Were Payas and Pech Indians the Same? The Story of Payaqui (among Nahuas)

Were Payas and Pech Indians the Same? The Story of Payaqui (among Nahuas)

By Wendy Griffin

Where was Payaqui (Among Nahuas or Yaquis) or Hueyatlato (the Big One or the Greater One)?

Although Payaqui was originally founded as a confederation of the Nahuas with the Chorti in the tricountry border area there,  the Spanish conquerers in the 1520’s reported to Cortes that they went through Payaqui to get to the gold fields in the Olancho valley from the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua.  Missionaries in the 1600’s also reported working with Jicaques (free, unconquered, non-Christian) Indians in the Department of El Paraiso of the Paya nation.  In modern Honduras Payaqui has been a building in Tegucigalpa and a musical group.

Many places names in the Department of El Paraiso, Honduras are in Nahua like Texiguat (the pool or well of the woman, probably referring to La Sirena in Spanish and the goddess of Terrestial Waters among the Nahua speakers of Teotihuacan), Teopasenti (Teot means god in Nahua), Azacualpa (the place of the temple of the god of the Pochteca, the Aztec merchant class or in the pyramid), Calpules (the neighborhood) and the Pochteca River which separates Honduran and Nicaragua at the border (Pochteca were the Aztec and possibly also Toltec merchant class) .  There is no indication in Pech oral history, Pech legends, or place names in El Paraiso that there were ever Pech in El Paraiso Department. The archaeology along the Pochteca river (the river of the Aztec merchant class in Nahuatl) shows many house and temple mounds, noted a Honduran ethnographer.  The Payas in El Paraiso were not Pech. There are definitely reports of  Spanish missionaries of Mexican Indians in the colonial period along the rivers of Eastern Honduras.

Who were the Payas and Where were They?

 Although eventually Paya came to refer specifically to Pech Indians, who lived from hunting, fishing, and a little agriculture in non-hierarchical society under a religious leader known as the Watá, in the colonial period the use of the Paya was much more general conclude various authors. The words Paya and Maya came into Spanish, when Christopher Columbus stopped a canoe led by a Mayan merchant Yumbe (Our Lord) and asked who lived in the area. He seemed to indicate that to the west of Trujillo there were Mayas, and from Trujillo to the East there were Payas, although in the handwritten manuscript it is not clear if it is T (Taya) or P (Paya).  In the colonial era Payas were reported on the Bay Islands, in Colon in the Trujillo and Aguan Valley regions, in Olancho especially in the Agalta Valley between Trujillo and the Valley of Olancho where Catacamas and Juticalpa are and north of Catacamas, in the Department of El Paraiso, in the Sula Valley, and  according to Linda Newson’s maps in the Cost of Conquest from Trujillo to the Nicaraguan border.  

 The word Paya seems to have referred to the residents of Payaqui (among Nahuas or among Yaquis), which included both rainforest Indians like the Pech and the ancestors of the Miskito Indians, and Mesoamerican Indians. This is supported by the fact that at the time of conquest, the Indians of the Naco, Santa Barbara/Sula area,   the Trujillo and Olancho areas, the Comayagua area, and the area around the towns of Gracias and Erandique, Lempira, known to the Spanish as Gracias a Dios, all paid tribute to Copan Galel, the leader of the Chortis on the Guatemala/Honduran border and captain of the Toltecs of Esquipulas, Guatemala.

Also where Hernan Cortes and Doña Marina were in Trujillo and  a different group of the Spanish from Santo Domingo were attacking the Bay Islands, the Bay Islands Indians came to Trujillo to ask for help and it was given.  Another group of Spanish had been sent up from Nicaragua to attack Olancho, and the Olancho Valley Indians also came to Trujillo and the help was also given. The Spanish also tried to impress the leaders of Trujillo that he had conquered the Aztecs in Mexico, and as Naco, Trujillo and Cuscatlan in El Salvador were conquered by the Spanish over the next 20 years, the Spanish sent Indians from the conquered town to tell the Indians in these other three towns that the Spanish had won there, perhaps thinking it would help win their allegiance to the Spanish.

