sco became known
to the Spaniards under their Nahuatl appellatives through interpreters
in that tongue, and because most of the territory had been subjected to
the powerful sway of the Montezumas.

Still, Cintla may also be a Mayan word. It may be a nominal form from
the verb _tzen-tah_, and would then have the signification, "a built-up
place," or one well stocked with provisions; or, it may be a patronymic
from the Tzentals, the tribe which occupied this region at the time, as
I shall proceed to show.

_The Native Tribe._--There is no question but that the native tribe
which took part in this combat belonged to the Mayan stock. All the
accounts agree that Aguilar, the Spaniard whom Cortes found in Yucatan
as a captive, and who had learned to speak the Mayan tongue,
communicated with the natives without difficulty. This is conclusive as
to their ethnic position.

Further evidence, if needed, is offered by the native names and words
preserved in the accounts. The term for their large canoes, _tahucup_,
is from the Maya _tahal_, to swim, and _kop_, that which is hollow, or
hollowed out. The name _potonchan_, Aguilar translated as, "the place
that stinks" (lugar que hiede). He evidently understood it as derived
from the Maya verb _tunhal_, to stink, with the intensive prefix _pot_
(which is not unusual in the tongue, as _pot-hokan_, very evident,
etc.). The historian Herrera, on some authority not known to me, further
explains this term as one of contempt applied to the people there,
meaning rude and barbarous;[6-1] as we should say, using the same
metaphor, "stinkards."

_Tabasco_ is said by Bernal Diaz to have been the name of the principal
chief of the eight provinces or tribes, who together opposed the
Spaniards. For this reason I would reject the derivation from the
Nahuatl, proposed by Rovirosa,--_tlalli_, earth, _paltic_, wet or
swampy, _co_, in,[6-2]--however appropriate it would be geographically;
and also that from the Maya, _tazcoob_, "deceived," referring to the
deceptions practiced on the Spaniards,--which is defended by Orozco y
Berra[6-3]; and I should accept that which I find suggested by Dr.
Berendt in his manuscript work on Mayan geographical names. He reads
_Tabasco_ as a slightly corrupt form of the Maya _T'ah-uaxac-coh_, "our
(or the) master of the eight lions," referring to the eight districts or
gentes of the tribe. This is significant and appropriate, the jaguar,
the American lion, being a ver