Brinton.] t>c5 fFeb. 5, 



III. 



THE CHOLONA LANGUAGE. 



Nothing has heretofore been printed of the language of the 

 Cholonas. This tribe dwells on the left bank of the upper Hual- 

 laga river, between 8°-g° 30' South latitude. They were visited 

 by Edward Poeppig in 1829, when he found them to number about 

 1000 souls, scattered in missions on the banks of the Monzon, 

 Uchiza, Tocache and Pachiza, small streams flowing into the 

 Huallaga. At the close of the last century they occupied a mission 

 with the Hibitos or Xibitos, and together numbered about 5000.* 

 Poeppig asserts that the Hibitos speak a wholly different tongue, 

 but this is denied by my MS. authorities, who acknowledge only a 

 dialectic difference ; but the German traveler is correct in his state- 

 ment that some of the wild Chunchos of the Sierra belong to the 

 same stock. 



My source of information in regard to this language is a MS. in 

 the British Museum, entitled Arfe de la Lengua Cholona. Its 

 author was Fr. Pedro de la Mata, who wrote it in Truxillo in 1 748, 

 from which original the MS. in question is a copy made by Fr. 

 Geronimo Clota, in San Buenaventura del Valle, in 1772. It is a 

 small octavo of 132 folios and is complete. Fathers Jose de Araujo 

 and Francisco Gutierrez wrote also Artes of these dialects, but I 

 have not discovered their manuscripts. There is also a MS. Arte de 

 la Lengua Cholona, apparently anonymous, mentioned by Ludewig, 

 Lit. of Amer. Aborig. Langs., p. 162. 



The Cholona is a language extending over a small area, but it 

 seems connected with no other, forming an independent stock. 

 The only analogies worth mentioning which I have noted point 

 towards dialects of the Arawak stock. For instance : 



Sun, muxac. This seems = M/«.tt saadie, "the shining sun," of the 



Moxos. 

 Moon, pel; allowing for r=^l, this is close to the pueri ofthe Jucuna 



dialect. 

 Eye, nache ; reminds one of the michii of the Canamirim ; the nacuque of 



theUirina, etc. 

 Tooth, ale ; again allowing r = Z, this is the ari of the Goajiro. . 

 Blaclc, zalucJi or chaluch ; ghulekm Araicu. 

 White, Chech; ghalik'in Araicu. 



• See my American Race, p. 288. 



