SHEA’S LIBRARY OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS.

Volume III.

GRAMMATICAL SKETCH OF THE HEVE LANGUAGE,

TRANSLATED FROM AN UNPUBLISHED SPANISH MANUSCRIPT.

BY BUCKINGHAM SMITH.

NOTICES OF THE HEVE;

THE LANGUAGE SPOKEN BY THE EUDEVE, A PEOPLE OF THE DÓHME. ^[1]

BY BUCKINGHAM SMITH.

HISTORICAL.

This tongue was spoken in the middle of the last century over a region of country principally within Sonora, the northernmost of the seven Provinces then comprising the kingdom of New Galicia under the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The limit of Sonora on the east was continuous along the chain of mountains that divides it from Taraumara,—from Sateche, the farthest of the Indian settlements in that district, southwardly eighty leagues to Bacoa Sati the first of its towns. On the west the Province was washed by the sea of Cortez from the mouth of the Hiaqui to the Tomosatzi, or Colorado, the waters of the Hiaqui forming its limit to the south; and on the north by a course from the Mission of Baseraca westwardly through the Presidio de Fronteras to that of Pitic (Terrenate), a distance of seventy leagues. According to the opinion of a Jesuit Father, the author of an anonymous work in manuscript on that country, written in the year 1762 at Alamo, it was thought also to be the most important among the many Provinces of Mexico, whether for fertility of soil, gold washings, or silver mines; and not less distinguishable for the docility and loyalty of those aboriginal inhabitants who had early given their adhesion to the government to secure religious instruction.

The Missions of Sonora included moreover a section to the south bounded by the River Chico within the Province of Ostimuri. To the north, within the religious precinct, was the Pimeria Alta through the Sobahipuris up to the junction of the river of that name, (otherwise the San Pedro,) with the Gila; thence for a distance of more than one hundred and thirty leagues, after passing

among rancherias of Pima, Opa, and Cocomaricopa, and having received in its course the Asumpcion, or Compuesto—from its being formed by the united waters of two streams, the Salado and Verde—it enters the Tomosatzi, closing that Pimeria of innumerable tribes described by the missionaries as sealed in productive places, and in a genial climate. Other Indians of the same names, the Yuma also and Papapootam (Papago) lived beyond, as appears from the accounts given by the spiritual invaders of those remote regions, chiefly the Fathers Kino, Keller, and Sedelmayer.

The two principal nations of Sonora are spoken of as the Opata and Pima, since the Eudeve should be reckoned with the Opata, for the reason that its language differs as little from that of the other as the Portuguese from the Castilian, or the Provençal from the French; and likewise should also be added the Jove, who, having mingled with the Opata, no longer use their own tongue, except in some instances of the aged. It is one difficult to acquire, and different from any other in the Province.

The Opata are the best of the native Christians, having never turned upon their teachers, nor once risen against the royal authorities; nor do they, like other Indians, make the women bear the heavier share of the labor in the fields. They are industrious husbandmen; but they are not any the less wanting in valor on that account, having oftentimes shown their good conduct when bearing arms with the king’s forces at the expense of the Missions. Individuals there were, and perhaps still are, who did the work of blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, stone cutters, masons, learning any craft readily, and practicing it with skill. They and some of the Endeve, although in a less degree, are to the other Indians what the people who live in towns are to those in the country, still for all it was remarked, they were none the less Indians. Such was the general character of the Opata, which is the same that is given of them in our time by that curious and instructive observer, John R. Bartlett, in his narrative of an expedition into that country.

The Jove were a rural people, quite the greater number of them, unwilling to be brought together in communities, lived in chasms among the ridges where they were born, proof to the solicitations of kindness and conveniences of civilized life. The other portion of them dwelt in Ponida, Teopari and Mochoba. The good missionary at Bacadeque endeavored to bring into towns those who inhabited the rancheria

of Sathechi and the margins of the Mulatos and Arcos, rivers to the south, without avail. They live among briars, owning a few animals, subsisting on wild fruits and vegetables, gathering an occasional stalk of maize or a pumpkin that nature suffers to grow in some crevice here and there made by torrents bursting from the mountains.

These nations, the Pima and the Opata, Eudeve, Jove, forming two people, occupy the greater portion of Sonora, seated far inward to the west from the Cordillera. The limit on the south is where stood the deserted town of Ivatora thence to Arivetze, Bacanora, Tonitzi, Soyopa, Nacori; on the west from Alamos, through parts of Ures and Nacomeri to Opedepe, and Cucurpe; on the north from Arispe, Chinapa, Bacoquetzi, Cuquiaratzi to Babispe, and from that Mission of Babispe on the east by mountains of low elevation returning to Natora.

The Pima occupy a still wider territory, extending on the south into Cinaloa, on the east in to the Province of Taraumara. The Upper Pima are found far to the north

living by the Sobahipuris to its outlet, and on both banks of the Gila to the Tomosatzi, in vales of luxuriant beauty, and in wastes of sand and sterility between those rivers and the sea,—having still other tribes beyond them using the same language in different dialects. The Lower Pima are in the west of the Province, having many towns extending to the frontier of the indomitable Seri, who live some thirty leagues to the north of the mouth of the Hiaqui and have their farthest limit inland, some dozen leagues from the sea, finding shelter among the ridges, and in the neighboring island of Tiburon.^[2] Those of the Pima who reside on the south, in the Province of Cinaloa, the history of their migration thither is of the earliest, and belongs to that which should relate the closing scene in the journey of Cabeza de Vaca, with the strange success that eventually, at the close of a century, attended his Christian purpose.

All these nations, save the last, and all others who inhabit the country excepting the Apaches—including a numerous people on the Gila and on the farther bank of the Colorado—speak the same language, with so slight differences, say the missionaries, that they who shall have attained the one of the Opata and Eudeve with little difficulty will master the rest. And for this we have that early authority referred to, of three centuries since: “They made known to us what they would say by means of a language they have among them through which we and they understood each other. Those to whom it properly belongs we call Primahaitu, which is equivalent to when we say Biscayans. We found it in use over more than four hundred leagues (miles?) of our travel, without another in the whole extent.” The name thus given by the narrator of