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.