The term Indians is often applied to North Americans and Latin Americans of Indigenous heritage, and it is a term that is viewed differently by different people. This is discussed on p. 7 of the textbook (2^nd edition), and will also be discussed briefly in class.

The usage of the terms Maya, Mayas, Mayans, and Mayan has long been a problem for scholars. Some have said Maya is a noun and should be used as such, while Mayan is an adjective and should be used as an adjective. This usage would therefore omit the word Mayans.

Others use the word Maya to refer to the people and cultures and Mayan to refer to their languages (of which there are approximately 30 mutually unintelligible ones), and by this usage the word Mayans would not be found.

The word Maya originally referred only to the Yucatec language. Mayan came to be applied by scholars to the family of related languages that included Yucatec, and then to any language within that family, while the plural form Mayans then referred to the speakers of any of the Mayan languages.

A discussion of these terms can be found at http://www.pauahtun.org/Calendar/maya_vs_mayan.html where John Justeson’s usage is presented and justified. His usage apparrently includes Maya only for the Yucatec language, Mayan for the language family, and Mayans for the speakers of any of the 30 Mayan languages. (There is no single Mayan culture, so that usage is not applicable). Any individual language (Yucatec, Tzotzil, Tojolabal) will be referred to with the singular term (which will also be used for the culture) and the people speaking it will be referred to with the plural form of that language. The same rule is applied to other languages of Mesoamerica; e.g. Zapotec (the language, and also used as an adjective preceding the word culture when that entity is referenced) , Zapotecs (the people)