wHoMas] INDIAN LANGUAGES OF MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 8 
WaicurRI AND PERICU 
It is usually stated that three principal languages were spoken in 
Lower California—Cochimi, which constituted a dialect of the Yuman 
family and has already been treated, Waicuri, and Pericu. Could 
the authorities for this statement be sifted down in every case, it 
would probably be found that most of them derived their information 
from Venegas, who quotes a missionary named Taraval. In the 
same chapter Venegas admits that other missionaries increased the 
number to four or five, and gives one to understand that the more 
intimate a person became with the people the fewer linguistic 
divisions he found to exist. That Cochimi and the languages to 
the south of it were entirely distinct is known on linguistic evidence. 
The short vocabulary of Bagert is nearly all that is nuw available 
of the languages at the lower end of the peninsula, and Brinton at- 
tempted to find resemblances between this and Yuman, but the 
futility of his attempt has been demonstrated by Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, 
and there can be no question of the independent position of the two 
languages. Regarding Pericu, the case is different, because, so far 
as known, there is not a word of that language, except some proper 
names, in existence, the only sources of information being the state- 
ments of early writers and circumstantial evidence. As already 
noted, the majority of direct statements make this people inde- 
pendent of the Waicuri, but it is questionable how many independent 
original sources are represented. On the other hand, two authorities 
mention but two stock languages in the entire peninsula, one of 
which is, of course, Yuman, while the other includes all of the lan- 
guages to the south of it. Again, if Pericu were really distinct from 
all others, why are so many mistakes made in applying the term? 
Although the Cora who occupied the eastern side of the peninsula 
at its lower end are frequently spoken of as a Waicuri tribe, Venegas 
states that they were Pericu, and among later writers Orozco y Berra 
does not hesitate to include them in his Pericu area. Again, al- 
though Venegas gives the Utciti as a branch of the Waicuri in his 
chapter on languages, in his second volume he mentions them as a 
Pericu tribe. Thirdly, although linguistic evidence can not be 
brought to bear satisfactorily, there-is in the word Pericu itself and 
in a number of personal and mythological names from that tongue, 
ptoof of the existence of the phonetic 7, which is also present in 
Waicuri, but conspicuously absent from Cochimi. Altogether it 
seems best to regard Pericu as related to Waicuri, only more distantly 
than any other of the group of southern dialects. As indicated on 
the map, the name appears to have been confined properly to one 
tribe about the mission of San José, near Cape St. Lucas, and extend- 
ing northward on the west coast of Lower California to about 23° 30’. 
