Ciudad blanca Honduras Possible Builders Part III Probably Nicaroas Toltecas and Rah

 

Part III--The Rah Indians, the Yaquis/Chichimeca and the Nahuas (Pipiles, Nicaraos, Toltecs, Cholulatecas and Teotihuancanos) among the Possible Builders of Ciudad Blanca área archaeological sites although the sites near Kao Kamasa are most like Nahuas, based on place names.

By Wendy Griffin March 13, 2015

The Indian tribe in the Honduran Mosquitia known to the Miskito Indians as the Rah who kept awake all night on the occassion of the death of a dog and if a Miskito who was in the village did not do so, too, the Rah ate him, might be descendants of the Chichimecas (Dog people in Nahua). Nahua speakers believed that a dog accompanied the soul of his master to the  Paradise of the rain god under the rainbow. It may be the Rah stayed up to wake the dog, so that it did not take its master with him that night, which is the reason the Pech Indians do wakes. Scott Wood notes in his book La Moskitia desde Adentro (the Moskitia from the Inside), that while anthropologists have been silent on the subject of the Rah, they are very alive in the oral history of the Miskitos.

All Rah are currently mixed with Miskito Indians, but Miskito author Scott Wood was able to rescue some words of Rah in his new book La Moskitia Desde Adentro (The Moskitia from Inside).  Some modern descendants of the Rah Indians mixed with Miskitos include Erasmo Ordoñes of Ahuas, the person who told the story of the Rah in the MISKIWAT story book La Gente de Miskut, and the author of the Miskito grammar book published together with Scott Wood’s book. Scott Wood includes the same story of the Rah and how the Rah of Raititara were poisoned by the Miskito King for eating a mixed Miskito-Rah child as told to him by his mother.

Scott Wood continues in saying the Rah were very warlike, and if a Miskito stayed in their village, he had to tell them stories of wars and battles. If they liked the stories, he was OK. If he did not tell stories that met their total satisfaction, they ate him. The Spanish also continously complained of the belicosidad (warlikeness) of the Indians of Olancho and the Trujillo área. Fifty years after Spanish conquest, the Indians of Olancho El Viejo (near Boqueron) were still actively burning incense in their temples to their idols. In 1807 not only the missión Indians of Pacura ad Tonjagua in the Agalta Valley attended the secret ceremony in mountains viewed by Liendo y Goicochea’s assistant but the Indian government of Catacamas where the Franciscan misión was headquartered for Olancho and El Paraíso was there, too.  There is a land title to the Nahua Indian cofradía of Catacamas, but that town and the Agalta Valley towns may have been multiethnic, as probably were Tenampua, Naco, and Ilamatepeque.

In light of finding the Ciudad Blanca finding out who the canabalistic Rah were by identifying their language becomes more important. The Rah were at the time of Conquest in the Aguan Valley and Eastern part of the Department of Colon, and Miskitos still report battling with the Rah over control of the área between the Aguan River near Trujillo and the Plantain River. The Rah also attacked even the Spanish who settled in Trujillo.

What Happened to the Ciudad blanca área and Its Inhabitants after the Spanish Conquest?

The área between the Aguan river and south to Bluefields, Nicaragua was not permanantly conquered by the Spanish although for a few years the Spanish had control of the gold mines of placer gold on the Rio Platano(around 1535), at Xeo (now Feo, Colon inland from Santa rosa de Aguan), at Yare possibly on the Rio Coco, but probably the Tawahka controlled gold mines on the Patuca River, and at Tayaco (Place of the Tayas, posibly the Nahua speakers’ name for the Pech Indians) on the Sico River. The Spanish in their early reports of the Rio Platano gold mines do report problems of one group of Indians attacking the other groups of Indian miners and trying to eat them. Human sacrifice was also apparantly practiced near Trujillo itself, as Hernan Cortes when he left his cousin in charge of Trujillo in 1524 told him to try to stop the sacrifices.  Pech legends collected in Dioses, héroes y Hombres en el Universo Mitico Pech, report problems with the Pech being captured, sacrificed and eaten, and at one point Patakako the Pech hero has his heart taken out while he is asleep in a hammock by a celestial tiger. Theodore Morde also said the legends related to the Ciudad blanca also are clear that human sacrifice was invovled. The Spanish did find El Dorado in NE Honduras, as the gold placer mine in the Pech región was worked in the early colonial period and again in the 20th century. Ted Danger who made the Search for the Ciudad Blanca video originally got interested in Ciudad blanca within the Rio Platano biosphere reserve, because he was doing research before being hired to go and look for gold in the región. 

