38 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [boll. 63 



This Chono woinMii in the course of her first and especially third 

 examinations testified that she had never been beyond the Gulf of 

 Penas district, but that she knew the language of the Caucagues who 

 Uved there, having learned it from them on their visits to her country. 



This testimony seems at first glance to show clearly that there was 

 a linguistic dividing line near the Gulf of Peiias. But in the first place 

 the veracity of the Chono woman is open to question ; for some Chono 

 Indians had been captured the year before by B. Gallardo and taken 

 away to Chiloe and the north, and the old woman knew this (de Vea, 

 574); so she may have well been suspicious of the designs of her 

 anned captors and questioners, and anxious to give them the im- 

 pression that she was not one of the group for which they were 

 searching. Secondly, even grantmg her truthfuhiess and good faith, 

 what she called a different language may have been only a different 

 dialect; in fact. Dr. Skottsberg's interpreter, Emilia, made just such 

 a mistake regarding the Port Grappler people's dialect {d, 585-586). 



B. GaUardo's and de Vea's accounts imply that the same language 

 was spoken by the natives both north and immediately south of 

 Taitao Peninsula. Father Garcia's expedition nearly a century later 

 brought out this fact more clearly. He calls aU the natives who 

 accompanied him Caucahues, and in the course of the voyage some 

 of them pointed out various places both north and south of the 

 peninsula where they had been born or reared — one near the foot 

 of Moraleda Channel (9), others near Boca de Canales (22), another 

 near the Ayantau Islands (23). Their kinsmen, too, used to frequent 

 the Guaianecos Islands (25-26). Moreover, Father Garcia elsewhere 

 (Hervas, a and 6) clearly imphes that the Caucahues extended as far 

 as the Guaianecos Islands and the head of Messier Channel. 



Moraleda's Chono guides were familiar with much of the territory 

 north of Taitao Peninsula, although at least some of them probably 

 had come from south of the Peninsula with the missionaries (51, 292, 

 319, 358). 



In the eighteenth century, therefore, the tribal or linguistic divid- 

 ing line, if such existed, was not, as one would expect from the 

 topography of the district, at the Taitao Peninsula, but a little far- 

 ther south. ^ 



Father Garcia puts just such a line at the Guaianecos Islands: 



I reached [he wrote in 1783, speaking of his 1766-67 expedition] beyond the 48th 

 degree of south latitude, where the Calen and Taijataf nations were; and there I 

 found that beyond these nations towards the Strait of Magellan there were two other 

 nations called the Lecheyel and Yekinahuer, which according to my observations 

 must be on the shores of the Strait of Magellan. Of the language of these nations, 

 I can only say that it is not Araucanian or Cliilian. 



' Canoe communication between the Chonos Islands and the Gulf of Penas by way of the unsheltered 

 Pacific coast must have been well-nigh impossible; but, on the other hand, the portage route via S. Rafael 

 Lagoon and the Isthmus of Ofqui made commumcation between the two districts comparatively easy. 



