— 178 — 
pipe appropriates it as gain. Should he play into tlie well he is 
“ burnt ” or out of the game. 
It is an ancient game connected with pillage, war and rape ; and 
the terms and all the movements of the game are closely wrapped up 
with marriage and sexual intercourse. 
VII 
The Choroti language is one of the simplest of the Chaco tongues. 
In many respects it has cióse affinities with the Mataco -Mataguay o 
group of which my Vejoz 1 is a cliaracteristic member. Both Vejoz 
and Choroti point to a common ancestry, but each has developed 
peculiarities of its own. The relationship of the Toba, Vejoz and 
Choroti if gauged by the second person is most intímate. The personal 
pronoun am is common to all, but in the plural each goes its own way 
of formation, thus : 
Choroti, am Vejoz, am Toba, am Thou 
Choroti, as-am Vejoz, am-el Toba, Jc-am-i Ye 
Choroti, s-am Vejoz, n-am-el Toba, k-om-i We 
A gain in the conjunotivo partióles of posscssion the a is used by all, 
being in fact a form of the personal pronoun ; and in the second per- 
son of verba, which is frequently the imperative, and as such the most 
used and consequontly the primitivo root, likowise all use tho a or 
the root letter of the verb. 
The pronoun of the first person is usually a derivative of the second, 
the commonest method in the Chaco being to prefix a y or i, and in 
this contracted form serves as a prefix to the nouns to denote posses- 
sion, e.g. ya-taas (my pot). In Vejoz one of the pronouns of the first 
singular is O-thl-am (or ho-thlam). Here we notice the presence of 
the reflexive th or thl, which also occurs in the oíd Lengua of Aguirre 2 
in the pronouns of first and second persona, viz. Yls-cha (I) ; 
Ais-cha (thou). It also occurs in the Lengua-Mascoy pronoun Ith-chi 
(thou fem.) and Ith-chip (thou mase.). In Chiquito, which has many 
interesting comparisons with the Choroti, it appears as a prefix ax or 
ash to all the personal pronouns, e.g. Ax-ñi (I). 
In an appendix 3 I have endeavoured to shew the simplicity of 
derivation and by examples how the Choroti has affinities with the 
1 lí. J. Hunt, El Vejoz , De la Revista del Museo de la Plata, tomo xxii. (segunda serie, 
tomo ix.), pagina 7 y siguientes. 
2 See Appendix C on the Lengua-Enimaga or Towothli. 
3 See Appendix B on Word Formation and Partióles. 
