LINGUISTIC FIELD WORK.
WORK OF MRS. ERMINNIE A. SMITH.
From the 1st of July to the 15th of August, 1884, Mrs. Smith, assisted by Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, of Tuscarora descent, was engaged among the Onondaga living near Syracuse, N. Y., in translating and annotating two Onondaga manuscripts; afterward, until the latter part of October, with the same assistance, she was at work on the Grand River reservation in Canada, where she filled out the vocabulary in the Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages from the dialect of the Cayuga. She also obtained from the Mohawk a translation, with annotations, of a manuscript in their dialect.
The three manuscripts mentioned are now in the possession of the Bureau of Ethnology. Their origin and history are not distinctly known, as they are all probably copies of originals which seem to have been lost or destroyed. It was intended in these manuscripts to reproduce, by the alphabet and the script used by English writers, the sound of the dialects employed.
These records have their chief interest in the preservation of many archaic words, or those of ceremony, law, and custom, which in these dialects, as is the general rule, remain unchanged, although the colloquial language may be modified. The subject matter of all these records is genuinely and exclusively Iroquoian.
The Mohawk manuscript was copied about the year 1830 by Chief John "Smoke" Johnson from an earlier original or perhaps copy. The orthography of this copy is quite regular and is that of the early English missionaries, being similar in many respects to the well known Pickering alphabet.
One of the Onondaga manuscripts was found in the possession of Mr. Daniel La Fort and the other in that of Mrs. John A. Jones, both of the Onondaga reserve, New York. These two copies differ from each other in orthography and substance, the Jones manuscript being probably a full detail of a part of the other.
The orthography of the La Fort manuscript is very irregular and difficult to read, but that of the Jones manuscript is regular and legible. The Mohawk manuscript contains a detailed account of the rites and ceremonies, speeches and songs, of the condoling and inducting council of the Iroquoian League in the form in which that council was conducted by the elder brothers or members of the Onondaga, Mohawk, and Seneca divisions, which have been generally called tribes, but are more correctly confederacies, their villages being the tribal unit. The La Fort Onondaga manuscript comprises a similar ritual of the same council as carried out by the younger brothers, viz., the Cayuga, Oneida, and Tuscarora members or confederacies of the league. The Jones Onondaga manuscript is the charge of the principal shaman to the newly elected or inducted chief or chiefs.
During the remainder of the year material was collected and work continued on the Tuscarora-English part of the Tuscarora dictionary.
WORK OF MR. H. W. HENSHAW.
Mr. H. W. Henshaw visited southern California for the purpose of pursuing linguistic studies in the group of languages spoken by the Santa Barbara Indians. Although these Indians became known at a very early day, being mentioned with particularity in the relation of Cabrillo's voyage along the California coast in 1542, but little has been ascertained in respect to their language and its relations to the speech of neighboring tribes.
Few vocabularies were collected by the early Spanish missionaries and those gathered were very imperfect, so that no conclusions can be based upon them with confidence.
As a result of the policy pursued by the various missionaries among these docile tribes, aboriginal habits were soon exchanged for others imposed by the priests. Tribal organizations were broken up and the Indians were removed from their homes and located about the missions. In addition the Spanish language was early introduced and so far as possible made to replace the aboriginal tongue. As a consequence Spanish became familiar to a large number of the proselytes, and all the surviving Santa Barbara Indians speak Spanish fluently, or rather the Mexican dialect of Spanish. Indeed, the impression prevails generally in California that none of the Indians can speak their own tongue. As a matter of fact, however, in their own families and when away from the white men they discard Spanish entirely.
The attempt to preserve the language was begun none too soon, as of the large population attributed to this part of the California coast Mr. Henshaw was able to discover only about fifty survivors, and these were widely scattered over several counties. A number of the dialects of the linguistic family are now extinct, and only a month before Mr. Henshaw's arrival at San Buenaventura an old woman died who, it is believed, was the last person to speak the dialect belonging to the Island of Santa Cruz. In Santa Barbara and Ventura counties six dialects of the family were found, which are believed to be all that are now extant.
In the case of the dialect of Santa Rosa island, but one Indian remained to speak it. Two more dialects are spoken by two or three individuals only. The existing dialects, named according to the missions around which they were spoken, are as follows: San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa Island, Purissima, Santa Inez, and San Luis Obispo. With the exception of the last named the several dialects are very closely related, and, although each possesses a greater or less number of words not contained in the others, their vocabularies show many words which are common to all.
The dialect formerly spoken at San Luis Obispo differs much from any of the others, and a critical comparison is necessary to reveal a sufficient number of words possessing identical roots to render their common parentage obvious.
