20 ETHNO-BOTANY OF THE COAHUILLA INDIANS 



tribal designations, or why the Kizh and Netela of Mr. Hale should be 

 removed to make way for them. Gaitchim, Tobikhar, and Takhtam 

 are pure inventions, unheard of as tribal designations by anyone in 

 southern California, yet all these terms have been adopted by Mr. 

 Gatchet, Major Powell, and Dr. Brinton and can serve only to confuse 

 anyone who tries to study and collect vocabularies of these Indians on 

 the ground. Mr. Loew's vocabularies contain about 150 words each, 

 taken according to Mr. Gibb's Indian vocabulary. Besides confusing 

 the v and w, in the Coahuilla vocabulary at least, b often takes the 

 place of/, g of k, and vice versa ; in many words the personal pronoun 

 fie is affixed in its several modifications. These defects prevent the 

 vocabularies from being trustworthy. 



In an article, " Indian Languages of the Pacific States and Terri- 

 tories," I Mr. Gatchet had the following paragraph : 



Kauvuya (Cawio; Spanish, Cahuillo). This branch of the Shoshoni 

 stock prevails from the Cabeson mountains and the San Bernadino valley, 

 California, down to the Pacific coast, and is at present known to us in four 

 dialects : Serrano, or mountain dialect, spoken by Indians who call themselves 

 Takhtam, which means "men," "people;" Kauvuya, in and around San Ber- 

 nadino valley, Gaitchim or Kechi, a coast dialect, in use near the missions of 

 San Juan Capistrano, and San Luis Rey de Francia Netela is another 

 name for it ; Kizh, spoken in the vicinity of the mission of San Gabriel by a 

 tribe calling itself Tobikhar, or " settlers," and of San Fernando mission, 

 almost extinct. The two last-mentioned dialects considerably differ among 

 themselves and from the mountain dialects of the Takhtam and Kauvuya. 



Mr. Gatchet is in error when he speaks of the Serrano and San Gabriel 

 Indians " calling themselves " Takhtam and Tobikhar, respectively. The 

 words are unknown as tribal designations among these Indians them- 

 selves, and precisely this point constitutes the objection to them. 



The interest in Indian languages awakened by Major Powell's 

 study and the collections made for his report by the Bureau of Eth- 

 nology do not appear to have added anything to our knowledge of 

 these Indian languages. No mention of vocabularies appears in the 

 account of the results of this work. 2 



Major Powell speaks in his Linguistic Families only of the " Tobikhar, 

 about twenty-two hundred under the Mission Agency, California," 3 seem- 

 ing thus to include the entire Coahuilla family under this designation. 



1 Magazine of American History , March, 1877. 



2 J. C. PILLING, Catalogue of Linguistic Manuscripts in the Library of the Bureau of Eth- 

 nology, First Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, 1879-80, pp. 545 ff. 



3 Indian Linguistic Families of America, north of Mexico, in Seventh Annual Report of the 

 Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1891), p. no. 



