The Arawacks are essentially of South American origin and affiliations.
The earliest explorers of the mainland report them as living on the
rivers of Guiana, and having settlements even south of the Equator.[5]
De Laet in his map of Guiana locates a large tribe of "Arowaceas" three
degrees south of the line, on the right bank of the Amazon. Dr. Spix
during his travels in Brazil met with fixed villages of them near
Fonteboa, on the river Solimoes and near Tabatinga and Castro
d'Avelaes.[6] They extended westward beyond the mouth of the Orinoco,
and we even hear of them in the province of Santa Marta, in the
mountains south of Lake Maracaybo.[7]
While their language has great verbal differences from the Tupi of
Brazil and the Carib, it has also many verbal similarities with both.
"The Arawack and the Tupi," observes Professor Von Martius, "are alike
in their syntax, in their use of the possessive and personal pronouns,
and in their frequent adverbial construction;"[8] and in a letter
written me shortly before his death, he remarks, in speaking of the
similarity of these three tongues: "Ich bin überzeugt dass diese [die
Cariben] eine Elite der Tupis waren, welche erst spät auf die Antillen
gekommen sind, wo die alte Tupi--Sprache in kaum erkennbaren Resten
übrig war, als man sie dort aufzeichnete." I take pleasure in bringing
forward this opinion of the great naturalist, not only because it is not
expressed so clearly in any of his published writings, but because his
authority on this question is of the greatest weight, and because it
supports the view which I have elsewhere advanced of the migrations of
the Arawack and Carib tribes.[9] These "hardly recognizable remains of
the Tupi tongue," we shall see belonged also to the ancient Arawack at
an epoch when it was less divergent than it now is from its primitive
form. While these South American affinities are obvious, no relationship
whatever, either verbal or syntactical, exists between the Arawack and
the Maya of Yucatan, or the Chahta-Mvskoki of Florida and the northern
shore of the Gulf of Mexico.
As it is thus rendered extremely probable that the Arawack is closely
connected with the great linguistic families of South America, it
becomes of prime importance to trace its extension northward, and to
determine if it is in any way affined to the tongues spoken on the West
India Islands, when these were first discovered.
The Arawacks of to-day when asked concerning their origin point to the
north, and claim at some not very remote time to have lived at _Kairi_,
an island, by which generic name they mean Trinidad. This tradition is
in a measure proved correct by the narrative of Sir Walter Raleigh, who
found them living there in 1595,[10] and by the Belgian explorers who in
1598 collected a short vocabulary of their tongue. This oldest monument
of the language has sufficient interest to deserve copying and comparing
with the modern dialect. It is as follows:
LATIN. ARAWACK, 1598. ARAWACK, 1800.
pater, pilplii, itti.
mater, saeckee, uju.
caput, wassijehe, waseye.
auris, wadycke, wadihy.
oculus, wackosije, wakusi.
nasus, wassyerii, wasiri.
os, dalerocke, daliroko.
dentes, darii, dari.
crura, dadane, dadaanah.
pedes, dackosye, dakuty.
arbor, hada, adda.
arcus, semarape, semaara-haaba.
sagittæ, symare, semaara.
luna, cattehel, katsi.
sol, adaly, hadalli.
The syllables _wa_ our, and _da_ my, prefixed to the parts of the human
body, will readily be recognized. When it is remembered that the dialect
of Trinidad no doubt differed slightly from that on the mainland; that
the modern orthography is German and that of De Lact's[TN-4] list is
Dutch; and that two centuries intervened between the first and second,
it is really a matter of surprise to discover such a close similarity.
Father and mother, the only two words which are not identical, are
doubtless different expressions, relationship in this, as in most native
tongues, being indicated with excessive minuteness.
The chain of islands which extend from Trinidad to Porto Rico were
called, from their inhabitants, the Caribby islands. The Caribs,
however, made no pretence to have occupied them for any great length of
time. They distinctly remembered that a generation or two back they had
reached them from the mainland, and had found them occupied by a
peaceful race, whom they styled _Ineri_ or _Igneri_. The males of this
race they slew or drove into the interior, but the women they seized for
their own use. Hence arose a marked difference between the languages of
the island Caribs and their women. The fragments of the language of the
latter show clearly that they were of Arawack lineage, and that the
so-called Igneri were members of that nation. It of course became more
or less corrupted by the introduction of Carib words and forms, so that
in 1674 the missionary De la Borde wrote, that "although there is some
difference between the dialects of the men and women, they readily
understand each other;"[11] and Father Breton in his Carib Grammar
(1665) gives the same forms for the declensions and conjugations of
both.
As the traces of the "island Arawack," as the tongue of the Igneri may
be called, prove the extension of this tribe over all the Lesser
Antilles, it now remains to inquire whether they had pushed their
conquests still further, and had possessed themselves of the Great
Antilles, the Bahama islands, and any part of the adjacent coasts of
Yucatan or Florida.
