, with the index finger of the other hand; thus, one is counted on the little finger of the left hand, two corresponds to the next finger,...
Page 19 - ... necklaces of coral beads, gold chains, pendants, etc.; their breasts were indicated as exaggeratedly developed. The other dancers wore the usual men's white shirts and drawers, but the latter had a red stripe down the side of the leg; jingling hawkbells were hung to various parts of the dress; red fa/as (belts), were worn about the waist. Most of the dancers wore sandals. All wore crowns, consisting of a circlet of tin, from which rose two curving strips of tin, which crossed above the middle...
Page 13 - ... survival of an ancient type, though no remains of a similar form have been found in any of the Maya ruins. His description is as follows: "The ground form is elliptical, the long axis being transverse: there are often two doors, opposite each other, at the ends of the short axis [front and back]. The base of the house is built of stones, often slabs set on edge; the walls rising from the base are thinner than it, so that the basal part projects somewhat. The walls may be of poles and sticks daubed...
Page 19 - The leader of the dance, the queen, carried a cord of San Francisco, with which to strike unskillful performers and intruders. Besides their own musicians, they had an accompanying band, which played music like their own; it played before and after the dancing and when the company passed from house to house. During the dance itself the pitero and drummer perform. The music was peculiar and may be both old and Indian. The words sung were Mayan. Signals were given by the pito — one, music; two, prepare;...
Page 17 - His god-father sits next to the groom: her godmother sits next lo the bride. The god-father dips a morsel of food into sauce and offers it to the groom; the god-mother dips one and offers it to the bride; the bride and groom then exchange the same courtesy: the guests then fall to eating. - The tunkul, or native drum, corresponds to the Aztec teponastl; it has largely gone out of use, but is said to still figure at some village festivals; the caracal, or shell trumpet, is used in rural places to...
Page 8 - Liltle girls wear a single piece garment, a camisa, or huipili, with the open-work neck-band. The variety of breads made of maize is astonishing. Tortillas, of course, are general: but there are also cocoles, chavacanes, and pemol. Cocoles are flat, round, cakes of maize, about two inches across and three-eights of an inch thick; they contain shortening and are served hot. Chavacanes are thin, flat, square, crisp crackers of flakey texture, made of corn meal, eggs, and shortening; they come hot from...
Page 65 - The //'Aw are small, cane pipes, of two kinds. The smaller has slant-cut mouthpiece, partly plugged with gum, a square hole near the end and two similar holes opposite. The larger is longer, and has a similar mouth-piece, one round escape hole on one side, and several on the opposite side. The drum is a hollow cylinder, cut from a block of wood, with both ends covered with stretched skins, which are tightened by cord lacings, passing from one to the other, back and forth. The dancers are fantastically...
Page 60 - Ay Zandunga ! j Zandunga, amor sublime, mama por Dios! Zandunga por ti morire, Huerita de mi corazon. The Zapotec towns from San Geronimo to Tuxtla Gutierrez present much similarity. San Geronimo itself lies a little back from the Tehuantepec Railroad station of the same name; it spreads over a considerable area, which is swept clean and bare by strong, hot winds. The houses are rectangular, composed of poles daubed with mud and whitewashed, and roofed with high, steeply-pitched roofs. Pottery is...
Page 1 - ... 1901, among eight tribes— Aztecs, Huaxtecs, Mayas, Tehuantepecanos (Zapotecs), Zoques, Tzotzils, Tzendals, and Chols. On the accompanying outline map the areas occupied by these tribes are indicated, by numbers, as follows: III., Aztecs. IX., Tehuantepecanos. 18, Huaxtecs. 19, Mayas. 20, Zoques. 21, Tzotzils. 22, Tzendals. 23, Chols. THE AZTECS. A few additional notes regarding the Aztecs are presented. They relate to Aztecs in the State of Puebla, those (Tlaxcaltecs) of Tlaxcala, and those...

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