Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/854

828

parent stock of the Omahas, Iowas, Kansas, Quappas or Arkansas, and Osages of the middle and lower Missouri basin. 4. Upsarokas or Crows, of the Yellowstone valley. 5. Minnetarees, Hidatsa, and Mandans, of the upper Missouri, of doubtful linguistic affinities, but by Morgan regarded as intermediate between the Dakotas and Appalachians. W. W. Matthews also affiliates the Hidatsa language to the Dakota family.

XII. Appalachian Races.—These form an ethnical and geographical grouping, including four distinct languages, which, however, according to Morgan, are remotely related to the Dakota; area, the south-east corner of the United States, westwards to Arkansas and Louisiana, northwards to Tennessee and South Carolina, all inclusive; name purely conventional, from the Appalachian or sotithern spurs of the Alleghanies. Here was a large linguistic family forming a powerful confederacy, of which the Muscogees or Creeks of Alabama were the centre. The other members were the Seminoles of South Alabama and Florida; the Chickasaws of Mississippi; the Mobiles of Florida West; the Choctaws of the lower Mississippi; the Colusas or Coosadas, Alibamous, Appalaches, Uches, and Timucuas (?) of South Carolina and Georgia. Of distinct speech were the Natchez of the lower Mississippi, who were said to have spoken three languages; the Cherokees or Chelekees, of the Appalachian slopes, and the Catawbas of South Carolina, supposed by some to be the Eries, or the neutral nation who disappeared from the lake region about 1656. All these races are either extinct, or have been removed to the reserves of Indian Territory, where two of the stock languages (Cherokee and Creek) are still current. Natchez and Catawba are extinct. Special interest attaches to the extinct Timucua language, formerly current along the east coast of Georgia and Florida southwards to and beyond Cape Canaveral. It is a highly synthetic form of speech, regarded by Gatschet (&ldquo;Volk und Sprache der Timucua,&rdquo; in Zeitsch. f. Ethnologie, 1877, p. 245) as a stock language, and possessing in the grammar, dictionary, and catechisms of Pareja, published in 1612-13 in Mexico, the oldest written records of any native tongue east of the Rocky Mountains. Gatschet gives a full account of its structure, which philologists will find extremely interesting.

XIII. Mexican Races.—This is a geographical grouping, the region comprising an exceptional number of radically distinct languages, and apparently three or four ethnical types. There is one large and important linguistic family, the Aztec-Sonora, which stretches southwards to Nicaragua, and for which Buschmann has sought affinities as far north as the Shoshone group. Its chief members are:—

1. Aztec or Mexican proper, widely diffused throughout the Nahua empire, overthrown by Cortez. 2. Cora, in the state Jalisco. 3. Tarahumara, in Chihuahua and Sonora. 4. Cahita, in Sinaloa and Sonora. 5. Niquiran, of Nicaragua. 6. Tlascaltec, of San Salvador. With these are probably related the Pima and Opata of Sonora and Sinaloa, the Acaxee of Durango, and the Tubar of Chihuahua.

The other chief stock or at least not yet classified Mexican tongues are the Miztec and Zapotec of Oajaca, Tarasco current in the old kingdom of Michoacan, Matlalzinca north of Anahuac, Ceres and Cochita of Sonora, Tepecano of Jalisco, Zacatec of Zacatecas, Tamnlipec of Tamaulipas, and Otomi, an interesting form of speech still almost in the monosyllabic state, current in the mountains enclosing the Anahuac table-land. This is the more remarkable that most of the other Mexican languages are highly polysynthetic; but the attempt made to connect Otomi with Chinese has merely served to place their fundamental difference in a clearer light.

XIV. Central American Races.—Like the foregoing, this is a geographical grouping, with one wide-spread linguistic and ethnical family, the Maya-Quiché of Yucatan and Guatemala with an outlying branch in Vera Cruz and Tamaulipas. Of this family the chief members are the Maya, still generally current in Yucatan; Zendul and Zotzil of Chiapas; Mam and Pokomam of Vera Paz, Guatemala; Huastec of Vera Cruz and Tamaulipas; Totonac of Vera Cruz; Quiché, Chol, and Zutugil of Guatemala. The Mayas, like the Aztecs, possessed a writing system, of which three documents still survive,— the Dresden Codex, published in Lord Kingsborough's collection as an Aztec MS., the Mexican MS., No. 2 of the Paris National Library, and the Troano MS. in Madrid. Bishop Landa even credited them with the invention of an alphabet; but all attempts to interpret these documents by the key left by him have hitherto failed.

In Nicaragua and Honduras, besides the Aztec Niquiran, Squier (Nicaragua, ii. p. 308) reckons three distinct linguistic groups:—

1. Melchora, including the Wâlwa, Rama, Toaca, Poya, and Waikna or Mosco (Mosquito), collectively known as Bravos, probably of Carib stock, but with a mixture of Negro blood. 2. Chorontega, including the Dirian, between Lake Nicaragua and the Pacific; Nagrandan, north of the Dirian; Orotinan, about the Gulf of Nicoya. 3. Chondal, Chondales highlands, north and east side of Lake Nicaragua.

In Costa Rica and the peninsula of Panama there are a multiplicity of unclassified tribes, amongst whom are current at least five stock languages:—

(1) Doracho of Veraguas; (2) Savanerie; (3) Bayano, Rio Chapo Pacific coast; (4) Manzanillo (San Blas), Atlantic coast, Costa Rica; (5) Bribri, a Costa Rica dialect, has been compared, but on slender grounds, with some West African tongues.

