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Show ui i* ue " urrcat D e w iney juage toe time at uigm, ana Know tuat lis position is a an-ferent one at sunset at different times of the year. The language is polysyllabic, melodious, and rich. There exist four words for " to eat," according to the food, and three words for '* ant," according to the species: Tehama thulye, ( little piss- ant;) Hano- p6 oka, ( large hairy ant;) Hor6- o, ( little black ant.) They have a separate word for " thinking," alieta, and in expressing it put their Angers to the forehead, knowing well that brain- work and thinking are identical. Some of their words have eight syllables, for instance, Mdage- gtnga- handlge, the throat- bone, thyroid cartilage. Although they have no law against polygamy, most of them have but one wife. The women are well treated, and by no ineaus like slaves, a moral feeling in the families generally being observed. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, exceptions that become conspicuous with those Indians that live just around the white settlements. The Mohaves have a myth of a great flood, during which their forefathers lived upon the neighboring mountains. They are very superstitious. Dreams are ascribed to the influence of deceased friends. If one dies upon a trail, his spirit will hover there to harm those passing by at night. To avoid this, another trail is made, leading far around the bewitched spot. After the death of a man, the whole family bathe fur four days, with little interruption, in the river, and a horse is killed in order to enable the spirit to ride to heaven. The heaven, okidmbova, is situated in a hot and dry valley west of the Mohave range; while the hell, avikvomd,, is on the top of a big mountain where it is cold and rainy, ( Dead Mountain, forty miles north of Fort Mohave.) They believe in a good and bad spirit. The custom of cremation is very old with them. Upon inquiry why the dead are not interred, as among white people, they laughed, and said, *' It stinks bad." During the ceremony, all the clothes of the deceased and of his relatives are burned. If a medicine- man predicts three times falsely be is invariably strangulated. Several year ago such a medicine- man was only saved by the interference of the military authorities of the post. Another provided himself with a pistol, having resolved not to submit to the puuishment for his unfortunate diagnosis. COMPARISON OF LANGUAGES.- HIEROGLYPHICAL WRITINGS. As to the origin of the Indians, many theories have been offered, of which the most probable is that of Asiatic descent; especially the marked Mongolian features of some tribes are favorable to this conception, so ably treated by Mr. H. Howe Bancroft in bis " Native Races of the Pacific States," and by Oscar Pesohel in his " Voelkerkunde," to which works the reader is referred. What 1 desire to call attention to, however, are several points not heretofore treated with the desirable minuteness, chiefly on account of want of proper knowledge of some of the Californian languages; I mean affinities between some of the idioms with the Japanese and Chinese. It is true some attempts have been made to prove a relationship between a Mexican language ( Otom6) and the Chinese; however, those efforts become ridiculous to the eye of the critical examiner/ When collecting vocabularies in Southern Califarnia, I was struck with the Eauvuya word tamyaty for sun, resembling much the Chinese yat- tau, for sun. This led me to compare all the vocabularies I collected on your expeditions with Japanese aud Chinese, wirh which languages I am acquainted to some small extent However, it was with the apprehension of touching a field outside of my sphere that I commenced this work. I therefore declare expressly that I leave it to the professed philologist to decide whether the similarities of words contained in the following table are to be ascribed to accidental coincidence. I further declare that among the eighteen languages of California, New Mexi o, Nevada, and Arizona, compared with Japanese, only the Payute offered some striking similarities of words with this idiomt. About one dozen more words could be added than contained in the following table, but as the similarities between these words are confined to one single syllable, they were discarded. * See Bancroft, Native Races, vol. iii. t About infusion of Japanese blood into the California Indians, and drifting of Japanese vessels from the Asiatic to the American ooast, see Bancroft, Native Races, vol. v, p. 52. |