[206] “The Seris, the chief tells me, comprise about 200 men fit to bear arms—they still live part on the island of Tiburon, part on the coast.”
[207] M Pinart’s reference to his interpreter is not only impersonal but ambiguous. “Interpreted by the chief of the Seri and another Indian” might be considered to imply two Seri Indians, though it may, with equal linguistic probability, be interpreted to mean the specified Seri and another Indian; and while the temporary presence of a second Seri at the pueblo seems possible, the sum of probabilities points so clearly the other way as to demand the latter interpretation.
[208] Gatschet, op. cit., p. 131.
[209] Bandelier, Final Report of Investigations among the Indians of the Southwestern United States, part i, in Papers of the Archæological Institute of America, American series, iii, Cambridge, 1890, p. 76. As already noted, it is probable that the Guayma lost their “antigua idioma” (Ramirez, op. cit. p. 149) long before M Pinart’s visit; and pending definite statement of the facts on which his conclusion rests it is necessary to retain the classification based on specific and repeated, albeit unskilled, observations of the identity of the Guayma speech with that of the Seri.
[210] In correspondence with Dr Gatschet, op. cit., p. 133.
[211] Dr. Gatschet has recently revised the data and recognized the distinctness of the Seri tongue (Science, new series, vol. XII, 1900, p. 556-558).
[212] Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1885-’86; Washington, 1891, p. 137.
[213] Op. cit., p. 74.
[214] The American Race: A Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America; New York, 1891, p. 335.
[215] Mr. Hewitt’s discussion (postea, pp. 299-344) gives fuller details of this short vocabulary.