XI.] THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 431 



a language fundamentally distinct both from the Araucanian and 

 the Patagonian has been questioned on the strength 

 of some Puelche words, which were collected by Returns* 10 

 Hale at Carmen on the Rio Negro, and differ but 

 slightly from Patagonian. But the Rio Negro lies on the ethnical 

 divide between the two races, which sufficiently accounts for the 

 resemblances, while the words are too few to prove anything. 

 Hale calls them " Southern Puelche," but they were in fact 

 Tehuelche (Patagonian), the true Pampean Puelches having dis- 

 appeared from that region before Hale's time 1 . I have now the 

 unimpeachable authority of the Rev. T. P. Schmid, for many 

 years a missionary amongst these aborigines, for asserting that 

 d'Orbigny's statement is absolutely correct. His Puelches were 

 the Pampeans, because he locates them in the region between 

 the Rios Negro and Colorado, that is, north of Patagonian and 

 east of Araucanian territory, and Mr Schmid assures me that all 

 three Araucanian, Pampean, and Patagonian are undoubtedly 

 stock languages, distinct both in their vocabulary and structure, 

 with nothing in common except their common polysynthetic form. 

 In a list of 2000 Patagonian and Araucanian words he found only 

 two alike, patac 100, and huarunc- 1000, numerals obviously 

 borrowed by the rude Tehuelches from the more cultured 

 Moluches. In Fuegia there is at least one radically distinct 

 tongue, the Yahgan, studied by the Rev. Mr Brydges. Here the 

 Ona is probably a Patagonian dialect, and Alakaluf perhaps 

 remotely allied to Araucanian. Thus in the whole region south 

 of the Plate River the stock languages are not known to exceed 

 four: Araucanian; Pampean (Puelche); Patagonian (Tehuelche) ; 

 and Yahgan. 



Few aboriginal peoples have been the subject of more glaringly 



discrepant statements than the Yahgans, to whom 



nrvt P 

 several lengthy monographs have been devoted Yahgans 



during the last few decades. How contradictory 



are the statements of intelligent and even trained observers, 



1 They were replaced or absorbed partly by the Patagonians, but chiefly by 

 the Araucanian Puelches, who many years ago migrated down the Rio Negro as 

 far as El Carmen and even to the coast at Bahia Blanca. Hence Hale's 

 Puelches were in fact Araucanians with a Patagonian strain. 



