5.  Chumash Numerals

Madison S. Beeler

Chumash is the label identifying a family of languages spoken in aboriginal times along the coast of southern California from about Malibu, northwest of Los Angeles, to an indeterminate point north of the city of San Luis Obispo. They also occupied the three westernmost of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands: Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel. They were a coastal people; but we know that in the general region of Ventura they lived beyond the summit of the mountains bordering the southern end of the San Joaquin valley. So far as is known there are no speakers of any Chumash language alive today; but in the nineteenth century Indians gave us some information about seven different forms of Chumash speech. It is likely that before white contact there were still others.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries five missions of the Franciscan order were founded among these people. A generalized form of language tended to grow up at each mission center, and these dialects of languages are traditionally known in the literature by adjectives derived from the Spanish names of the missions. There is thus, commencing in the south, a Ventureño dialect; to the northwest this is succeeded by the territory of the Barbareño -- city of Santa Barbara -- group. Next are Ynezno -- mission of Santa Inez -- and Purisimeño -- mission of La Purisima Concepcion [the Immaculate Conception]. The last group to the north are the Obispeño, from the city and mission named for San Luis Obispo. No mission was established on the islands, or in the interior; the forms of Chumash speech there are usually known as Cruzeño, from Santa Cruz, the name of the largest island, and Interior.

My interest in the study of Chumash speech began almost thirty years ago when a fluent speaker of Barbareño was discovered in Santa Barbara. At that time almost nothing about these languages, beyond a few poorly recorded vocabularies, was available in the literature. This woman, Mrs. Mary Yee, had been born in 1897 and was then in her middle fifties. I worked with her, on and off, until her death in 1965. The result of this work, and of that of a number of students, is that we now have grammars and dictionaries, not only of Barbareño, but of most of the other Chumash languages. This rescue operation was carried out at the last possible moment, since there now appear to be no speakers of any of these languages. This material now makes possible linguistic work of many kinds on these fascinating languages.

In 1961, while working in Santa Barbara, I had called to my attention by Father Maynard Geiger, O.F.M., the resident historian of the Franciscan order, a small manuscript book in the order's archives. This turned out to be a 'Confesionario', or handbook for father confessors, in Ventureño, with interlinear translation into Spanish, and some passages in Latin. The handwriting of this document was identified for me by Father Geiger as that of José Señán (1760-1823), a native of Barcelona who was stationed at Mission San Buenaventura from 1797 until the end of his life. Contemporary testimony of his ecclesiastical superiors emphasizes Father Señán’s "knowledge of the languages of it's (i.e. of the San Buenaventura mission's) Indians." This document I published in 1967 (Beeler 1967). Earlier, however, separate publication was given to a unique section of this handbook which had attracted my attention because of my interest in the study of aboriginal counting systems (Beeler 1964). This part of Father Señán's work had great importance for me because of its early date. I knew something before about Chumash numerals; but all of what I had learned before was outdated by the information contained in Señán's handbook.

Most of the facts previously available about Chumash counting had been recorded in the second half of the nineteenth century or early in the twentieth. It appears that one of the parts of native grammar most vulnerable to intrusive influence was precisely the system of numerals. The padres did not wish to adjust their thinking to accommodate anything differing from the decimal system to which they were accustomed by their own Indo-European language. Even linguistically more sophisticated investigators have difficulty in divesting themselves of ingrained habits, and many of them wanted to impose these habits on the Chumash when they began to become familiar with the strange counting practices of these Indians.

A passage in Señá's handbook illustrates these points.

"Quest.	To how many have you said that what the Father says is a lie?
Ans.	To fourteen (a catorze, eshcóm laliét). This expression in Ventureño means something like 'two lacking, subtract two'.
Quest.	I don't understand what you say to me (no entiendo lo que me dices). I don't understand the way you people count (no entiendo vuestras cuentas): count by tens (cuenta por diezes, saliét al cashcom).
Ans.	Ten and four (diez y cuatro, cashcóm casatscumu)."

It may be guessed that this passage was written about 1818-1820, which is very early as Indian language texts in California go. The reader will soon see that the Ventureño manner of counting was apparently flourishing in its aboriginal condition at that date. Subsequently, in this paper, he will see that influence of this kind, wielded by the priest in the confessional, had effectively destroyed the native system of counting at an early date: by the second half of the century the Indians were all "counting by tens." Most California native languages apparently became known to linguists only after influence of this kind had done its work: the native system had been lost irretrievably before the investigator ever saw it. It is this fact that gives the Señan record its great value for science. The Ventura mission had been founded in 1782; the native system of numbers had survived for some thirty five years, but would soon succumb to the treatment it was receiving.

It is time now to examine this native system. This can most easily be accomplished by presenting Señán's description, with some comments by me. The spelling is that of the original.

