Details

Subjects:

Guaymi language -- Glossaries, vocabularies, etc.
Indians of Central America -- Panama -- Languages.
Indians of Central America.
Language and languages.
Guaymi language.
Panama -- Languages.
Panama.

Form/Genre:

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

Language:

Spanish, Guaymi, and English.

Summary:

Notes about the Indians of Chiriqui province of Panama compiled by C. Hermann Berendt from various sources. The notes include vocabulary, probably in Guaymi (or: Ngöbe-Buglé), with either Spanish or English equivalents. The first note (tipped in, f. 1r), taken from Joaquin Acosta's work Compendio histórico del descubrimiento y colonización de la Nueva Granada en el siglo décimo sexto (Paris, 1848; p. 453-454), concerns a report, from a memorial in Chiriqui, of a missionary, Presentado F. Melchor Hernandez, who, in 1606, in the context of a group of 626 Indians, distinguished six languages they spoke, and named 10 tribes. Three additional notes (tipped in, f. 1v-2r) are all taken from William Bollaert's work entitled Antiquarian, ethnological, and other researches in New Granada, Equador, Peru and Chile (London, 1860), as follows: 1) a list of 17 Chiriqui words, with English equivalents, based on reports published in the Panama Star and Herald by its editor John Power, in 1859, about his visit to the region (Bollaert, p. 65). 2) a list of eight Chiriqui words given by J. Harrison Smith in his article in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (vol. 24, 1854, p. 257; as reported in Bollaert, p. 65). 3) a recapitulation of a reference provided by E. G. Squier (Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, vol. 3, 1853, p. 106), from Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, concerning places where the same language was spoken as in Chiriqui, with mention of a village called Carabizi,and areas called Cabiores and Duracaca (Bollaert, p. 33). Berendt adds a few annotations of his own in red ink.

Notes:

Ms. component part.
Title from component paper cover.
Item 172, in contemporary paper covers, is the 11th 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, 4; ii (paper endleaves) + 2; [1-2]. The manuscript comprises notes written on separate leaves (nearly full size) and tipped in (f. 1-2).
Script: Written in the hand of C. Hermann Berendt.
Origin: The manuscript in its present form was probably assembled by Berendt around 1873; it is similar in appearance to other items in the same bound volume, several of which date to his stay in New York in 1873.

Penn Provenance:

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. 31 (no. 172).
Described in Weeks, John M. "Karl Hermann Berendt: Colección de manuscritos lingüistícos de Centroamérica y Mesoamérica," Mesoamérica 36 (Dec. 1998), p. 646 (no. 55).
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 11).

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Coll. 700, Item 172

Contributor:

Brinton, Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison), 1837-1899, former owner.

OCLC:

720046585