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 39*> AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., I, 1899

Islands and their People, a record of his personal observation and ex- perience during nearly or quite three years in the archipelago, is of the opinion that the civilized natives are utterly unfit for self-government, and that "their morals improve as the square of the distance from churches and other so called civilizing influences." G. R. S.

Zoque and Mije — The Mexican state of Oajaca is equal in size to about half the area of Pennsylvania, and is mountainous throughout. Within its limits reside a large number of civilized Indian tribes who speak many different languages belonging to several linguistic stocks. The most populous native group is the Zapotec, and next in order of number is the Mixtec, both belonging to the Zapotecan family. Other tribes are the Zoque and the cognate Mije or Mixe, whose territory extends into the adjoining states of Chiapas and Tabasco. The main Mije settlement in Oajaca is at San Juan de Guichicovi, where they have resided since very early times. The two villages called Chimalapa form the center of the Zoque population.

The dialects of the cognate Zoque and Mije were early studied by the padres, who introduced Christianity among them more than two centu- ries ago, the earliest Zoque grammar dating from 1672. The ancient artes and vocabularios contain a large number of terms, but the informa- tion which they render on the grammatic structure of the languages is limited. Still, we may gather from them that the noun undergoes little inflection, but that the whole predicative and inflective power is vested in the verb. The cases in English are supplanted in Zoque and Mije by postpositions ; that is, prepositions placed after the nouns. Rela- tive pronouns do not exist, but in their stead there is a relative particle, the place of which follows that of the verb. Raoul de la Grasserie, who has brought together all the existing material on the two dialects, shows that in the verbal inflection Mije places the subject pronoun be- fore the verb, Zoque after it. 1 The root is monosyllabic in both ; there is no objective conjugation with incorporative forms, but polysynthesis by particles inserted in the verb is rather predominant. The personal pronoun of Zoque closely resembles the possessive, but is not identical with it. The substantive verb potz enters largely into the inflection of the verb and there figures as a suffix. The numeral system is quinary, and in Mije all simple numerals from one to ten appear to be dissylla- bic. Generally speaking, Zoque is more archaic than Mije, for it has preserved its words in fuller form. A. S. Gatschf.t.

��1 Languf Zoque et Langue Mixe. Grammaire, Dictionnaire % Textes Tradnits et Analysis* par R. de la Grasserie. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1898. 8°, 384 pp. Tome xxn of the Bibliotkeque Lin- guistique A nte'ricaine.

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