Gatschet.] ^lo [Nov. 17, 



dent tliat neither the study of phenomenal nor the mathematical considera- 

 tions involved, have been exhausted in the papers of the Glasgow Pliilo- 

 Bophical Society, while the present article does not pretend to do more than 

 to indicate the direction in which enquiry should be pursued. 



Remarks upon the Tonkaioa Language. 



By Alb. S. Gatschet. 



{Read before the American Philosophical Society, Nov. 17, 1876.) 



A small body of Texas Indians, the wretched remains of a once powerful 

 tribe, bears the name of Tonkawas or Tonkaways, and is called Tonkahaas 

 by Spanish writers. Through the unfortunate homophony of their name, 

 they were frequently confounded with the Central Texan or coast tril)e of 

 the Towakonays, who certainly were congeners of the Wichitas and Waeoes, 

 and led a nomadic life in close community with the Karankahuas, Arreua- 

 mus and Caris. A bay in the middle part of the Texan Gulf Coast is called 

 Carancahua Bay up to this day. At the time when Spanish missionaries, 

 along with a number of their Aztec helpmates, had colonized the South of 

 Texas, and disseminated the germs of the Roman Catholic faith among the 

 untutored tribes of aborigines, whom they induced to join in agricultural 

 pursuits in the vicinity of their missicms, the Indians were treated with hu- 

 manity. Then Mexico and all Spanish America freed itself from the domi- 

 nation of the distant mother countrj'; Texas declared itself independent 

 from Mexico, and when after another lapse of time the Texan settlers pro- 

 claimed their adhesion to the American Union, a war of extermination com- 

 menced against the helpless Indians, which up to our daj's continues witii- 

 out abatement on the northern border against the roving bands of the Li- 

 pans, Comanches and Kiowas. 



The Tonkawa tribe, however, whose first mention in American annals 

 occurs at the commencement of this century, seems to have sutfered more 

 from internecine wars and feuds with the Comanches, than fr nn white set- 

 tlers. In 1847 official documents put down the number of their warriors at 

 155, a decrease of about two-thirds since 1820. Tlie remnants of the tribe, 

 about 35 warriors with their families, are with a number of Lipan-Apaches 

 at present gathered on a reservation in Shackleford County, Northern 

 Texas, seven miles froni Fort Griffin. They raise stock, hunt the buffiilo, 

 and serve as scouts on the expeditions of the United States troops stationed 

 at Fort Griffin. They are exceedingly filtlij' in dress and habits, paint their 

 faces in a grotesque manner, and live in canvas tents. Their national le- 

 gend represents them to be the offspring of the wolf; hence this animal is 

 worshipped in their tcolf-dan,ce, of which Schoolcraft has given a descrip- 

 tion (in Vol. V). 



Two Bavarian gentlemen have lately visited and studied this obscure and 

 half-forgotten tribe, and have favored me with their notations on the na- 



