For
contemporary Native Americans, Baja California's aboriginal languages
are an important part of their cultural heritage. Professional linguists
study these languages to seek clues to the universality or diversity of
various features and processes in human speech. Anthropologists discover
in them traces of prehistoric migrations and patterns of cultural change
and interaction, both within the peninsula and across wider reaches of
western North America.
Many of the native people in northernmost Baja California still speak
their ancestral tongues, and in recent years a number of linguists, including
James M. Crawford, Leanne Hinton, Judith Joël, Mauricio J. Mixco, and
Jesús Angel Ochoa Zazueta, have been active in documenting and analyzing
them. South of San Quintín, the aboriginal languages became extinct during
the 18th and 19th centuries. For knowledge of the southern languages,
we are entirely dependent upon the records written by early visitors,
particularly Jesuit missionaries such as Jakob Baegert, Miguel del Barco,
and Franz Benno Ducrue. Because of gaps in information, scholars disagree
as to the number of distinct languages in the peninsula and their geographical
ranges.
The northernmost aboriginal Baja Californians spoke languages belonging
to the Yuman family, including Kiliwa, Paipai, Tipai, Kumeyaay (Kumiai
in Spanish), Cocopa (Cucapá), and Quechan. Using the controversial technique
of glottochronology, it has been estimated that the initial separation
of the Yuman family into different languages occurred perhaps 2,500 years
ago. Suggested homelands for the original Yumans were on the lower Colorado
River or in northwestern Baja California. Cocopa, Kumeyaay, and Tipai,
along with Ipai in Alta California, are very closely related to each other,
separated by perhaps about 1,000 years of independent development. Quechan
is related to Mohave and Maricopa, on the Colorado and Gila rivers. Surprisingly
from a geographic point of view, Paipai's nearest links are to the language
of the western Arizona Yumans, the Yavapai, Walapai, and Havasupai. Kiliwa
stands alone as the most divergent of the languages within the Yuman family.
A slightly more remote connection joined the Yuman family with Cochimí,
the language or group of languages spoken throughout the central half
of Baja California, from north of El Rosario to the vicinity of Loreto
in the south. (Cochimí of central Baja California should not be confused
with the Tipai dialect at La Huerta which is sometimes also known by that
name.)
Much
more distant relationships, probably dating back in excess of 5,000 years,
existed between Yuman-Cochimí and several other families belonging to
the Hokan linguistic phylum. Hokan languages were scattered around the
periphery of Alta California, including Chumash, Pomo, Washo, and others;
the Seri hunter-gatherers of the Sonoran coast across the Sea of Cortés
are apparently also Hokan speakers. Within Baja California, south of the
Cochimí, the Monqui of Loreto and the Guaycura of the Magdalena Plains
may have belonged to the Hokan phylum. In the extreme south of the Cape
Region, Pericú is an linguistic enigma. It may have been related to Guaycura,
or it may not; the evidence is too meager to say.
For additional discussions of the distributions and relationships of
Baja California languages, refer to the Bibliography, and to such sources
as Gursky 1966; Joël 1998; Laylander 1993, 1997a; León-Portilla 1976;
Massey 1949; Mathes 1975a, 1977a; Mixco 1977d, 1978; Ochoa Zazueta 1979,
1982b; and Robles Uribe 1965.
© 2002 Don Laylander
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