The linguistic classification of the South American tribes offers far
greater difficulties than that of North America. Not only has it been
studied less diligently, but the geographical character of the interior,
the facilities with which tribes move along its extensive water-ways,
and the less stable temperament of the white population have combined to
obscure the relationship of the native tribes and to limit our knowledge
about them.
The first serious attempt to take a comprehensive survey of the idioms of
this portion of the continent was that of the Abbé Hervas in his general
work on the languages of the globe.[218] Balbi and Adelung did scarcely
more than pursue the lines he had traced in this portion of the field. So
little had these obtained definite results that Alexander von Humboldt
renounced as impracticable the arrangement of South American tribes by
their languages, because “more than seven-eighths would have remained
what the classifying botanists call _incertæ sedis_.”[219]
This eminent naturalist, however, overlooked no opportunity to collect
material for the study of the native tongues, and on his return to Europe
placed what he had secured in the hands of his distinguished brother
for analysis. William von Humboldt, who was the profoundest linguist of
his day, gave close attention to the subject, but rather from a purely
critical than an ethnographic aspect. He based upon the South American
languages many principles of his linguistic philosophy; but so little
general attention was given the subject that his most valuable study was
first given to the press by myself in 1885.[220]
Sixty years ago the French traveler, Alcide D’Orbigny, published his
important work devoted to South American Ethnography, but confined to
that portion of the continent he had visited, south of the parallel of
12° south latitude.[221] His classification was based partly on language,
partly on physical traits, and as it seemed simple and clear, it has
retained its popularity quite to the present day. He subsumes all the
tribes in the area referred to under three “races,” subdivided into
“branches” and “nations” as follows:--