The identification of the Indians of Esquipulas as “brethren of the Toltecs” and “Pipils”, the leaders from the Nahua word Pipiltin, the ruling class,  and speakers of “mexicano corrupto” (Pipil language or Nahua) is by the Central Mexican soldiers Pedro Alvarado had with him at the time of the Conquest, and is noted on the official Esquipulas website.  Esquipul was the god of the Nicarao, the Nahua speaking Indians from Cholula, Mexico whose name means the Tiger or jaguar or Panther who eats human hearts and was associated with the constellation Ursa Major. He is considered the Central American equivalent of Tezcalipochtli the god “Smoking Mirror”.   Nicaroa god names were also names of towns in Santa Barbara region and the name of the village where the Nicarao were supposedly from in Cholula was also a place name in Santa Barbara in the colonial period. Mexicano Indians were noted in tax records for the Tencoa/Santa Barbara area and also the Mexicano language was reported in towns like Machaloa, which was the largest town in the Santa Barbara after the initial conquest.

The name of the country of Guatemala is translated in Wikipedia as “land of many trees” in Nahua, in Nahua there is a difference between a long a and a short a, and the correct translation is “the land of many eagles” referring to eagle warriors, a high class of warriors among Nahua speakers and some Mayan tribas accordin to Dr. Judith Maxwell. On the Aztec picture maps of Guatemala, the city that is now Guatemala City is shown as eagles and not as trees. There was a road from Guatemala through the Copan area, through la Jigua, which is La Entrada, Copan, through the valleys of Sula, Quimistan, and Naco, which the Spanish note as soon as they have “conquered” the area.  There were also river routes that connected Western Honduras and central and northern Honduras which converged around Santiago Pimienta Cortes, where there is an archaeological site known as Cerro Palenque, on the Ulua  river, which was reportedly a very busy port at the time of the Spanish conquest and there was a temple there which the Spanish built the church on top of. From Cerro Palenque, it is clear sailing to the coast by water. Across the river from Pimienta is Poterillos, the last stop of the banana era train, so that important trade route straight up the Ulua river continued into modern times.

Some Relations Between the Sites of Western Honduras and Northeastern Honduras

An archaeological ruin in the area of El Carbon, Olancho above the Agalta Valley is known as Guatemala, too, according to German geographer Karl Helbig. This ruin has stone walled buildings and many mounds, and temple mounds. With massive earth and constructions like the type reported for Papayeca, Colon, Guatemala (place of many eagle warriors) above the Agalta Valley in Olancho, Tulito (meaning little capital or little place of tule the reed to make petate mats), an archaeological ruin along the Paulaya River east of Trujillo, the big ruins in the Ciudad Blanca area between Culmi, Olancho and the Rio Platano in Gracias a Dios are thought by archaeologists to require hierarchical societies with strong leaders and often  strong armies to force people to work in building the temples and the fortifications and the houses of rich people like at Copan or at these ruins.

These type of hierarchical structures did not exist in the Pech culture, according to the historical memories of the Pech and a language that still today has no word in Pech for any authority other than the religious leader the Wata, including having no word for chief, even though they have “caciques”, the Spanish word for chief.

In contrast, the Indians in the Trujillo area had a society which included “el verdadero señor” the true lord, the “principals” or nobles, macehuales which Doña Marina, Cortes’s translator,  translates as “vasallos” subjects or vassals who have to give service, and slaves. In the Ulua valley the word for the leaders of a Toquegua community was “tatoques”, which would be a Nahua word for “principales” or the council of leaders of the community. If the Indians in the Bay Islands were complaining that the Spanish were stealing their macehuacales, a Nahua word, it is likely they were Nahuas.

Masahuales (common people, the workers in Nahua societies) was a place name in the Department Cortes, according to Alberto Membreño, and maybe related to the place name Masahuat, in El Salvador which was Pipil and part of Payaqui, and another Masahuat in Western Honduras.  The fact that the Nahuas in Honduras were called Pipils, from “Pipiltin” the ruling class which also included priests,  may give the idea that they were the leaders in multiethnic societies or states. One Honduran said, they used to call all El Salvadorans Pipiles. 

