Details

Other Title:

Darien--San Blas

Subjects:

Cuna language -- Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
Indians of Central America -- Panama -- Languages.
Indians of Central America.
Language and languages.
Cuna language.
Panama -- Languages.
Panama.
San Blas Coast (Panama).

Form/Genre:

Glossaries.
Manuscripts, American.
Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
Controlled vocabularies.

Language:

English, and the San Blas and Tule dialects of Cuna.

Biography/History:

Born in 1804; served as Baptist missionary in British Honduras (Belize), beginning in 1835.

Summary:

C. Hermann Berendt's transcription of 13 words or phrases, together with the numbers 1 to 9, in the language of the San Blas Indians, as communicated to him by Alexander Henderson, who had received the material many years before from a certain Mr. Haly, an English trader who lived in Bluefields, Nicaragua. The region known as the San Blas Coast, in northeastern Panama, is commonly identified with a dialect of the Cuna language. In red ink Berendt includes, for comparison, in a column designated as Tule language, the equivalent words recorded by Edward Cullen; and also notes that Cullen apparently distinguished between the Tule (or: Yule) and the San Blas languages.(Berendt's reference here is to Cullen's article Vocabulary of the language of the Yule Indians, in the Journal of the Royal Geographic Society, vol. 21, 1851, p. 241-242; see Ms. Coll. 700, Item 174 for Berendt's comments on and transcription of Cullen's vocabulary based on the various published versions.) On the paper cover of the manuscript Berendt originally noted the source as Henderson, dated 1871, but revised it to read: Haly, 1834. Original correspondence between Berendt and Henderson that illuminates the background of this vocabulary can be found among the loose items shelved in a folder with Ms. Coll. 700, Item 127; included is the original sheet, in Henderson's hand, containing this vocabulary, dated 4 June 1871. Henderson labels the vocabulary: San Blas Indian, Moskito coast. Also included in the correspondence is a (draft of) Berendt's letter to Henderson of 14 October 1872, written from New York, in which Berendt, among other things, thanks Henderson for this vocabulary, and asks for details about the circumstances of its collection; Henderson replies, in a letter of 26 December 1872, with information about Mr. Haly. Berendt presumably made this copy of the vocabulary sometime in 1872 after receipt of it from Henderson, and then added the references to Haly (on the cover and title page) sometime in 1873, after receipt of Henderson's December 1872 letter. Berendt presented this vocabulary in a paper entitled The Darien language, delivered before the American Ethnological Society in November 1873 (American Historical Record, vol. 3, no. 26, Feb. 1874, p. 54-59).

Notes:

Ms. component part.
Title from component title page (f. 1r).
Item 164, in contemporary paper covers, is the second of 15 manuscripts (Items 162-165, 167-171, 172-175, 218, and 219) bound together in a volume with the spine title: Languages of Chiriqui and Darien.
Foliation: Paper, 6; ii (paper endleaves) + 2 + ii (paper endleaves).
Layout:Vocabulary written in 3 columns, English on the left, San Blas dialect (as recorded by Haly) in the center, and Tule dialect (as recorded by Cullen) on the right.
Script: Written in the hand of C. Hermann Berendt.
Watermark: PIRIE'S Old Style.
Origin: Probably written in New York in 1872 or 1873.

Penn Provenance:

Copied from a manuscript leaf in the hand of Alexander Henderson, which was among items tipped or laid in Ms. Coll. 700, Item 127, now housed in a separate folder shelved with Item 127.
From the collection of C. Hermann Berendt, later acquired by Daniel Garrison Brinton (ex libris stamp on verso of front free endpaper of bound volume).

Cited in:

Described in Brinton, Daniel Garrison. Catalogue of the Berendt Linguistic Collection (Department of Archaeology and Paleontology, University of Pennsylvania, 1900), p. 30 (no. 164).
Described in Weeks, John M. "Karl Hermann Berendt: Colección de manuscritos lingüistícos de Centroamérica y Mesoamérica," Mesoamérica 36 (Dec. 1998), p. 659 (no. 100).
Described in Weeks, John M. The Library of Daniel Garrison Brinton (University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2002), p. 67-68 (no. 387, document 2).

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Coll. 700, Item 164

Contributor:

Berendt, C. Hermann (Carl Hermann), 1817-1878, former owner.
Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison), 1837-1899, former owner.

OCLC:

710835253