Produced by David Starner, Julia Miller, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. This file is gratefully uploaded to the PG collection in honor of Distributed Proofreaders having posted over 10,000 ebooks. Transcriber’s Note: A number of typographical errors and inconsistencies have been maintained in this version of this book. Typographical errors have been marked with a [TN-#], which refers to a description in the complete list found at the end of the text. A list of words that have been inconsistently spelled or hyphenated is found at the end of the present text. The following less-common characters are used. If they do not display properly, please try changing your font. ă a with breve ā a with macron The following codes are used for characters that are not present in the character set used for this version of the book. [c] quatrillo, resembles a 4 with a tail [c,] quatrillo with comma [t] tresillo, resembles a reversed 3 [tz] resembles a tz drawn together LIBRARY OF ABORIGINAL AMERICAN LITERATURE. No. VI. EDITED BY D. G. BRINTON BRINTON’S LIBRARY OF ABORIGINAL AMERICAN LITERATURE. NUMBER VI. THE ANNALS OF THE CAKCHIQUELS. THE ORIGINAL TEXT, WITH A TRANSLATION, NOTES AND INTRODUCTION. BY DANIEL G. BRINTON 1885, Philadelphia PREFACE. Both for its historical and linguistic merits, the document which is presented in this volume is one of the most important in aboriginal American Literature. Written by a native who had grown to adult years before the whites penetrated to his ancestral home, himself a member of the ruling family of one of the most civilized nations of the continent and intimately acquainted with its traditions, his work displays the language in its pure original form, and also preserves the tribal history and a part of the mythology, as they were current before they were in the least affected by European influences. The translation I offer is directly from the original text, and I am responsible for its errors; but I wish to acknowledge my constant obligations to the manuscript version of the late Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg), the distinguished Americanist. Without the assistance obtained from it, I should not have attempted the task; and though I differ frequently from his renderings, this is no more than he himself would have done, as in his later years he spoke of his version as in many passages faulty.