Nearly all those which I have seen for use in the Mission
schools appear to be the productions of the white instructors,
generally, of course, aided by some intelligent native. I have in my
possession an _Ortografia en Lengua Kekchi_, picked up by Dr.
Berendt in Vera Paz, which was the work of Domingo Coy, an Indian of
Coban (MS. pp. 32). But on examination it proves to be merely an
adaptation of a _Manual de Ortografia Castellana_, in use in the
schools, and not an original effort. For all that, it is not without
linguistic value. In Mexico a useful little book of instruction in
Nahuatl has been prepared by the licentiate Faustino Chimalpopoca
Galicia, a scholar of indigenous extraction.[53] An older work, of a
similar character, by Don Antonio Tobar, a descendant of the Montezumas,
is mentioned by bibliographers, but never was printed, and has probably
perished.[54]
It has always been part of the policy of both Catholic and Protestant
missions to permit the natives to enter the career of the church; in the
territories of both confessions instances are moderately numerous of
priests and preachers of half or full Indian blood. Most of these
educated men, however, rather shunned the cultivation of their maternal
tongues, and preferred, when they wrote at all, to choose that of their
white brethren, the Spanish, Portuguese or English.
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