XV. New Granada and Guiana Races.—The confusion of tribes is continued southwards into the Colombian and Venezuelan Cordilleras; but, as we proceed eastwards along the Orinoco plains and through the Guianas, greater order seems to prevail. In New Granada itself there is at least one marked ethnical and linguistic group, the Chibcha or Muisca of Bogota, a civilized people, noted for their remarkable taste and skill in the execution of gold ornaments. Some of these works recently discovered and exhibited by Mr Powles at a meeting of the Anthropological Institute, London, excited universal surprise and admiration. This little known but extremely interesting people formed an important link in the chain of civilized and agricultural nations stretching along the western uplands from the New Mexican Pueblos, through the Aztecs of Mexico, Mayas of Yucatan, Dorachos of Veraguas, Chibchas of Bogota, and Peruvian Quichuas, to the Aymaras of Bolivia. Elsewhere in New Granada the tribes are almost past counting. In the southern province of Popayan alone ninety-four distinct languages were reckoned at the time of the conquest; and, although most of these are extinct, the unclassified races both here and in the north are still very numerous. The only large linguistic group is that of the Salivi, including the Betois, Eles, Yaruras, Atures (extinct), Quaquas, Macos, and others about the western head-streams of the Orinoco and in the Popayan highlands. Further east is the Barré family, including the Maypuri, Baniwa, Achegua, and many others in Venezuela and Guiana, besides some tribes as far south as Moxos in Bolivia. From the recent ethnological researches of Everard F. im Thurn (British Guiana Museum, Georgetown, 1878), there appear to be at least four independent linguistic groups in the Guianas:— Warau and Arawack in the coast region, Wapiana or Wapisana, with Atorais, in the savannah region, and Carib everywhere. At the time of the discovery the Caribs represented the conquering element in the West Indies, whence they have since disappeared, unless a few survive in Dominica (Vivien de Saint Martin). But they are still numerous, either pure or mixed with Negroes and others, from Honduras round the coast to the Amazon delta. They are represented in French Guiana chiefly by the Galibi, Oyapok, Emcrillon, Nuragwe, and Rucuyennes, the last-mentioned on both sides of the Tumac-Humac range (Dr J. Crevaux in Tour du Monde, June 28, 1879). In British Guiana the Carib tribes are the Ackawais and Caribisi of the coast and forest regions, the Arecumas and Macusis of the savannah region. On the upper Orinoco are the Carinas or Calinas; in Dutch Guiana the Kirikiricots, Acuria, Saramacca, Aukan, and Mataarie; in Brazilian Guiana the Pianghottos, Parechi, Daurais (extinct?), Mandaucas, Masacas; in Venezuela the Tiverigotes, Guaraunos, Guayanos, Tamanacs, Avarigotes, Acherigotes, Piritus, Palencas, Chacopatas, and many others. On the affinities of the Carib race great uncertainty prevails, some regarding them as an independent stock, some tracing them across the islands to the Allighewis or Alleghans, who are supposed to have been driven by the Algonquins from the Mississippi regions in the 10th century, while others, with D'Oibigny (L'homme Americain, vol. ii.), affiliate them with some show of probability to the Guaranis of Brazil.

XVI. Peruvian and Bolivian Races.—Here the grouping is strictly ethnical and linguistic in the Cordilleras and upland plateaus, which are mainly occupied by one great historical and civilized race, with two well-defined branches—Quichua of Peru and Aymara of Bolivia. Under the Incas Quichua, one of the most highly cultivated but also one of the harshest of American tongues, was current along both sides of the Cordilleras, from Quito on the equator southwards to the Araucanian domain about 30° S., but in terrupted between 13° and 20° S. by the Aymara, which, like the northern Quiteño, seems to be an older and ruder form of the common stock language. Still more primitive forms were probably the extinct Cara and Puruha of Ecuador. But in this northern province, which was the last added to the empire (under the twelfth Inca Huaina-capac), there were said to be at the conquest forty other nations, speaking as many distinct languages, with three hundred different dialects. Of these a considerable number still people the banks of the Yapura, Pulumayo, Pastassa, Napo, and other northwestern head-streams of the Amazons, the most noteworthy being the Jivaros of the Pastassa, the Zapáros of the upper Napo, the Anguteras and Orejones of the lower Napo, the Colorados and Capayas of the uplands east of Quito, and the Copanes of the upper Aguarico. The secret language of the Incas was apparently the Aymara of Lake Titicaca, the cradle of their race; and remotely connected with the same branch are probably the Olipe or Atacameño, between 19° and 22° S., and the Chango, between 22° and 24° S., although R. A. Philippi (Reise durch die Wüste Atacama, Halle, 1860) regards this latter as fundamentally distinct both from the Quichua and the Aymara.

Antisuyo, the eastern division of the old empire, stretching along the eastern slopes of the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes between 10° and 19° S., is occupied by five nations, the Yuracares, Mocetenes, Tacanas, Maropas, and Apolistas, whom D'Orbigny (op. cit., vol. i.) collectively calls Antisians, affiliating them to the Quichua-Aymara family, from which, however, they differ in speech and physique as profoundly as they do from each other. Hence the so-called Antis or Antisians of more recent anthropological works have no ethnical or linguistic unity, and, like Chinchasuyo, Candisuyo, and