Читать книгу Picture-Writing of the American Indians - Garrick Mallery - Страница 13

Mr. H. W. Henshaw spent the months of August, September, and October on the Pacific coast, engaged in the collection of vocabularies of several Indian languages, with a view to their study and classification. The Umatilla Reservation in Oregon was first visited with the object of obtaining a comprehensive vocabulary of the Cayuse. Though there are about four hundred of these Indians on the reservation, probably not more than six speak the Cayuse tongue. The Cayuse have extensively intermarried with the Umatilla, and now speak the language of the latter, or that of the Nez Percé. An excellent Cayuse vocabulary was obtained, and at the same time the opportunity was embraced to secure vocabularies of the Umatilla and the Nez Percé languages. His next objective point was the neighborhood of the San Rafael Mission, Marin county, California, the hope being entertained that some of the Indians formerly gathered at the mission would be found there. He learned that there were no Indians at or near San Rafael, but subsequently found a few on the shores of Tomales bay, to the north. A good vocabulary was collected from one of these, which, as was expected, was subsequently found to be related to the Moquelumnan family of the interior, to the southeast of San Francisco bay. Later the missions of Santa Cruz and Monterey were visited. At these points there still remain a few old Indians who retain a certain command of their own language, though Spanish forms their ordinary means of intercourse. The vocabularies obtained are sufficient to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that there are two linguistic families instead of one, as had been formerly supposed, in the country above referred to. A still more important discovery was made by Mr. Henshaw at Monterey, where an old woman was found who succeeded in calling to mind more than one hundred words and short phrases of the Esselen language, formerly spoken near Monterey, but less than forty words of which had been previously known. Near the town of Cayucas, to the south, an aged and blind Indian was visited who was able to add somewhat to the stock of Esselen words obtained at Monterey, and to give valuable information concerning the original home of that tribe. As a result of the study of this material Mr. Henshaw determines the Esselen to be a distinct linguistic family, a conclusion first drawn by Mr. Curtin from a study of the vocabularies collected by Galiano and Lamanon in the eighteenth century. The territory occupied by the tribe and linguistic family lies coastwise, south of Monterey bay, as far as the Santa Lucia mountains.