1	paqueet
2	eshcóm
3	maseg
4	scumú
5	itipaqués
6	yetishcóm
7	itimaség
8	malahua
9	etspá
10	cashcóm
11	telú
12	maseg scumu, tres vezes cuatro [three times four]
13	masegscumu canpaqueet, tres vezes cuatro [sic; three times four and one]
14	eshcom laliét, dos faltan pạ 16 [two lacking from 16]
15	paqueet cihue, uno falta pạ 16 [one lacking from 16]
16	chigipsh
17	chigipsh canpaqueet
18	eshcóm cihue scumuhúy
19	paqueet cihue scumuhúy
20	scumuhú
21	scumúhuy canpaqueet
22	eshcóm cihué, dos faltan pạ etsmajmaség
23	paqueet cihué, uno falta pạ etsmajmaség
24	etsmajmaseg
25	etsmajmaseg canpaqueet, veinte y cuatro y uno
26	eshcóm cihué itimaseg, dos faltan pạ veinte y ocho
27	paqueet cihue itimaseg, uno falta pạ veinte y ocho
28	ytimaseg, ] maseg
29	ytimaseg canpaqueet, veinte y ocho y uno
30	eshcom cihue eshcom chigipsh, dos faltan pạ dos vezes diez y seis
31	paqueet cihue eshcóm chigipsh, uno falta dos vezes diez y seis
32	eshcóm chigipsh, dos vezes diez y seis

Desde el numero 32 empiezan a contar de cuatro en cuatro, como sigue:

scumú	4
malahua	8
maség scumu	12
chigípsh	16
scumuhúy	20
etsmajmaseg	24
ytimaseg	28

[Here there is a break in the manuscript; when it begins again, on the next page, we have:]

el numero 16, que sale siempre duplicado al fin de la cuenta. Asi aora prosiguiendo en contar, el numero ultimo serí yetishcóm chigípsh; esto es, seis vezes 16. Pasando adelante, sería malahua chigípsh ocho vezes 16; y asi de los demás [the number 16, which always comes out duplicated at the end of the count. Now, continuing the count, the last number would be yetishcóm chigípsh; that is six times 16. Still going ahead, malahua chigípsh would be eight times 16; and the same for the rest.]

In the discussions that follow I shall assume that the reader is familiar with the names of the Chumash languages, other than Ventureño, which have been listed above. These languages are related to each other as follows: Ventureño is a member of a cohesive group of four, quite similar to each other, called Central Chumash, and containing, besides Ventureño, Barbareño, Ynezeño, and Purisimeño. The dialect of the islands, which we call from its principal variety Cruzeño differs in many respects from the Central Chumash languages; and the language of San Luis Obispo to the north, called Obispeño, is the most divergent of all six. In aboriginal days there assuredly existed other forms of Chumash speech; but missions were not founded among them, and very little is known of these Indians. I shall use the term 'Interior' when referring to Chumash groups who lived away from the Pacific coast.

A recurrent feature characteristic of the history of native numerals in California is the prevalence of borrowing from language to language and from dialect to dialect. What is borrowed is not only the number words themselves (the numerals), but also, occasionally, the basic system itself. Before the coming of the whites, the California region was an area of great linguistic diversity. Because of this, and because many forms of native speech have become extinct without ever having been recorded, it is not always possible to identify the source when borrowing is suspected. But it frequently is, and I give this information when it is known. It will be useful to have available a map of California, if you wish to understand the geography of what is involved.

The arithmetical operations employed by the Ventureño, to construct their system, will be seen to be addition, subtraction, and multiplication. All numeral systems with which this writer is familiar employ a restricted number of root words; these root words are then combined with each other, and modified with affixation, to express all the numbers which the culture in question needs. The analysis of such systems requires then, the isolation of the root numeral words, the description of the processes by which these root words are brought together to express higher numbers, and the identification of foreign borrowings, if any appear to have been made.

The root words of the Ventureño are basically four in number: they are the terms for 1, 2, 3, and 4, i.e. (in Ventureño) paqueet, eshkóm, maseg, and scumu. Hereafter, in this paper I shall replace these spellings, which conform to Spanish orthographic conventions by the following: pake?et, ?iškóm, masix, and skumu, which follow current linguistic usage. Any interested reader can determine the meaning of these symbols by consulting an elementary textbook of phonetics. The system is obviously quaternary; the only other root words employed are the words for multiples of four: malawa is eight, and pet'a is sixteen (in Barbareño). We shall soon discuss the Ventureño term for this number, šixipš, a Ventureño innovation.