All ancient writers agree that on the Bahamas and Cuba the same speech
prevailed, except Gomara, who avers that on the Bahamas "great diversity
of language" was found.[12] But as Gomara wrote nearly half a century
after those islands were depopulated, and has exposed himself to just
censure for carelessness in his statements regarding the natives,[13]
his expression has no weight. Columbus repeatedly states that all the
islands had one language though differing, more or less, in words. The
natives he took with him from San Salvador understood the dialects in
both Cuba and Haiti. One of them on his second voyage served him as an
interpreter on the southern shore of Cuba.[14]
In Haiti, there was a tongue current all over the island, called by the
Spaniards _la lengua universal_ and _la lengua cortesana_. This is
distinctly said by all the historians to have been but very slightly
different from that of Cuba, a mere dialectic variation in accent being
observed.[15] Many fragments of this tongue are preserved in the
narratives of the early explorers, and it has been the theme for some
strange and wild theorizing among would-be philologists. Rafinesque
christened it the "Taino" language, and discovered it to be closely akin
to the "Pelasgic" of Europe.[16] The Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg will
have it allied to the Maya, the old Norse or Scandinavian, the ancient
Coptic, and what not. Rafinesque and Jegor von Sivors[17] have made
vocabularies of it, but the former in so uncritical, and the latter in
so superficial a manner, that they are worse than useless.
Although it is said there were in Haiti two other tongues in the small
contiguous provinces of Macorix de arriba and Macorix de abajo, entirely
dissimilar from the _lengua universal_ and from each other, we are
justified in assuming that the prevalent tongue throughout the whole of
the Great Antilles and the Bahamas, was that most common in Haiti. I
have, therefore, perused with care all the early authorities who throw
any light upon the construction and vocabulary of this language, and
gathered from their pages the scattered information they contain. The
most valuable of these authorities are Peter Martyr de Angleria, who
speaks from conversations with natives brought to Spain by Columbus, on
his first voyage,[18] and who was himself, a fine linguist, and
Bartolomé de las Casas. The latter came as a missionary to Haiti, a few
years after its discovery, was earnestly interested in the natives, and
to some extent acquainted with their language. Besides a few printed
works of small importance, Las Casas left two large and valuable works
in manuscript, the _Historia General de las Indias Occidentales_, and
the _Historia Apologetica de las Indias Occidentals_. A copy of these,
each in four large folio volumes, exists in the Library of Congress,
where I consulted them. They contain a vast amount of information
relating to the aborigines, especially the _Historia Apologetica_,
though much of the author's space is occupied with frivolous discussions
and idle comparisons.
In later times, the scholar who has most carefully examined the relics
of this ancient tongue, is Señor Don Estevan Richardo, a native of
Haiti, but who for many years resided in Cuba. His views are contained
in the preface to his _Diccionario Provincial casi-razonado de Voces
Cubanas_, (Habana, 2da ed, 1849). He has found very many words of the
ancient language retained in the provincial Spanish of the island, but
of course in a corrupt form. In the vocabulary which I have prepared for
the purpose of comparison, I have omitted all such corrupted forms, and
nearly all names of plants and animals, as it is impossible to identify
these with certainty, and in order to obtain greater accuracy, have
used, when possible, the first edition of the authors quoted, and in
most instances, given under each word a reference to some original
authority.
From the various sources which I have examined, the alphabet of the
_lengua universal_ appears to have been as follows: a, b, d, e, (rarely
used at the commencement of a word), g, j, (an aspirated guttural like
the Catalan j, or as Peter Martyr says, like the Arabic ch), i (rare), l
(rare), m, n, o (rare,) p, q, r, s, t, u, y. These letters, it will be
remembered, are as in Spanish.
The Spanish sounds z, ce, ci (English th,) ll, and v, were entirely
unknown to the natives, and where they appear in indigenous words, were
falsely written for l and b. The Spaniards also frequently distorted the
native names by writing x for j, s, and z, by giving j the sound of the
Latin y, and by confounding h, j, and f, as the old writers frequently
employ the h to designate the _spiritus asper_, whereas in modern
Spanish it is mute.[19]
Peter Martyr found that he could reduce all the words of their language
to writing, by means of the Latin letters without difficulty, except in
the single instance of the guttural j. He, and all others who heard it
spoken, describe it as "soft and not less liquid than the Latin," "rich
in vowels and pleasant to the ear," an idiom "simple, sweet, and
sonorous."[20]
In the following vocabulary I have not altered in the least the Spanish
orthography of the words, and so that the analogy of many of them might
at once be preceived,[TN-5] I have inserted the corresponding Arawack
expression, which, it must be borne in mind, is to be pronounced by the
German alphabet.