OCR Text |
Show 342 HUALAPAI. This dialect is closely related to Mohave, since the tribe of the Wallpais, Wallapais, or, according to Spanish orthography, Hualapais, have constantly lived in close contiguity and intercourse with the Mohaves. In the spring of 1874, 580 Hualapais came to the Colorado River reservation, where they live together with about 1,540 Mohaves and many other Indians. The lexicon of this dialect shows many terms in which it differs from Mohave and the other dialects. But the prefixes, suffixes, derivative endings, & c, are substantially the name, showing many dialectic variations, however. So we observe that the Hualapai terminal - aga is in Mohave - aga; - ega becomes - a* or - um; - oga turns up as - auk, u- nga as- ug; koark, to speak, appears as koauk in Hualapai: harabk as hatabuk, five: mailh6 as malti- u, tobacco- pipe. In a good number of terms, H. coincides entirely with Tonto, or more olosely than with Mohave. Being in want of the material requisite to construct a complete grainmav of this Yuma dialect, hitherto almost unknown, I subjoin the few sentences given by Dr. Loew illustrating the inflection of the verb, in which the auxiliary verb / go, miama, is used to designate the future tense. kvimago, I eat. miama kvimago, I shall eat, ( viz, " I go eat.") kvimago vam, I have eaten just now. kvimago kure\ I have eaten some time ago. kvimago ta 6paka, I will not eat. , kutchu kanaba, What do you wantt vam in Hual. means now, to- day, and kure* occurs in Diegefio as okur: distant, far off. The negative particle ta is found: also in tuya, nothing. DIEGESJO. The Indians of the Yuma stock belonging to this warlike race were called so from the vicinity of the seaport San Diego, in Southern California, which will be the terminus of the Southern Pacific Railroad. The correct form for this name would be Dieguefios, or San Diegunos, but Diegefios is now generally adopted. Some travelers have asserted that the Diegefios were identical with the Comovei, or Comoyas, inhabiting some desert plains between that port and the mouth of the Colorado River, but the words taken from both prove that in their language, at least, some difference exists. Diegefio and Cuchan exhibit many radical discrepancies in the vocabulary, and it is not improbable that the languages of the Californian peuinsula have in former times influenced their stock of words ; and a few expressions are traceable to Sonora sources. Diegefio words more frequently end in consonants than those of Tonto, Mohave, and Hualapai, but the consonantal combinations and the grouping of the sounds are substantially the same as in Mohave. The gutturals gh and kh occur very frequently, but th of the Mohave, which is pronounced just like the English th, is not found. Among two hundred terms I find r occurring only in three, viz, sepir, strong; kitehur, cold, winter; okur, distant. The accent not unfreqnently rests on the final syllable of nouns as well as of verbs. The parts of the human body assume the prefixed pronoun - i,(" mine"), but nothing of the kind is observed in the degrees of consanguinity. Of compound nouns we notice : akh£- kvan, river, ™ ." large- water;" uma- tet6, mountain, viz. " rock- above; " amata- tchikvara, meadow, prairie, viz. " ground- which- large;" kh&- silgh, sea, viz." water- salt. 7' Numerals from six to nine are composed with nio-, niu-, and Loew's numbers differ largely from those given by Whipple in the reports. These latter were probably taken from a Comoyei Indian. No sentences or conjugations are at present available from which to construct paradigms or syntactic rules for the Diegefio dialect, and from all what may be iuferred from the vocabularies, it must differ in this respect considerably from the Mohave and from Yuma- Cuchan, of which Lieutenant Whipple has given us some phraseology. Undoubtedly the several Yuma dialects have borrowed a few words from nations speaking various other languages, as it is observed all over America, but in general this family kept itself more free from such importations than many other Indian races. A faint relationship, not heretofore mentioned by any investigator, exists between Yuma and the dialects of the peninsula of California. This connection deserves to be followed up as closely as the scanty material which we possess of the peuinsular idioms will allow, and in this way an ancient immigration of some Yuma tribes into this deserted and barren stretch of land may be traced out and proved by linguistic research. I will here only point out the following similarities: Cochimi: amat, amet, ammet, earth; Mohave: amat; Cuchan, omtit. Cochimi: ama, am ma, ambayujtip; Waikuru: dateuibtf, heaven, sky. Mohave: auiaya • Cuchan, ammai. Cochimi: maba, upon, above. Mohave: amail, above. Laymonio: litsi, to drink; Diegefio, kisi; Cuchan: asi. |