396 THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF 
Passing to the verbs, I will mention that these have neither a conjunctive 
nor a mandative mood, and only an imperfect optative mood, and that the pas- 
sive form is wanting as well as the reciprocal verb, which is used in the Spanish 
and French languages. ‘The verbs have only one mood and three tenses, viz., 
a present, preterit, and future, which are formed by affixing certain endings 
to the root of the verb, namely, in the present re or reke ; in the preterit rikzra, 
rujere, raupe, or raupere; in the future me, méje or éneme.* 
Sometimes the matives prefix the syllable kw or a & alone to the plural of the 
verb, or change its first syllable into ku; for example, piabake, to fight, wmuti, 
to remember, jake, to chat; but kupiabake, kumutu, and kudke, when they 
will indicate that there are several persons fighting, remembering, or chatting. A 
few of their verbs have also a preterit passive participle; for example, tshzpake, 
to beat, tshipitshiirre, a person that has been beaten, plural kutepad. Some 
nouns and adjectives are likewise subject to changes in the plural number, as, 
for instance, drat, woman, kdnai, women; entuditd, ugly or bad, and entudi- 
tamma,t bad or ugly women. Be expresses J, me (mihi,) me (me) and my ; 
ez means thou, thee (tibi,) thee (te) and thy, and so on through all the personal 
and possessive pronouns. Yet becun or beticén signifies also my, and ecén or 
evticun, thy. 
They know nothing of metaphors, for which reason the phrase blessed ts the 
JSruit of thy womb in the “ Hail Mary” has simply been replaced by thy child. 
On the other hand they are very ingenious in giving names to objects with 
which they were before unacquainted, calling, for instance, the door, mouth ; 
bread, the light; iron, the heavy ; wine, bad water ; a gun, bow; the function- 
aries of the mission, bearers of canes ; the Spanish captain, wild or cruel ; oxen 
and cows, deer ; horses and mules ¢itshénu-tsha, that is, child of a wise mother ; 
and the missionary, in speaking of or to him, éd-pa-tu, which means one who 
has his house in the north, .&c. 
In order to converse in such a barbarous and poor language, a European has 
to change, as it were, his whole nature and to become almost a Calformian him- 
self; but in teaching the natives the doctrines of the Christian religion in their 
own language, he is very often compelled to make use of paraphrases which, 
when translated into a civilized language, must have an odd and sometimes 
even ridiculous sound to Europeans; and as the reader may, perhaps, be curi- 
ous to know a little more of this peculiar language, I will give as specimens 
two articles from the Waicuri catechism, namely, the Lord’s Prayer and the 
Creed, each with a double interpretation, and also the whole conjugation of the 
verb amukiri. t 
Concerning this Californian Lord’s Prayer and Creed and their interpreta- 
tions, the reader will take notice of the following explanatory remarks: - 
1. The first translation, which stands immediately under the Californian text, 
is perfectly literal and shows the structure of the Waicuri language. This 
version must necessarily produce a bad effect upon European ears; whereas the 
second translation, which is less literal and therefore more intelligible, may serve 
to convey an idea how the Waicuri text sounds to the natives themselves as . 
well as to those who understand their idiom, and. have become accustomed, by 
long practice, to the awkward position of the words, the absence of relative 
pronouns and prepositions, and the other deficiencies of the language. 
* From the conjugation of the verb amukiri, given at the end of this chapter, it is evident 
that these endings have no reference to the person or number of the tenses, but may be indif- 
ferently employed. } 
t This compound word illustrates well the polysynthetic character of the Waicuri language. 
{ We cannot be too thankful to Father Baegert, who, with all his oddity and eccentricity, 
has had the philological taste to preserve and explain a specimen of the Waicuri—a fayor 
the greater, as neither Venegas nor the polished Clavigero has preserved any specimen of 
a Californian language, much less a verb in full. 
