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what shy of strangers; in general they speak Spanish, but may be heard occasionally to talk Indian dialect with one another; with regard to this dialect they are, however, extremely unwilling to afford any explanations, generally answering «es muy antiguo» «no sé nada». The Indians of Belen and the surrounding region remind one of the Ometepec Indians, but are evidently intermixed with foreign elements.
According to Oviedo, Torquemada, and Cerezeda, the last one of whom accompanied Gil Gonzales de Avila in his expedition 1522, and thus is able to speak, like Oviedo, from his own personal observations, the Niquirans had reached a higher degree of civilization than their neighbours. However, the Chorotegans were also pretty far advanced in culture.
Indeed, reading the scanty descriptions of the last days of these nations, one feels tempted to assert that in harmonic development of the mental faculties they were superior to that nation, which, by its crowds of rapacious and sanguinary adventurers, honoured in history with the name of «los Conquistadores», has fixed upon itself the heavy responsibility for the annihilation of this civilization. For indeed so swift and radical was this annihilation, through the fanatical vandalism of «christian» priests and the bloody crimes of a greedy soldatesca, that history knows of no similar example. Thus the investigator of the comparatively modern culture of Central America is obliged to travel by more toilsome and doubtful roads than the student of the ancient forms of civilization of Egypt and India, although these were dead several thousands of years ago.
So much, however, has come to the knowledge of our time, as suffices to prove that the nations of Central America were very far advanced in political and social development as well as in
