THE STTJMA STOCK. 409 



tribes to the north — Tepeguanas and Tarahumaras, Coras and Cahitas ; 

 further on the Yaquis, (3patas, and Eudeves, and the southern neighbors 

 of the Yuma race: the Papagos and Pimas in the Pimeria alta, of which 

 the southernmost part of Arizona forms a part, the Sobaipuris, and the 

 Pimas in the Pimeria baja, forming a portion of the Mexican State of Sonora. 

 Numerous discrepancies between the Nunia tongues as the northern, and the 

 Nahuatl as the southern portion of the stock tend to obscure their common 

 origin, so that their affinity becomes apparent onl} T after a close investiga- 

 tion of the subject. The coincidence of a number of radicals which can- 

 not be simply borrowed, joined to that of grammatic affixes or formative 

 svllables and to the remarkably vocalic character of all dialects in both 

 sections, removes the doubts concerning a common parentage, though they 

 are now separated from each other by a wide belt of territory, inhab- 

 ited by the Yuma, Tinnd-Apache and Pueblo races. From all that it 

 would be, nevertheless, preposterous to conclude that the Aztec civilization 

 came from the north ; but we gain the evidence that the originators of the 

 national Aztec legend, which professes this people to have issued from seven 

 caves in the north, were cognizant of the affinity of their nation with some 

 tribes living north of Anahuac. 



As far as known, all Numa dialects (though not the Nahuatl) possess 

 a plural in the verb, the substantive, adjective and pronoun. They prefer 

 the deep vowels a. o, u to the clear-sounding e and i; softening into a, ii, 

 and nasalizing of vowels is not unfrequent, and the phonetic structure of 

 these languages is, without exception, as sonorous and vocalic as that of 

 many Nahuatl languages. None of the dialects seem to incorporate the 

 subject- or object-pronoun into the verb, as it is done in Aztec. 



As the result of information gathered of late from various sources I 

 present the following classification of this most important of our western 

 linguistic families: 



A. Shoshoni. — This appellation is most generally applied to the north- 

 eastern group of the Numa race, residing in Northern Utah, some parts of 

 Wyoming, along the Snake River of Idaho, and in Eastern Nevada. This 

 group comprises the following subdivisions : 



Washafki, on Wind River, ranging towards Green River, Wyoming. 



Hokan-tikara, or Diggers, on Salt Lake, Utah. 