My book Los Pech de Honduras tells about Pech goldmining on the creeks that flow into the Rio Platano. That book may have caused the destruction of the Pech village of Las Marias in the Rio Platano Biosphere, as people have poured in to cut down the forest,put in a drug airport, talk about planting african palms, having more cattle. My friends who helped me write the book lost their lands there.  In my History teacher Ed Kaplan's recently published book by New Tiger Press he mentions how if the local military commander knows where something is, he can just send his men to go and take it, but merchants from afar have to persuade people to sell it to them and know what to offer in Exchange.

Interethnic Warfare Continued After the Spanish left the Area-No Pax Hispana anywhere in Honduras

The rebellions in the 1540’s seemed to have been successful in throwing the Spanish out of these áreas east of Trujillo, which were not reconquered by the Spanish during the entire colonial period. The place name of Bataya at the mouth of the Rio Platano is according to local Garifunas from the Spanish Word Batalla (battle) and was named for a battle between the Paya Indians and the Spanish, which the Spanish lost. The Miskitos eventually overcame the Rah, and extended to the Aguan River, according to their oral history, and also the English Superintendant in 1811 reports them just the other side of the Guaymoreto Lagoon, which would be Santa Rosa de Aguan at the mouth of the Aguan River, whose name is in Nahua. The Miskitos have a rather bad reputation of attacking both other Indian groups who they then sold as slaves to the English, or making them pay tribute, such as making canoes for them or robbing cattle for them, and for attacking the Spanish. Several ethnic groups seemed to come together in Honduran Moskitia, including escaped blacks, and while eventually they mostly became one group known as Miskitos, they previously had serious divisions, some of which led to wars. Scott Wood argues the Miskitos may have been great enemies of the Spanish because the Indians in the Moskitia saw how badly Indians under the Spanish were treated.

These early Spanish goldmines and the practice of taking the Indians prisoner and selling them as slaves by the boatload to work the goldmines in Cuba and Santo Domingo is probably what caused the abandonment of the archaeological sites on the Rio Platano and further inland, known as the Ciudad Blanca área. The Rah Indians had moved deeper into the Moskitia by the 19th century which also saw  the reconquest of Trujillo by the Spanish and the arrival of the Garifunas who began expanding along the coast. Scott Wood notes the Rah living on the Patuca River (its name is in Tawahka), and near Auka in the Moskitia. The Mummies in the caves at Warunta, he thought might be Rah.

The Trujillo and Lower Aguan área seems to have been dominated by Nahua speakers with Nahua names for their cities like Ce Coatl (One snake), Champagua (damp house) and Papayeca (the place of Papa, the chief priest of Quetzalcoatl in his round temple in the formof God of theWind). The two provinces of Papayeca and Champagua extended inland to Telica in the Olancho Valley. It is not clear if Agalteca (people from the place of tule, junco or carrizo or the followers of Ce Acalt in Nahua)  in the Aguan Valley near Olanchito was part of this state or formed a different state than these two provinces, as Hernan Cortes complained that the Acaltecas were rebellious and would not swear alligance to him. There are in Atlantida department there are a number of places with Nahua names too like the Papalote (butterfly) River near Jutiapa or Texiguat.

The Spanish retribution against the Agaltecas was terrible including putting them in houses and burning them alive, cutting them up and feeding them to the dogs, and enslaving them and trying to take them in chains to Leon, Nicaragua to be sold. A similar fate met the Indians of Juticalpa (place of the edible snail called Jute in Nahua), Olancho. Some Agalteca Indians still remained however, and they are reported as tributary Indians throughout the colonial period. In 1645, the Spanish of Trujillo tried to round up all of their tributary Indians in the Bay Islands, Trujillo área, the Lower Aguan, and took them to NW Honduras and most were eventually assigned to guard the fort at Santo Tomas, Guatemala where most died due to problems of tropical fevers in the área. 