The expressions meaning 5, 6, and 7 will be seen to contain the words for 1, 2, and 3, prefixed by an element yiti-, which from the exigencies of the system seems to mean 'four'; five would be 'four plus one', six 'four plus two', and seven 'four plus three.' I was once inclined to connect this element yiti- with a Yokuts verbal root yit'is, 'to make five' (Beeler 1976, p.256). (Yokuts is a major Californian family of languages spoken, beyond the coastal mountains from Chumash, in the San Joaquin valley. We shall encounter potential Yokuts influence repeatedly; that transmontane tongue appears as the source for the introduction of quinary and decimal features into Chumash.) Subsequent considerations have led me to prefer a native Chumash etymology for yiti-. We find in some members of the family a verbal root yet'i ~ yit'i-signifying 'to come, come back, return.' We have in Cruzeño (see below), for 5, 6, and 7, constructions such as (na-)syet-eshkom, '6', which I think can take an interpretation 'when (or where) two recurs, is seen again'. In principle I prefer a native etymology to a foreign loan, if I can find one.

Since the number 5 is expressed as the sum 'four plus one', we might expect, in a quaternary system, that nine would be given as 'eight plus one.' The Ventureño for 'nine' (in Señán etspa, in my notation tspa) may be given such an interpretation, in the light of the whole Chumash system. The central Chumash for 'one' commences with the syllable pa-; if this be interpreted as a verb 'to be one', as are so many words in Indian languages, the Ventureño third person singular subject pronoun, when prefixed, yields tspa, 'it is one.' This of course requires the assumption that prehistoric phonetic changes have, under unknown conditions, caused the reduction of pak'a -- or whatever it once was, to pa.

Whatever the unknown -- and unknowable -- prehistory is of this word for 'nine', it is certain that Barbereño used an expression for 'ten' meaning 'add two.' This is clearly its term for 'ten', k'eleškóm, which shows -eškóm, 'two', following the segment k'el-, which may be translated 'and'. 'Ten' is therefore rendered as the sum '(eight) and two'. In Ventureño kaškom we find the same construction, somewhat obscured by subsequent phonetic change. The Ventureño for 'and' is kal- ~ kan-, which, when prefixed to eskóm, caused elision of the initial vowel of 'two' and later reduction of the resulting consonant cluster.

What I can suggest for til'u, 'eleven', is much less certain. One suspects here something signifying 'three', but one must reach far to find a possible source. Nothing remotely similar has been discovered in the areas which we know have supplied linguistic loans to Chumash. The only sources possible, when phonetic and semantic structure are taken into account, are in the San Francisco Bay region, more than five hundred km away to the north, and in Polynesian, where we find a word something like telu, in the sense of 'three'. I will urge the case of neither. Only one Chumash language, Obispeño, has a word for 'eleven' not cognate with the Ventureño.

The expressions for 13, 14, and 15, according to Señá are, respectively, '12 plus 1', 16 less 2', and '16 less 1'. These show the importance, in this system of counting by fours, of 12 and 16, multiples of 'four'.

The next critical point is 16, the product of the basic '4' when multiplied by itself. There is in several Chumash languages a root word for this unit, but that does not occur in Ventureño; there we have chigipsh (in linguistic spelling šixipš). For it a convincing etymology has been discovered. In the Central Chumash languages there is a verbal root iquip ~ ixip, meaning 'to shut, to conclude, to complete'; this is here preceded by the third person singular pronominal prefix s- and followed by the intensive suffix -š, and the whole is realized by the characteristic Chumash process of sibilant harmony to yield the existing form. It means then '(it, the count) is quite complete, is concluded'. It appears to be a Ventureño innovation, possibly to supply a likely meaning to an inherited term no longer understood. Later in this paper we shall see what subsequent generations did with it.

No comment is called for about the numerals for 17-19, 21-23, 25-27, or 29-31. For 20 we have scumuhuy; this shows scumu, '4', provided with a suffix -huy, of unknown meaning. Because of the words for 24 and 28, to be examined directly, I suspect a significance of 5 for scumuhuy, that is, '5(× 4)' = '20'; -huy would then be a term for 'one'. For 28 there is yiti-masix, which is simply the word for 7. Therefore in tsmax-masix for 24 we should have an expression for 6; since masix is 'three', tsmax- could be a term for 'twice', otherwise unknown. Or, one might admit other possibilities.

The system is, then, a consistently elaborated pattern of counting by fours as far as 4 × 4; when 16 was reached, the process of counting as far as 4 × 4 was repeated. From 32 on the whole doubled quaternary count was repeated, with no upper limit stated.

As remarked earlier in this paper, the Ventureño count is the only one of the Chumash family to be worked out so thoroughly, and that is because of its early recording and because of the pains taken by Father Señán to make this recording complete. Most of the other Chumash languages begin to show the interference of the Spanish decimal system after twelve, as well as the employment of loan words from Spanish. Some of these innovations will be noted below.

We now pass to the consideration of counting in the other Chumash languages, and we look first at Barbareño, the coastal tongue just to the west of Ventureño, and a member, as stated, of the central Chumash group. This language continued to be spoken until 1965, much longer than any other idiom of the family. I can therefore give the numerals as I heard them spoken in the twentieth century.