The Story of the Agaltecas or Acaltecas

The Indians from the town now known as Agalteca, Yoro outside of Olanchito, were called Acaltecas by Doña Marina, the Nahua translator of Hernán Cortes, and the Acaltecas did not accept to pay homage to Hernán Cortes. The name Acalteca may come from being Indians from the place of Acalt or “tule” which would be Tulan, or Teotihuacan, in Mexico or  from the Agalta Valley in Olancho which is more of a place of Carrizo, also called “acalt”. Besides the stone ruins known as Guatemala,  there are also Toltec style ruins such as a Toltec style observatory, Tlaloc cups (Tlaloc or Quia is the rain god of the Nahua speakers and usually has round frog eyes), and life size clay statues of Xipe Totec, near Tonjagua, the original site of the Ladino town of San Esteban, Olancho in the Agalta Valley.

Even in the 20^th century, the Indians who live in Gualaco  another town in the Agalta valley were known as “Payas” to their descendants, even though historical records and oral history of the Pech report that the Indians of Gualaco were not Pech. The folkdance of Jutiquile  (creek with jute snails), Olancho (Ulanco-the place of rubber, hule in Spanish and Nahua)  is the “Aguateña” which may refer to a woman from the Aguan Valley.  Agalteca could mean person from the Agalta Valley.  The river through the Agalta Valley is the Sico or Rio Grande de Agalta (the big River of Agalta). The mountain range between Culmi, Olancho  and the Agalta Valley, is also called the Sierra de Agalta. (The Agalta mountain range). Some peaks in this mountain range have Nahua names like Malacate (spindle whirl in Nahua) mountain near Culmi. Tributaries through the Agalta Valley include the Tonjagua, and the Conquire rivers, and there were previously communities called Tonjagua and Conquire. Both –gua and –quire are associated with words and places of  water, and the Spanish talk about the –quire Indians in the colonial period.

 Because most Indian languages in Honduras have either r’s or l’s but not both, it is common that words vary between r and l pronunciations like  –-quile (like Cataquile, which later became the town of Santa Barbara, Jutiquile or Jutikile, Olancho) and –quire (Conquire, Jamasquire, Aguaquire, Olancho)  or the Cholti and Chorti language. Atanasio Herranz thought that –quire might by a variation of –quira, a Lenca word meaning creek. Cauquira in the Mosquitia was according to oral tradition founded by “Isleños” (Bay Islanders), but since its Casa Quemada or Burnt House existed during the time of the Miskito King, maybe this refers to Bay Islander Indians and that is why it also ends in –quira. The words that end in –quire mean nothing in Pech, although in some cases there are Pech living there now, like along the river Aguaquirito (little Aguaquire), and the village of Aguaquire, which the Ladinos changed the name to Zopilote, the Nahua and Honduran Spanish word for vulture.

Where were the Pech Indians in the Post Classic and early Spanish contact period?

Where the Pech lived on the Rio Platano was called Puskira in Miskito, when Conzemius visited in the 1920’s. According to a Miskito Indian, this means place of the Moscon. The Moscon in Miskito dances like Umbasta Pipi seems to refer to a character similar to the sisimite, tall horrible, frightening,  who grabs the last person at the end of a line. The Miskito king was called the Rey Mosco by Honduran historians, and so the Moscon, could also refer to the big leader of the Miskito Indians. The Miskito General who controlled the Honduran Miskitia did in fact live on the Rio Platano until it was joined to Honduras in 1860.

 The Pech Indians of Silin, Trujillo say that the Pech Indians used to reach the sea, but the Miskito Indians cut off their access to the sea as they expanded along the Coast. The myths of the Pech which mention eating lobster, and the ruins in the Silin area, seem to confirm that the Pech in the past did reach the seas. At the time of Conquest, the Pech Indians were probably along the  Rio Tinto or Negro (the one in Iriona, not the one near Trujillo), Sico/Paulaya and the Rio Platano and inward along them up in the mountains, having been displaced from the Trujillo area by the arrival of the Nahua speakers.

Pech villages into the 19^th century were often called Tayaco (the place of the Tayas) by Nahua speakers in the Valley of Agalta and Sico Valley. Tas means I and Ta means mine in Pech, so sentences like my name is begin with ta- and that may be why the Nahua speakers may have called these villages Tayaco. At least six different Pech villages were called Tayaco in the Olancho and Colon area in the 19^th century.

