322^ 



THE SERI INDIANS 



[ETH. ANN. 17 



YUMAN — coutiiiiiud 



Tho.se philologists who have classed the Seri tongue as a dialect of the Yumau 

 stock have laid great stress on tlu' alluring phonetic accordance, supj>osedly ludie- 

 ativo of genetic relationship, between the Laymoa (and probably Cochimi) tamd or 

 lammii, " man (homo) ", and the Serian li'i'li'imm, ktam or eletam, possibly of the same 

 signilication — i.e., "man (homo) ", rather than "man(vir)"; but the accompanying 

 comparative list of vocables purporting to denote "man (homo)" discloses the 

 .significant fact that tamd (tammd) belongs only to the Laymou, and (probably) the 

 Cocbimi dialects. In Mr Bartlett's Cocbimi record, he wrote delmd, "man, 

 lionibre'', and ijuaml (Spanish i/), "husband" — that is, "male person". From cer 

 tain Laymou texts with interlinear translations in Bnschmann's "Die Spurcn der 

 aztekischen Sprache'', etc., the following forms of the vocables in question have been 

 extracted: tammd, "man (homo, Menscb)''; lamma-bvtel, "this man"; uami-hiitel, 

 "this man, this male person"; wami-Jua, "man (vir, Mann), male person"; jcaAoe- 

 Inilel, "this woman"; iiiii-wiictii-jiia, "his woman"; whanu, "small, young, a 

 child"; whaint-wami-jua, "asmall, or young, male person", perhaps "a boy". Now, 

 waiijii or u-aniju, "young", ndhki, "woman" {-alci iu wanju-ali, "girl" — i. e., 

 "young woman") ; o«rtMii,"(my) husband", correctly, "(my) male person"; ouirjua, 

 "(my) ■wife", evidently a form of W/iti, "woman", are all Cochimi vocables. Dr 

 Gabb, in hi.s Cocbimi vocabulary, did not record the pre.snmptively correct term 

 denoting "man"; for the word which he has written, wanijuami, and which he has 

 translated "man", really signifies, "young male person", rather than "man 

 (homo)". This is unfortunate, because in Mr Bartlett's Cochimi, rfe^Jiin is rendered 