The Spanish abandonned Trujillo between 1645 and 1795 due to problems with pirate attacks, although the port continued to be used as a port by pirates and smugglers, including the mulattos of Sonaguera. Many were slaves of the King of Spain, managing his ranch with cattle, horse,and mules, and the presence of 40 mule carts found near the Aguan River would seem to indicate that the mulattos used the king’s own mules in their smuggling activities. Tela also probably owes its name as a smuggling port where the English pirates/traders traded cloth (Tela in Spanish) with Jicaque (unconquered) Indians and maybe the mulatos of Yoro for local products.

Oral History of Agaltecas and the Aztec King Moctezuma in NE Honduras

However, the Spanish did not manage to take all the Agalteca Indians, and they regrouped in the late colonial period.  They still live in Agalteca, and still tell stories of the glory of the Agalteca Indians and the attempt of Moctezuma who they say came personally to try to conquer the Honduran Indians and make them pay tribute. This story of the attack of Aztecs under Moctezuma I to try to make Honduran Indians pay tribute is also reported in Torquemada’s Monarquía Indigena and Fuentes Guzman’s Recopilación Florida. Both are colonial era books and include the best known versions of the stories of the immigration of the Nahua speaking Pipiles, Toltecs, and Nicaroas to Central America. Fuentes Guzman had access to a Pipil Codex that no longer exists, and to Quiche oral history, and as a direct descendant of Hernan Cortes’s capitán Bernal Diaz de Castillo, he also had Access to oral history of Spanish families who had participated in the Conquest.

According to the oral history of the Agalteca Indians, Moctezuma was killed on the road between Agalteca and Yaruca, now a village outside of La Ceiba, and that was the beginning of the decline of the Agaltecas, reported Oscar Flores Cruz, president of the UNAH-CURVA in Olanchito and author of the book La Torreada de la Danta (A dance where Ladino horsemen try to kill a female tapir, but they never succeed, and at the end the female tapir (danta) appears with two young tapirs.)

The Mystery of the Relation of Yaquis to the Kingdoms in Central America that formed Payaquí

There seems to be some ressemblance between this dance and the dance of the deer of the Yaqui Indians of Mexico. The province or multiethnic conferation the Toltec King Ce Acalt Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl founded in Honduras and Guatemala and which may have included parts of El Salvador and Nicaragua was known as Payaqui (among Yaquis, or among Nahoas) and Huetlato (el mayor,the large one).  Currently the Yaqui language and Nahua languages are part of the same language family Uto-Aztec, but are separate languages, but in the 10th century at the time of the Toltec King’s migration to Central America, they would have been much closer. The Nahua speakers of Mexico probably considered the Yaquis "Chichimeca".  

The archaeological site of Naco, Arizona is in an área that the historically known Yaqui Indians were known to use,and the Yaqui Indians still make and play the carrizo (acatl) flute that is also made by the Pech Indians and previously made by all Honduran Indians.  The Sierra de Agalta (place of a lot of carrizo, Nicarao dialect of Nahua) is the mountain range between San Esteban Tonjagua and Gualaco (now a town that is part of the Nahua Federation of Olancho, its name means the place of the start of a river, which it is the start of the Rio Sico) and Culmi (from Kurmi, a type of tree in Pech), Olancho in the Ciudad blanca area which is crossed at the Malacate (spindle whorl in Nahua) pass. 

While Nahua, Pech and Miskito seem to be the principal source of place names in NE Honduras, especially in the Ciudad Blanca and Trujillo-Lower Aguan and Agalta Valley áreas, there seem to be some place names like Tocoa, that has not been identified as  any of these langauges. Tocoa, and the related place names Omoa, Yojoa, Toloa, Tencoa, Machicoloa, Ulua, are all by wáter, but the source language of that Word for wáter  is not any of the currently recognized languages in the área, including it is not Lenca, Tol, Chorotega (Mangue of the Oto-Mangue language family), Mayan, or Pech.  The switch of u’s and o’s are common in Nahua words in Honduras like tolli/tule (a wáter reed), olli/hule (rubber), as are l’s and r’s like Culmi/Kormi, Belen Gualcho/Guarcho and maybe Cholti/Chorti. Often the other language did not have the other letter or sound.  If Petoa palapa was a place name in NW Honduras at the time of giving encomiendas in 1536, probably the language where -oa means wáter is from the same part of Western Mexico where palapa means a house without walls. In Central America there was a migration of Indians from Guerrero in Western Mexico to Nicaragua by canoe, and they settled around Leon, Nicaragua where they were known as Sutibiaba or Marimbio Indians. Although they have lost their language, linguists now think it was an Oto-Mangue language.

