October 12, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



557 



that the Pericu tongue was spoken fifty 

 leagues north of Cape San Lucas. They 

 lived in small tribes, and the most noted 

 of these were the Coras, once known as 

 Edues to the inhabitants of Loreto. Some 

 writers classed them as Waikuru, and as 

 the name Cora may be identical with kuru 

 in Waikuru, it is quite possible that all 

 or most of the Pericues spoke Waikuru. 

 Nothing of their language has reached us 

 except the names of seven Perica deities 

 and a few local names (in Venegas, Gilij), 

 all of which have a musical and vocalic 

 sound. 



Farther north, between 23° 30' and 26° 

 lat., lived, or still live, the Waikuru In- 

 dians in small scattering bands. The more 

 important of their tribal bodies were, from 

 the names of their dialects, Loretano, Cora, 

 Uchitie, Aripe (Hervas). The Laimon, 

 the ' gente del adentro, ' spoke the dialect 

 in use around the Loreto mission. About 

 eighty words of their language have come 

 to our knowledge, contained in the Lord's 

 Prayer and church literature, which so far 

 as they go show no afiSnity of decided char- 

 acter with the Yuman dialects spoken north 

 of their settlements and on the mainland. 

 The language is vocalic and sounds agree- 

 ably, but differs entirely in phonology, 

 words, and grammar from Yuma, and has 

 to be set down as a family by itself. 



On the eastern side of the Gulf of Cali- 

 fornia are settled a number of tribes with 

 aflBnities heretofore subject to doubt, as the 

 Guayma and TJpanguayma, the Salineros, 

 and the Cocomaques ; also the Tepoka, 

 who live opposite the large Island of Ti- 

 bui'on. They are grouped in the vicinity 

 of the Seri, a wild and indomitable people 

 who live partly in mainland Sonora and 

 partly on their old home, Tiburon Island, 

 frequently changing their abodes. At 

 greater distances from the Seri dwell the 

 Lower Pimas, the Papagos, also the nearly 

 extinct Opatas. 



From ancient reports we gather the no- 

 tice that the Tepokas and Salineros speak 

 Seri, from Orozco y Berra that Cocomaques 

 speak Guayma or a dialect of it, and from 

 Alphonse L. Pinart, who traveled there in 

 1879, that the Guayma then spoke a dialect 

 of the Lower Pima. 



The vocabulary of Seri obtained by A. 

 L. Pinart shows many accumulations of 

 consonants, some of them difficult for us to 

 pronounce, and occurring mainly at the end 

 of the vocables. In his collection the words 

 seldom end in vowels, but in McGee's there 

 are as many vowels as consonants in final 

 sounds. Pinart found the utterance gut- 

 tural, and compares it in this respect with 

 the Santa Barbara or Chumashan dialects 

 of the State of California. The guttui-al, 

 lingual and labial articulation is prominent 

 over the other classes of consonants. 



As to the grammatic part of Seri speech, 

 we record some prefixes and a number of 

 suffixes in nouns and verbs, but since every 

 collector writes them differently, we know 

 little about their pronunciation and less 

 still about their function. Suffixes of 

 common occurrence are -em, -/o, -)/, -ok 

 (or -mok), -st, mostly appended to nouns. 

 For the Cochimi, some inflections of the 

 verb and other grammatic elements were 

 transmitted, but for Seri and Waikuru 

 these are absolutely wanting for the pres- 

 ent, for all that we have is mere words. A 

 close study of the compound words may 

 ultimately disclose case-forms in the noun 

 and personal inflection in the verb, but as 

 we have no texts of Seri, it is doubtful that 

 they will aid us much in bringing on a re- 

 sult. Mr. Hewitt has made a fair com- 

 mencement in analyzing etymologically the 

 numerals and other terms. ' Comparing the 

 vocables is, therefore, the only means left 

 to us at present to solve the question of af- 

 finity of Seri with the neighboring lan- 

 guages. The terms in which affinity with 

 Yuman dialects is most probable, are : 