In the early twentieth century the Nahua speakers had generally lost their language and they began to call a Pech village on the Rio Sico El Payal (the place of a lot of Payas) and a Tawahka  village on the Rio Guampu El Sumal (the place of a lot of Sumus).  According to Doña Juana, a Pech woman, when the Spanish came, the Pech hid in secret places along the Sico river and along the Sierra de Agalta. The Pech myths generally report them being up in the mountains, andsaid explicitly  if they went into the valleys they were captured, sacrificed and eaten.  The Pech hero Patakako who died in the Kao Kamasa (the white house) in one story has his heart taken out by a black sky tiger while he is asleep where the grandmother is in the sky, but fortunately at that point he does not die because the grandmother gives him a heart of a coatimundi (pizote). The many refernces to black sky tigers in the Pech oral literature seem to be related to the Nicarao god Esquipul (the panther who devours human hearts). The Mesoamerican style ruins with many temple mounds and stone walls and white stone paths are in fact mostly in the  river valleys  in or near the Pech region. The Chortis, the Lencas, the Tolupanes, the Pech all seemed to have been in the mountains already when the Spanish came because the Nahua speakers were using the flat bottom lands by the rivers for cacao and gold mining and transportation by canoe.

The Nahua speaking Indians south of Trujillo could also have been called Acaltecas because they were descendants of the  followers of Ce Acalt.  The Nicaraguan Nahua speakers who came from two villages in the Valley of Cholula, Mexico followed the chief Nicarao, became known historically as Nicaroas.  The Miskito Indians became known by that name as they were followers of chief called Miskut who according to legend migrated to the Mosquitia first from way north of Honduras (?Mexico) to Brus Laguna and finally to Sandy Bay, on the Nicaraguan side of the border near the Rio Coco which currently marks the border. These Miskito Indians existed prior to the mixing of Blacks with Indians after shipwrecks in the early 1600’s, because on English maps from the 1500’s, the area between the Aguan Valley and the Rio Coco or Wanks, was marked Mosquito Coast, with various spellings of Miskito.

The Miskitos claim that the name Miskitu comes from the name of the chief Miskut and the Miskito word uplika nani (people), which their Sumu speaking neighbors could not pronounce so they shortened it to miskitu, so that the Miskitu are the people of Miskut. The switch from the o to the u, also noted in the words Tolan and tulan and is also common in the word for bark cloth tunu or tuno, in this case happens because the Miskito language has no o, only the letter u.

There were several historical towns called Agalteca in Honduras at the time of conquest, besides Agalteca, Yoro. One was Agalteca, Comayagua. One seems to have been Agalteca, Olancho and there was also a Agalteca, Santa Barbara, still the name of a creek there.  There was also a Aguanteca, Olancho (people from the Aguan in Nahua).  

Because the Acalteca Indians  and Olancho Indians were rebellious and would not obey the Spanish, including Cortes, conquistadors that Cortes sent from Trujillo and that Pedrias sent from Nicaragua,  and later governors in Trujillo, the Trujillo governor Lopez Salcedo tried armed conquest. The attack on the Agalteca Indians is one of the worst in the annals of the Conquest with a third of the Indians being fed to the dogs, another third of the Indians being burnt alive in their homes. Other Indians were put in chains and enslaved and  forced to march to Leon Nicaragua to take mining equipment there which the Trujillo governor planned to sell the equipment and the slaves themselves. Among the 2,000 slaves he eventually captured was the whole town of Juticalpa (Place of many jute snails, a river snail which is edible and is popular in chile sauce and is often found in Mesoamerican style ruins in eastern Honduras), Olancho including enslaving the leaders or “principales”.

Although US geographer William Davidson describes this as a successful slaving raid, in fact 1,900 of the Indian slaves either ran away or were killed for being rebellious, or through mistreatment, and only around 100 arrived alive in Leon. The whole provinces of what are now Colon, Olancho (including El Paraiso), Yoro (including Atlantida), and the Mosquitia in Honduras and Nueva Segovia in Nicaragua were in armed rebellion and the Spanish did not conquer much of that area for the next 300 years, in spite of having the same number of soldiers as Pizarro in Peru.  The conduct of the Trujillo governor was so outrageous even for the 16^th century, that the authorities of Nicaragua put him in jail for a year. He was released after the year, but his health was broken and he died shortly after his release. The slaving raid was not successful him or for the Spanish. 