There has been some controversy of the relationship of Subtibiaba and Jicaque, and when the Jicaques arrived in Honduras.  Currently the idea of ethnographers is that the Tol speakers, if not having lived in Honduras for forever like the Lencas, probably were already in Honduras by 1,000 BC. It is posible that they were pushed out of Mesoamérica further north as those groups adopted corn agriculture and the Tol speakers as people who depended heavily on hunting and fishing and collecting foods, although they seemed to also practice some agriculture as the Pech did, needed to find where they could freely hunt and fish. Like the Pech, the Tawahkas, the Tol religión is heavily involved with rites and beliefs regarding hunting. However, not all Jicaques in colonial Honduras may have been Tol speakers, and the presence of Nahua place names in Jicaque territory is noticeable.  The Agalteca Indians of Yoro are part of FETRIXY (Federation of Xicaque Indians of Yoro). Even though it has become common to refer to Jicaques as Tolupanes, and the Tol language as Tolupan, FETRIXY has not changed its use of Jicaque or Xicaque to designate themselves.

In the 2001 ethnic census there was one community of "pech" in the rural part of Santa Fe municipio, in colon, and one community of "jicaques". The Pech are definately not Pech, but they might be Payas, and the Jicaques also could be part of the original inhabitants of Colon who not conquered and never left.  The 2001ethnic census did not include the possibility of choosing Nahua or chorotega or pipil, or Matagalpa(Pantasma)  in the census and so people who knew they were Indian could either choose another tribe, like Lenca, or they could choose other.   This is true even though the Nahua Indian Federation was founded prior to the 2001 Census.

Machicoloa in Santa Barbara, according to Raul Alvarado’s book El Partido de Tencoa y el Surgemiento de Santa Barbara was a largest town in the área with 1,000 Indians after Conquest, and the language spoken there was reported as “mexicano.” Russell Sheptak associates Omoa with Indians known as Toqueguas, about whom there is considerable controvery. Not all the Indians reported as Jicaque Indians by the Spanish were Tol speakers,and not all the Indians that the Spanish reported as Payas were Pech speakers,and it currently seems clear that among “Jicaques”and among “Payas” both sedentary corn growing Indians, and hunting-fishing-gathering-root crop growing Indians were lumped together by the Spanish,which confuses people,such as looking at the maps of Linda Newson in The Cost of Conquest.

The Spanish also spelt the Word Ulúa (maybe wáter by the rubber trees-hule),such as the Ulua river that separates the department of Cortes from Atlantida and Yoro and sometimes use is as a tribe name probably referring to Lencas as it also appears in El Salvador, and Ulwa (a subgroup of Sumu speakers) as Ulua (no accent, the stress is on the first syllable), because the Spanish did not have a w in their alphabet.  So this has caused no end of confusión as to who were the Indians in NE Honduras, including the Department of El Paraiso, where most of the colonial “pueblos de indios” have Nahoa names like Texiguat and Teupasenti (Teot means God in nahua).  There is also a San Juan de Ulua in front to Veracruz, Mexico, the área of the Huateca in Mexico where the dialect of Mahua is most like Pipil in Central America.

While current spellings of Nahua include with an u like Nahua, or with a w like Nawa, the most common colonial era spelling, prefered by the Nahoas of Honduras and the descendants of nicaraos in Nicaragua is with an o, or Nahoa. So it is posible that these –ua, and-oa words are from a dialect of Nahoa, and in fact Toqueguas were reported by Lawrence Feldman as having calendar names in Nahua, in Chol Maya, and another language where the words ended in –oa and –gua, which may however be a non-standard dialect of Nahua.  Reyes Mazzoni, a Honduran anthropologist who taught at the Jose Cecilio Valle University in Tegucigalpa identified Champagua as Damp (or Water) house (champa) in Nahua. The Word Champa is still used in Honduran North Coast Spanish to describe a house with a thatched roof with no walls, like Palapa in Mexico. The Nahua word for thatched roof houses with Wall jacal or chacal is stillused in Honduran Spanish, too.