Extensive vocabularies of the dialects of San Antonio and San Miguel were obtained, there being about a dozen Indians who speak these languages around the old San Antonio mission. These languages have been supposed to be of the Santa Barbara family (as it has hitherto been termed, now called Chumashan family), but the material obtained by Mr. Henshaw disproves this, and, for the present at least, they are considered to form a distinct family.
Mr. Henshaw visited Los Angeles and San Diego counties for the purpose of determining the exact northern and southern limits of the Shoshonian family, which extends quite to the coast in California.
At San Diego and San Luis Rey he obtained vocabularies representing four dialects of the Yuman family.
WORK OF MR. A. S. GATSCHET.
In August, 1884, Mr. Gatschet proceeded to visit the Tonkawē and Lipan tribes in Texas.
He reached Fort Griffin on the 29th of August. The Tonkawē tribe was encamped about a mile and a half south of Fort Griffin, Shackleford county, and consisted of 78 individuals, while the Lipan camp, one mile north-northwest, consisted of 19 persons only. All these Indians were on the point of removing to the Oakland reserve, Indian Territory.
The Tonkawē constitute an aggregate of several tribal remnants formerly living independently of one another in southern Texas and on the Rio Grande. Mr. Gatschet devoted five weeks to the study of their language and one week to that of the Lipan, which is a dialect of Apache (Athapascan). The Tonkawē is a sonorous and energetic form of speech. The radix of many of the adjectives becomes reduplicated to form a kind of plural, and the same thing is observed in some of the verbs, where iteration or frequency has to be indicated. Case suffixes are observed in the substantive, which can easily be traced to postpositions as their original forms. Very few of the natives were sufficiently conversant with English or Spanish to serve as interpreters, so that it was difficult to secure trustworthy results. A white man who had lived over six years among them was of material help, and several mythologic and other texts were obtained with tolerable correctness through his aid.
On October 9 Mr. Gatschet left Fort Griffin and reached Fort Sill, in the Indian Territory, on the 15th. Many Kaiowē and Comanche Indians encamped during the warmer months of the year around this fort, which is situated at the southeast base of the Wichita mountains. He engaged the best help he could find for studying the Kaiowē language, for which there is no Government interpreter. The Comanche is the predominating language on the whole Kaiowē, Comanche, and Apache reservation, although the Comanche exceed the Kaiowē but little in number. The Comanche is more easily acquired, at least to the extent required in conversation, and all the traders and shopkeepers on the reservation have a smattering of it.
Better interpreters for Kaiowē were obtained at Anadarko, the seat of the agency, where Mr. Gatschet remained from October 31 to December 12. A few Kaiowē were found who had passed some months or years among Americans or at the Indian schools at Carlisle, Chilocco, and elsewhere, and could express themselves intelligibly in English. A few white Mexicans were found among the Comanche, who were captured by them in infancy, acquired the Comanche language, and have ever since lived among these Indians. Of the Kaiowē, Mr. Gatschet acquired over two thousand terms, phrases, and sentences, several historic texts of value, and of the Comanche, eight hundred or a thousand words. The circumstances necessitated careful and numerous revisions of everything obtained, by which much of the time was absorbed.
The Na-ishi Apache, about four hundred in number and formerly roaming with the Kaiowē, furnished also a large amount of terms, exceeding fifteen hundred.
There are a few verbal similarities between the Kaiowē and the Shoshoni languages, but apparently not enough to indicate anything more than long association of these peoples. The Kaiowē has a dual in the intransitive verb and in some nouns. There are more than a dozen different modes of forming the plural of nouns. The subject pronoun is incorporated with the verb as a prefix, and every tense has a different subject pronoun, as in Otomi and other languages of southern Mexico.
Vocabularies were also obtained of Delaware, Ottawa, Yuchi, Caddo, Wichita, and of the hitherto unstudied Caddo dialects of Anadarko and Yatassi.
In spite of persevering search it was not possible to find any of the Bidai or the Tonica in Texas, although it is probable that some of them survived in that State as late as 1850.
Mr. Gatschet then passed a whole month among the Atakapa at Lake Charles, the county seat of Calcasieu parish, Louisiana. Of the two dialects traceable, only the western one seems to exist now, being still spoken by a few women living at the town. The language is sonorous, but strongly nasal.
Returning to the Indian Territory, after a fruitless search for the Tonica and Adai, he stopped at Eufaula, Creek Nation, to meet a Na'htchi Indian named Lasley, about sixty years old, who had represented his tribe in the councils of the Creek Nation. This man explained his Na'htchi terms and phrases by Creek equivalents, and these had to be translated into English to obtain full light concerning the Na'htchi terms. One legendary text was also obtained. The language is rather consonantal and has a multiplicity of verbal forms.
