This page provides resources about Colonial Poqomchi' and Poqomam, collectively "Colonial Poqom."
List of Archival Materials
The following document lists all extant manuscripts that I know of in Colonial Poqom (and post-colonial manuscripts through about 1900). This document was based on the finding aids for the Garrett-Gates Mesoamerican Manuscripts at Princeton, the William Gates papers at BYU, the Berendt-Brinton Latin American Collection at University of Pennsylvania, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Manuscrits américains and Manuscrits mexicains), as well as online searches of collections at Tulane and Harvard. If you know of Poqom archival documents that are not on this list, please reach out to me; I'd love to know about any others.
- Colonial Poqom Archival Materials (last updated June 23, 2022).
Transcriptions
Except where otherwise noted, the following are raw transcriptions that I have made of Colonial Poqom documents. These texts and my transcriptions are public domain (with the exception of my brief introductory notes), so feel free to use them at your discretion, though I would appreciate being credited if you copy a portion of my transcriptions for a publication. If you are using one of these documents for research, it may be a good idea to check it against the original. In addition to manuscript transcriptions, I have included links to published linguistic works about Poqom from the same time period.
Note on copyright: While the colonial texts themselves are in the public domain, university archives normally hold the copyright to their own facsimile images of the manuscripts. Annotations may also be copyrightable depending on the extent to which they constitute original work. While my own raw transcriptions presented here have minimal annotation and are therefore public domain, I make no guarantees about the copyright status of material found at external links below; please be aware of any applicable laws or guidelines if you are preparing a publication.
Artes (Grammatical descriptions)
The following four documents (two manuscripts and two published works) are the only surviving grammars of Poqom from before 1900. Other artes written in the 16th and 17th centuries have since been lost (Vinogradov 2019).
- Fragment of a Poqomchi' Arte (Garrett-Gates Mesoamerican Manuscripts, No. 231).
- Fragment of a Poqomchi' Arte - Original (last updated September 1, 2023). Original in the Firestone Library at Princeton University.
- Fragment of a Poqomchi' Arte - William Gates typescript (last updated August 31, 2023). Typescript held in the William Gates papers at BYU. Gates updated the spelling and punctuation, making it more readable, but introduced some errors.
- Arte breve of Poqomam written by Pedro Morán in 1720 (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Manuscrits américains, Item #53).
- Arte breve of Poqomam (last updated March 22, 2021). Based on a photostatic negative in the William Gates papers at BYU.
- Morán's Poqomam arte is based on a prior Arte breve of Poqomchi' written by Dionisio de Zúñiga. Zúñiga's Arte breve has been lost; the Fragment of a Poqomchi' Arte above belongs to a different (originally longer) document.
- Published resource: Poqom grammatical sketch in The English-American, his Travail by Sea and Land by Thomas Gage, 1648.
- Text available at Project Gutenberg - grammar found on pp. 213-220. Online version produced by Clare Graham and Marc D'Hooghe.
- Published resource: Die Maya-sprachen der Pokom-Gruppe by Otto Stoll, 1888.
- Scan available from the Internet Archive.
Doctrinal works
This is a partial list and will be updated as other transcriptions are completed.
- Sermonario en Pokonchí (Garrett-Gates Mesoamerican Manuscripts, No. 234). Original in the Firestone Library at Princeton University.
- Chapter Headings (last updated September 4, 2023).
- Part C: Meditations of St. Augustine (last updated January 8, 2024).
- Fragment of a Poqomchi' sermon (Garrett-Gates Mesoamerican Manuscripts, No. 235).
- De pasione Domini (last updated September 28, 2023). Original in the Firestone Library at Princeton University.
- Parallel Spanish-Poqomchi' confessional written in Tactic, Guatemala in 1814
- Confesonario en castellano y poconchi (last updated September 6, 2023). Based on C. Hermann Berendt's 1875 handwritten transcription at University of Pennsylvania (Berendt-Brinton Linguistic Collection, Item #67).
- Doctrina cristiana in Q'eqchi', Poqomchi', and Spanish compiled by Rafael Villacorta
- Doctrina Cristiana en lengua Castellana, Quekchí y Pocomchí (last updated March 31, 2024). Based on C. Hermann Berendt's 1875 handwritten transcription at University of Pennsylvania (Berendt-Brinton Linguistic Collection, Item #81)
- Parallel Spanish-Poqomchi' sermon (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Manuscrits américains, Item #52). No author or date, but written sometime before 1883. Discusses the Trinity, Incarnation, and seven sacraments.
- Plática de los principales misterios de la religión (last updated September 26, 2023). Based on a photostatic negative in the William Gates papers at BYU.
- Confessionel en langue Pocoman (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Manuscrits mexicains, Item #426).
- Mario Ruz has transcribed the full text of the Confessionel with annotations in the context of the Amoxcalli project. Amoxcalli hosts an online manuscript browser that has the transcription side-by-side with the facsimile images.