STUDYING THE INDIANS OF NEW MEXICO AND 

 CALIFORNIA 



By J. P. HARRINGTON, 



Ethitohgist, Bureau of American Efhuology 



Research during the summer of 1929 took me among Indians repre- 

 senting three distinct cultural regions. My first field-work took me to 

 the mountains of New Mexico where further attack was made on 

 the riddle of the Pueblo languages and cultures. Although a consider- 

 able knowledge of the native languages and dialects was already 

 current in this region among the Spaniards of the i8th and early 19th 

 centuries, they were never aware of any relationship between these 

 tongues and those of tribes outside the Pueblo area proper. After the 

 classification sponsored by Major Powell over 40 years ago, it became 

 the standard lore of textbooks that the Pueblo Indians speak four 

 stock languages, Tanoan, Keresan, Zufiian, and Shoshonean, and that 

 only the last named has outside afifiliations, namely that of the Hopi as 

 related to the Paiute tribes to the north and west and more distantly to 

 the Aztec. When I began my studies of Pueblo languages I early 

 found that Tanoan is closely related to Kiowa, a Plains tribe lying to 

 the eastward of the Tanoan. 



This summer's field-work was concerned with Tanoan and Zunian 

 and to some extent with the language of Acoma. An elaborate com- 

 parison w^as made of the Zuni and Tanoan languages with the result 

 that the genetic relationship which I have long believed in was defi- 

 nitely established. The phonetics of the two languages are identical 

 throughout. Among other similarities, they both have series of clusives 

 modified by the glottis into three kinds of release, represented by t, t, 

 and th. Keresan also shares this system. This and other linguistic 

 similarities are also found in the Shoshonean stock, and I am confi- 

 dent that I have demonstrated that all four " stocks "of Pueblo 

 languages are genetically related to each other in varying degree, 

 although we have here no close relationship like that of the Tanoan 

 to the Kiowa. 



A complete Zuni alphabet of kymograph tracings showing sounds 

 and their combinations was made and mounted and is ready for the 

 engraver. A Zuni ethnozoology following the same lines as the Tewa 

 ethnozoology earlier published by the Bureau was brought to com- 

 pletion with the help of Miss Anna Risser. The subject of Zuni ethno- 



19s 