Many of the ceramics known for Western Honduras in the Post Classic period like Fine Orange, and Tohil Plumbate, are also found in the Ciudad blanca área, but other types of ceramics are also found there. The most common ceramics in the área include an incised punctate ware which is similar in design to the incised punctate ware of the nicaraos in Nicaragua, and although more coarse, similar to the incised punctate ware Fine Orange of Cholula in Puebla, and Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico. The Nahua speaking Nicaraos identify their homeland where they started out their journey for Central America as two villages in the valley of Cholula, Mexico. This is why they sometimes appear as Cholulatecas (people from Cholula in Nahua) and Chorotegas (people from Cholula in Mangue) in Central American documents, and aré the origin of the place name Choluteca for the city, the river which also goes through Tegucigalpa,and the Department.

There were also Oto-Mangue speakers called Chorotegas, who for example settled in Nacaome in Southern Honduras and in Monimbó área near Masay in Nicaragua. The Oto-Mangue speakers are believed to be the older residents of the Valley of Mexico and the Valley of Cholula,and the city-states in the área, seemed to have multiethnic and plurilingual, one reason they preferred picture writings to glyphs that few could read. While the Nahuas were famous for trying to having to have a monopoly on obsidean, both Green and black, and cacao, the Chorotegas reportedly tried to have a monopoly on “níspero”, which is the tree bark cloth (usually called tunu in Honduras from the Miskito Word, but called amat in Tawahka from the Nahua word amate) is made, amate tree barkpaper is made,and the resin of the níspero tree is chicle from which chewing gum was made.  The Aztec King invaded Honduras to try to make them pay tribute in different things including gold, Green stones, Green feathers, cacao, and resins such as balsalm, liquidambar, rubber, copal, and possibly the resin of the níspero or amate trees. 

There are many reports of tree bark paper in colonial era reports, like gods named tzikin in the Agalta valley of Olancho in 1807 with Straw bodies and native paper faces, reported by missionary Liendo Goicoechea. The craft used for making this paper is a Stone with carved grooves, and it can seen in Santa Barbara, in the San Pedro Museum, in the Rufino Galan Museum of Trujillo, and in the Agalta Valley ruins.

The Lencas of Honduras still use this craft to break the fiber of native cotton, which is from a tree, before they spin it with a malacate, to make cotton thread. Cotton was not native to the city states of Central Mexico,and there were laws that only the wealthy of the Aztecs could wear it. The poorer Mexica might weave cloth from pita, a plant of the pineapple family and a type of cloth still known in the Honduran Mosquitia according to Scott Wood or even woven “acatl” tule or junco could be used as cloth to clothe the poor Mexica, according to phrases in a Nahuatl in the Náhuatl dicitionary on Oregon State University’s website.

Olancho, which maybe where the Ladino versión of Ciudad blanca is was originally Ulanco, the place of a lot of rubber (hule) and that is still its name in the Pech language. According to the Pech oral history and the location of their legends, they were primarily located on the Sico (place of little shells or snails in nahua) River, and the highlands above, and only immigrated later into the Culmi área, and also later to the Rio Platano. There are periodic American and European and Ladino reports of Payas, for example on the Patuca River, on the Paulaya river, in Gualaco, and in the 2001 census in rural Santa Fe, Colon department who probably not  Pech indians. In the rural community of Francia, Colon,the Ladinos there still kept tamed deer according to the Garifuna midwife who cared for them when pregnant. Tamed deer was in fact a hallmark of Nahuas, and many nahua chiefs noted in the colonial records had mazatl (deer in Nahautl) or Mazate as their personal names. Deer (Mazatl) was a symbol on the Pipil Calendar and their names may have come from the day they were born.

This seems to be the origin of Ce Acatl (One Reed) Topiltzin (Our Lord) Quetzalcoatl (snake-quetzal bird) name. The day Ce Acatl is under the protection of the goddess Lady with the Jade Skirt, according to the Aztec calendar page shown in Robert Carmack’s Legacy of Central America which may have been another reason that that diety was of special importance to the Indians of that área. In the oral history of Olancho Nahua Indians who live outside of Catacamas in Siguaté and Jamasquire, the leader who brought them to Olancho was Axil Tapaltzin. A similar name is given at the beginning of Fuentes Guzman’s Recopilización Florida for being the Tulteca King who was over the Mayas of Guatemala like the Quiches, the Tzutzujils, the Cachiquels,and all the way to the Rio Dulce.