William Davidson also says the Pech (incorrectly translating Payas in the colonial documents as Pech) languished on haciendas in Olancho and Colon where they quietly extinguished. This is totally not true, neither for the Nahua speaking Payas or Agaltecas nor  for the Pech. After Spanish Conquest, most of the Nahua speaking Indians and other Mesoamerican Indians in the Trujillo area, the Aguan Valley, the Rio Platano area, in Yoro and Atlantida and those enslaved to work in the Olancho goldfields in the 1540’s ran away into the mountains and into the rainforest. The Spanish never again conquered the area east of the Aguan River  during the colonial period.

The Spanish for a short time before the general riots in the gold fields in the 1540’s were able to enslave the Indians in the Trujillo area, in the area to the interior of Limon in Colon at the site called Xeo (now the village Feo), Rio Platano area and in the area of Tayaco on the Sico river and also along the Patuca where the Yare goldmine was in the Mosquitia, according to Pastor Gomez Zuniga’s book on goldmining and interethnic relationships in 16^th century Honduras. According to other documents, there were problems of mixing different Indian groups in the gold mines and at several points one group of Indians tried to eat those of another group. The Spanish were able to force the Indians to work in the mines until they rebelled, but they could not get them to sell them food. The Protector of the Indian said it cost the same as 2 Indian slaves for  the Spanish to buy 25 pounds (una arroba) of yucca.  Several Spanish report suffering from hunger. The Spanish in the Trujillo area tried growing wheat, they tried strawberries, but of course none of this worked in the hot sunny and then deluge rains that were typical of the North Coast of Honduras before deforestation.  The town of Bataya or Batalla at the Ibans Lagoon near Palacios at the entrance of the Rio Platano has that name because the Spanish and the Payas fought a battle there, and the Spanish lost, reports Garifuna Abraham Norales, a school teacher there.

 According to Miskito Indian oral literature, collected by Miskito Indian Scott Wood, the Miskitos and the Rah, who may have been the Nahua speakers who escaped into the Moskitia, fought between themselves for the control of the area between the Aguan River and the Rio Coco or Wanks, but the Rah were not able to defeat or control the Miskitos. Most eventually mixed with the Miskitos, many of whom still say they are partially the descendants of the Rah, including Miskito authors Orfa Jackson of Brus Laguna and Erasmo Ordoñes of Ahuas. The Rah also attacked the Spanish of Trujillo on several occasions according to the oral tradition.  The Honduran government finally got control of the Aguan Valley and the area east of it when the Truxillo Railroad came. Before that in the early 19^th century, the Honduran government had signed treaties with the Americans and the British not to sell guns to Honduran Indians, which limited the ability of the Indians to protect themselves from the Spanish speakers. The Honduran Indians were also badly affected by epidemics still in the 19^th century including cholera, measles, smallpox, and continuing into the early 20^th century with Spanish flu. The loss of population due to the epidemics seems to be the reason the Miskitos let the Garifunas occupy the coast between Trujillo and the Plantain River.

In an internal crisis in the Mosquitia caused by the Miskito King dying while his children were young in 1843, and the British of Belize trying to the control the Mosquitia during the Regency while they were young, Miskito leaders signed peace treaties with the Honduran government (1843) and with the Nicaraguan government shortly after that, prior to the British recognizing this in the 1859 treaties “returning” the Mosquitia to Honduras and Nicaragua, with a clause saying “the border being wherever it was between the 2 countries” (la frontera sea donde sea). The defining of the border took until 1960, after a short war known as “Guerra de Mocoron” between Honduras and Nicaragua and a World Court decision in the Hague. So a combination of factors caused the Mosquitia to become part of Honduras and the actual incorporation of it with functioning municipal governments at the local level  and Honduran Indians carrying Honduran government identification cards in the Mosquitia actually date to after 1992.