28 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [rull. fis 



These newly established facts have a considerable bearing on the 

 question whether or not the Chonoan tongue was a distinct linguistic 

 stock or merely an Alacalufan dialect — a problem to which we shall 

 return later. 



To sum up the whole preceding linguistic study, and the bearing 

 it has on the question at issue, namely, the territory occupied by the 

 Alacalufan tribe. The material at hand seems to show with reason- 

 able clearness that the same Alacalufan tongue is spoken by all the 

 non-Yahgan canoe-using Indians of the channels and iidets north and 

 south of the Strait of Magellan and up the West Patagonian coast as 

 far at least as Port Grappler. Fundamentally the two groups of 

 extant vocabularies agree, while their differences appear to be 

 accounted for sufficiently by the presence of loan words and by the 

 considerable element of error inevitable in the circumstances under 

 which the lists were taken. 



That there are many local differences of speech seems evidenced 

 both by the lexical material at hand and by the explicit statement of 

 the Rev. Mr. Bridges made in 1886, who had begun by this time his 

 more thorough researches in the Alacalufan language (Th. Bridges, t) 

 and had just completed an extensive journey into Alacalufan terri- 

 tory. Whether these local differences are important enough to con- 

 stitute definite dialects is hard to say. The H-Fi lists may represent 

 a distinct dialect but the evidence is not convincing; they may repre- 

 sent instead merely a hybrid Alacalufan-Yahgan speech used by the 

 natives of the Brecknock Peninsula and Christmas Sound neutral 

 or mixed zone. 



A distinct dialect, however, is pretty certainly spoken by the Port 

 Grappler people, as Emilia, Dr. Skottsberg's interpreter, had much 

 difficulty understanding them and making herself understood 

 (Skottsberg, c, 102; d, 585-586, 609). 



The preceding conclusion is of course offered with some reserve 

 and is subject to revision at the hands of those more experienced in 

 Indian philology than the present writer, who has been obliged to 

 venture unwillingly into a field not his own. Then, too, the lexical 

 material leaves much to be desired on the score of volume, while 

 grammatical data are entirely wanting. The recovery and publica- 

 tion of Messrs. Thomas and Despard Bridges' 1,200-word Alacalufan 

 vocabulary would probably make accessible sufficient material to 

 settle definitely the whole question. As for grammatical data, we 

 may hope for some light from Brother Xikora and the other Salesians. 



Having now questioned the linguistic criterion for tribal relations 

 over the territory in dispute, we may examine briefly the somato- 

 logical and cultural criteria. Before doing so, however, one final 

 point may be mentioned. 



La Guilbaudiere's vocabulary was gathered not later than 1696. 



