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 PALEOGRAPHY

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PALEOGRAPHY

while inconstant, seem to have been of unwarlike and generally friendly disposition.

The first civilized men to encounter the Pakawdn tribes were the shipwrecked Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions, survivors of the Narvdez expedi- tion, who spent seven years (1529-1536) wandering over the Texas plains before finally reaching Mexico. It is possible also that the Pakawii were represented among the. neophytes whom the Franciscan Father Andres de Olmos drew out of Texas and established under the name of Olives in a Tamaulijas mission in 1544. The earliest known missionary effort among the Pakawdn tribes is that of the Franciscan Damian Massanet (or Manzanet), the father of the Texas missions, who in 1691 stopped at the village of the Payaya tribe, near the present San Antonio, set up a cross and altar and said Mass in the presence of the tribe, explaining the meaning of the ceremony, afterwards distributing rosaries and gaining the good will of the chief by the gift of a horse. Throughout their history the Spanish Texas missions were in charge of Franciscans, directed from the Colleges of Zaca- tecas and Queretaro in Mexico. In 1718 was estab- lished the Spanish presidio, or garrison post, which later grew into the city of San Antonio. In the same year the mission of San Francisco Solano, founded in 1700 on the Rio Grande, was removed by Fr. Antonio de Olivares to the neighbourhood of the new post and renamed San Antonio de Valero, famous later as the Alamo. The principal tribe represented was the Xarame. Other establishments followed until in 1731 there were within a few miles of San Antonio five mis- sions, occupied almost exclusively by Indians of Paka- wan stock, viz:

(1) San Antonio de Valero (later, the Alamo) — 1718 — on San Antonio river, opposite the city. In 1762 it had 275 neophytes. (2) San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo — 1720 — six miles below San Antonio. This was the principal and most flourishing of the Texas missions, and residence of the superior, with what was said to be the finest church in New Spain. In 1762 it had 350 neophytes, and 1500 yoke of work oxen. (3) Purisima Concepci6n de Acuna (originally a Caddo mission in east Texas), removed 1731 to San Antonio river just below the city. In 1762 it had 207 neo- phytes. (4) San Juan Capistrano (originally the Caddo mission of San Jos6 irj east Texas), removed 1731 to San Antonio river about seven miles below the city. In 1762 it had 203 neophytes, with 5000 horses, cattle, and sheep. (5) San Francisco de la Espada (originally a Caddo mission in east Texas), removed 1731 to San Antonio river, nine miles below thecity. The chief tribes represented were the Pacao, Pajalat, and Pitalac, numbering together about 1000 souls. In 1762 it had 207 neophytes with some 6000 cattle, horses, sheep, and goats. It was here that Father Garcia wrote his "Manual". The ruins are locally known as the "fourth mission".

The missions probably reached their zenith about 1740. In that or the preceding year an epidemic dis- ease wasted the Texas tribes, and about the same time the jealousies of the San Antonio settlers and the increasingly frequent raids of the wild LipAn and Comanche checked further development. In 1762 an official report showed 1242 neophytes, although the missions were already on the decline. In 1778 small- pox ravaged the whole Texas area, practically exter- minating several small tribes. In 1793 the report showed fewer than 300 neophjies remaining in the five missions, and in the next year they were formally dis- solved by official Spanish order, provision being made for securing a portion of lands to the few surviving Indians. Some of the monks remained and continued their ministrations for at least ten years longer. In 1801 anothersmallpoxvisitation practically completed the destruction of the tribes. In 1886 Dr. Albert Gat- schet, of the Bureau of Ethnology, could find only 28

representatives of the stock, all on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande in the neighbourhood of Camargo. Excepting for a short vocabulary collected by him, our only knowledge of the language is derived from Fr. Bartholome Garcia's "Manual para administrar los Santos sacramentos, etc." (1760), written in Pakawd for the San Antonio missions and pubUshed in 1760.

B.lNCHOFT, Hist, of the North Mexican States and Texas (San Francisco, lSSG-9); Bolton in Hodge, Handbook Am. Inds. (Bur. Am. Ethn. BuHedn), Texas tribal and mission articles (2pts..VSrash- ington, 19(17-10); Garrison, Texas (Boston, 1903); Pilling, Proo/sheets of a Bibliography of the Languages of the N. Am. Inds. (Bur. Ethnology, Washington. 1885), for Garcia title; Shea, Hist, of the Catholic Church in the United Slates (New York, 1886).

James Mooney.

Palaeography (■n-a'Kaii, "ancient", ypa<p7}, "writ- ing"), the art of deciphering ancient writing in manu- scripts or diplomas. It is distinguished from epi- graphy, which provides rules for reading carved inscriptions, and from diplomatics, which studies the intrinsic character of written documents, while pala;- ography concerns itself only with written characters and the classification of documents by their external characters.

During the Renaissance period the reading of man- uscripts, necessary to the printing of classic authors, became widespread, but it was only in the seventeenth century that scholars thought of reducing their obser- vations to a system and formulating rules for the read- ing of manuscripts and diplomas. As early as 1681, in the first edition of his "De re diplomatica", Mabillon devoted a study (I, xi) to the various kinds of Latin writing, and gave specimens of these in the plates ac- companying his book. It was on this model that Montfaucon, after having worked on the editions of the Greek Fathers, published his " Palajographia Gra?ca" (Paris, 1708), simultaneously creating the word and the thing. From that time, thanks to the labours of Villoison, Natalis de Wailly, L6opold De- lisle, and Henri Omont in France, of Thompson in England, of Gardthausen in Germany, palxography has become the basis of all study of historical, reli- gious, or literary texts. There are as many branches of palajography as there are different kinds of writings, but the science of Oriental written characters is as yet hardly formed. In general students have had to be content with determining the place of each character in the succession of such characters. (See Ph. Berger, "Histoire de I'i^criture dans I'antiquilr", Paris, 1892.) In 1819, however, Kopp, in his " Fahr(inr;ipliia Cri- tica", laid the foundations for Oriciilal pala'ography, while devoting himself exclusively to Semitic lan- guages. The province of palaeology, therefore, more particularly consists of Greek and Latin characters, together with all those derived therefrom (Gothic alphabets, Slavic, etc.).

I. Greek Pal.eography covers two periods: A. Antiquity (till the fourth century after Christ) ; B. the Byzantine Period (from the fourth century to modern times).

A. Antiquity. — This period is much better known to- day, owing to the numerous discoveries of papyri which have been made in Egypt (sec Manuscripts). The differences between the various modes of writing are not so marked as in Latin documents. Besides, the material employed influenced the form of the let- ters: papyrus does not lend itself as well as parchment to rounded forms. The chief systems of characters used on papyrus are: (1) The Capital, employed some- what rarely, and chiefly known through inscriptions. On the papyri it is already mixed with uncial forms. One of the most ancient documents of this writing is the papyrus called the "Invocation of Artemis" (Li- brary of Vienna, third century B. c). The words are not separated from ^ one another, and the uncial form of the lunar .sigma \, is found. The greater number of the other letters — A, E, P, n, etc. — have the same form as in the inscriptions.