Note 805 — Chapter III

Kirk says (Prescott’s Mexico): “Confusion arises from the name of Chichimec, originally that of a single tribe, and subsequently of its many offshoots, being also used to designate successive hordes of whatever race.” Some have seen in the Waiknas of the Mosquito Coast, and in the Caribs generally, descendants of these Chichimecs who have kept to their old social level. The Caribs, on other authority, came originally from the stock of the Tupis and Guaranis, who occupied the region south of the Amazon, and in Columbus’s time they were scattered in Darien and Honduras, along the northern regions of South America, and in some of the Antilles (Von Martius, Beiträge sur Ethnographie and Sprachenkunde Amerika’s zumal Brasilìens, Leipzig, 1867). Bancroft (ii. 126) gives the etymology of Chichimec and of other tribal designations. Cf. Buschmann’s Ueber die Aztekischen Ortsnamen (Berlin, 1853). Bandelier (Archæol. Tour, 200; Peabody Mus. Repts., ii. 393) says he fails to discover in the word anything more than a general term, signifying a savage, a hunter, or a warrior, Chichimecos, applied to roving tribes. Brasseur says that Mexican tradition applies the term Chichimecs generically to the first occupants of the New World.