Among the Yuchi tribe on Middle Arkansas river, southwestern bank, and over 40 miles from Muscogee Station, Indian Territory, he remained but a week, too short a time to obtain full information respecting this interesting language. There are five or six hundred Yuchi still living on this tract. Two texts and a few popular songs, with one thousand terms of the language, were obtained.
The last stop was made among the Modoc at Quapaw Agency, at the agency buildings. About ninety are left of those brought there for having taken part in the Modoc war of 1872-'73. Five mythic tales were gathered from the natives within the short time of three weeks, one of them being of considerable length and of importance. It is called "The birth of Aishish." The birth of this astral deity resembles in most particulars that of Bacchus from the thigh of Jupiter after his mother, Semele, had been burned to death. The terms, phrases, and sentences gathered, besides the myth mentioned, amount to over fifteen hundred items, which will prove useful for completing the work on the Klamath Indians of Oregon now in preparation.
Of the Shawnee language several hundred words were gathered from the Indians of that tribe settled around the agency.
Mr. Gatschet returned to Washington in April, 1885.
WORK OF REV. J. OWEN DORSEY.
Rev. J. Owen Dorsey visited the Siletz Agency, Oregon, in August, 1884, to gain linguistic and other information respecting the tribes in that region. When he returned, in November, he brought back as the result of his work the following vocabularies:—Athapascan family: Applegate Creek, Galice Creek, Chastā Costa, Miko-no-tunne, Chetco, Smith River, Cal., and Upper Coquille.—Yakonan family: Yaquina, Alsea, Siuslaw, and Lower Umpqua.—Kusan family: Mulluk or Lower Coquille.—Takilman family: Takilma or Upper Rogue River.—Shahaptian family: Klikitat.—Sastean family: Shasti—total, nineteen vocabularies, ranging from fifty to three thousand entries, exclusive of phrases and grammatical notes.
He also obtained materials for an account of the social organization into villages of some of these Indians, the basis for which appears to have been the clan or gens. Rough maps, showing the localities of the villages, were made. Mr. Dorsey also obtained from several tribes the corresponding Indian names of about sixty vegetal products, specimens of which were brought to Washington for identification.
WORK OF MR. JEREMIAH CURTIN.
Mr. Curtin spent the first two weeks of July at the Quapaw agency, Indian Territory, in making a collection of Modoc myths, which he had begun in the preceding winter, being part of a general collection of Indian myths begun in 1883. The number of Modoc myths obtained was nearly one hundred.
After finishing work at the Quapaw Agency, he returned to Washington, and shortly afterward was directed to proceed to northern California and obtain vocabularies of the Nosa and Kombo languages, and thence to Oregon to obtain vocabularies of the Wasco, Tyigh, and Tenina languages.
Work was begun on the Nosa language (Yanan family) at Redding, Cal., on October 11. The difficulties were very great, especially at first, owing to the fact that the Nosa are few in number, live far from one another, and have a very imperfect knowledge of English.
The Nosa were a prominent and rather numerous people until 1864, when all of them who could be found were massacred by white settlers, who organized two companies for the purpose of exterminating the tribe. Owing to a chance by which a few escaped and to the exertions of Mr. Benjamin Oliver, who secreted several in his cellar, about fifteen full blood Nosa survived.
Work on Nosa was continued in and around Redding until the end of November, when Round Mountain was visited to complete the Nosa vocabulary and obtain that of the Atsugei (Palaikan family), a very interesting language. Work at Round Mountain was finished on January 8 and Redding was revisited on January 9, preparatory to departing for Oregon.
Owing to the excessive severity of the winter and the snow blockades, which lasted six weeks, communication with Warm Spring was closed, and it was impossible to enter the reservation till January 27, when Sinnashee, a school and center of the Warm Spring Indian population, was reached.
At this place the Tyigh vocabulary (Shahaptian family) was collected. The Wasco (Chinookan family) was obtained at the agency headquarters near the Deschutes river. Tenina, being identical with the Tyigh language, was omitted. From April 18, at which date work at the Warm Spring agency was finished, until June 30, the time was devoted to collecting myths in the Klamath reservation and at Yreka.
During the whole period of work all the myths that could be found among the people whose languages were being investigated were reduced to writing. In this manner a large body of Nosa, Atsugei, Tyigh, and Wasco myths was collected. In the cases of Klamath and Shasti, myths were the objects directly in view.
The vocabularies were obtained with satisfactory completeness and the verbal systems worked out in detail.
The Nosa is remarkable for a regularity of structure which yields to analysis and has a certain monotonous harmony of sound.
The Atsugei has a sonorous roll, a strong letter r, and a certain number of words in common with the Shasti, itself one of the r languages.