The author of the website about Guatemalan Pipils says that most people who do archaeology do not read the history of the área where they did, which is why they leave the issue of the arrival of Nahua speaking Pipiles, Nicaraos, Toltecas-Chichimeca, and the Mangue speaking Chorotegas in Central America out of the question when they are trying to decide what happened and why the large Mesoamerican sites of the Maya Chorti like Copan Ruinas in Honduras and Joya de Ceren in El Salvador, and the Lenca área of Santa Barbara and Cortes were abandoned around 836 AD. 

This is in spite of the fact that most of the place names now there, especially in the valleys appropriate for cacao cultivation, are mostly in Nahua, and the continuing reporting of indios mexicanos (mexican Indians), mexicano corrupto (pipil or Nawa—corrupt Aztec speech Nahuatl),  Nahua (Nahuaterique,Nahuapate), and into the 1860’s la voz azteca (the language of the Aztecs) was still being reported as being spoken in El Paraiso Dept., in Catacamas, Olancho and the Department of Cortes.  The cloaks covered with feathers which William Wells tried to buy at the Catacamas, Olancho fair in 1860 are tilma,finally decorated with feathers,and drawn first of Mexican Indians whom Hernan Cortes met in Moctezuma II’s court in Tenochitlan. The Nahua Indians say the Ciudad Blanca was built by their ancestors and there used to be a connection between those in Olancho and those in the Ciudad Blanca, and there was in between a secret cave with the Laguna de Mescal (mescal is an agave type plant still used to make twine in these Nahua villages) which is where they did human sacrifices of Nahuas. This is similar to the reported Pipil ceremonies for the beginning and the end of the rainy season.

See the articles in Spanish on my blog in Spanish

www.crisisderechoshumanoshonduras2015.blogspot.com

about calendars and all the still current ceremonies associated with calendars in Honduras. The old important dates of the Pipil and Mayan calendars are not forgotten by their descendants or the descendants of the Lencas, and the Ladinos. There are over 2,700 Nahua derived words in Honduran Spanish, according to Spanish linguist Atanasio Herranz, making Honduran Nahua better documented than some languages like Matagalapa, Agüilac, and some varieties of Lenca. In a study of medicinal plants in Eastern Guatemala a pharmacology student found some Ladinos could name 200 medicinal plants in Nahua. While there are currently about 10 medicinal plants in Honduras known primarily by their Nahua names now, when Dr. Jesus Aquilar Paz, who did Honduras’s map,marked the Ciudad blanca,and had it declared a protected área, was working in the 1920’s and 1930’s it seems the Nahua names were more common in Honduras, as for every medicinal plant he collected, he found 4 or 5 Nahua names. According to Dr. Paul House of the UNAH, the Nahua names in Honduras are not the same nahua names for these plants as in Mexico. And in the case of common foods, often the Nahua Word remains the common Word in Honduran Spanish, but not in Mexico. A Mexican female anthropologist reported the first time she went shopping in Honduras in the market, she cried as no one understood what food she wanted to buy.

Most of the Mexican dishes with Nahua names such as noted in the book on Pre-Hispanic Foods in Mexico, are still the common Spanish names for these foods in Honduras. Most crafts and craft plants made in Honduras by Mesoamerican Indians are still called by Nahua names in Honduras. The people of Santa Barbara are famous for their work in junco (acatl in Nahua), and they have just translated their old name Agaltecas or Acaltecas in Nahua to Juqueños and Junqueñas (men and women of Junco). The Agalteca creek runs through what is now the city of Santa Barbara in NW Honduras. Agalteca was also a place name in Comayagua, where the ruin had a ball court, and in Olancho, where there is also an Aguanteca. The dance from Jutikile in the Valley of Olancho “la Aguateña” probably refers to a woman either from the River Aguan or Aguanteca, both of which are in Nahua.   

The Pech Indians use Nahua derived words for their crafts in Spanish, but use separate words for the same craft in Pech when they speak Pech. Their Word for church sikinko, the house (ko,kao) of the saint (sikin), seems to comefrom the same tzikin Word for the idol made of Straw with native paper face reported in 1808 for Agalta indians, and is also the name of the Maya Chorti ceremony for the ancestros tzikin done on the Day of the Dead/end of the rainy season in Western Honduras on November 1. Tzikin means something different for the Ladinos of Copan Ruinas who throw rotten tomatoes that night and yell Tzikin, Tzikin than it does for the Maya Chorti out in the mountains who celebrate with foods made of squash (ayote), because it is shaped like a skull, which is also true of Honduran plum tomatoes.