1	pak'a
2	?iškóm'
3	masix
4	skum'u
5	yitipak'a
6	yitiškóm'
7	yitimasix
8	malawa
9	spa?
10	k'el-eškóm'
11	t'ilu
12	masixeskumu
16	(s)pet'a

All other numerals, when required, were borrowed from Spanish. The term for 16 appears to be the native Chumash word, replaced in Ventureño by šigipš. pak'a is a slight variant of Ventureño pake?et. All the rest have been discussed in the Ventureño section.

There are two other central Chumash tongues, Ynezeño and Purisemeño; named after the missions at Santa Ynez and La Purisma, less than 25 km apart. These can be quickly disposed of. The data are given below.

	Ynezeño	Purisemeño
1	pakas'	kac' (i.e. kats')
2	?iškom'	?iškom'
3	masix	masax
4	skumu	tskumu
5	yitipakas'	tip'ak'ac'
6	yitiškom'	te?škom'
7	yitimasix	tem'asax
8	malawa	malawa
9	spa	cpa
10	č'iyaw	kac'ač'iyaw
11	tɨl'u?	(no others given)
12	xayiskumu
13	K'elpakas'
16	pet'a?

First the Ynezeño forms. Here 'one' has a slightly variant shape, when contrasted with Ventureño and Barbareño. The only other numerals requiring comment are č'iyaw, '10', and xayiskumu, '12'. The first of these is surely a borrowing from the Yokuts of the southern end of the San Joaquin valley, where the Yokuts dialect called Yawelmani has t'iy'e •w for 10 (Newman 1944, p.55); Yokuts numerals were decimal. There is a history of intermittent contact between these southern San Joaquin Yokuts and the coastal Chumash, and when the Chumash of some of the missions revolted against Spanish (or Mexican) rule in 1824 it is to this region that many of them fled. One also assumes trade between these groups. As for xayiskumu, '12', it is said that xayi- here means 'and' (Applegate n.d., p.185); 12 was '(8) and 4'; this is the only central Chumash term for 12 thus far encountered which does not have '3 × 4' for 12.

Purisimeño is one of the most imperfectly known of all Chumash dialects; what I here give, the sequence of the first ten numerals, is supplied through the courtesy of Kathryn Klar from records at present in the National Anthropological Archives in Washington, D.C., and collected by John P. Harrington. These show a system basically identical with Ynezeño, differing from it only in phonetic details. Of the latter, the most characteristic is the loss, under unknown conditions, of the initial syllable in some words. The word for 10 is a compound signifying 'one ten', with the Yokuts loan as the basic term.

I come next to Cruzeño, or Island Chumash. Those three of the Channel Islands occupied by Chumash speakers are reported by 16th-18th century explorers to have been relatively densely populated. There were, however, no Indians at all left on them by the middle of the 19th century; it appears that the Island people were either induced by missionaries at the mainland establishments to abandon their island homes, or were subjected to harassment by Aleut sea-otter hunters imported by the Russians. No missions were ever founded on any of the islands. What knowledge we have of island speech comes from data collected in the latter part of the 19th century from surviving speakers on the mainland. The most copious of these records is the last one, collected in 1913 by John P. Harrington from a speaker said to have been born on Santa Cruz and taken to Ventura ca. 1808; he is reported to have been 109(!) years of age when Harrington worked with him. He had lived most of his life in Ventura; Ventureño is said to have been his customary speech. What follow are the numerals which this man gave to Harrington.

1	ismala
2	iščom
3	masɨx
4	skumu
5	(na)syet'isma
6	(na)syet'iščom
7	(na)syetmasɨx
8	Malawa
9	spa?a; tspa
10	Kaškom
11	tɨl'u
12	masɨx(pa)skumu
13	masɨxpaskumu hɨwan ismala
20	iščompaška(?a)škom
100	ka?aškòmpaš ka?aškòm

Cruzeño is the only Chumash dialect which does not show for 'one' some form of the stem pak-. I am inclined to think that isma(-la) may best be thought of as an original Chumash expression for that numeral, replaced in all the other related dialects by an importation from some unknown point on the coast of southern California. This hypothetical importation lacked the impetus to carry itself across the twenty miles of open water between the islands and Hueneme, their port on the mainland. In support of my contention I cite two neighboring forms of coastal speech, one to the south (Gabrielino, the native language of the Los Angeles area, of Uto-Aztecan affiliation) and one to the north (Esselen, spoken just south of Monterey, of probable Hokan character). The word for 'one' in Gabrielino was pukú in Esselen pek. The attentive reader will have noted that the central Chumash forms of 'one' exhibit varying patterns of suffixation to a stem pak-, as if speakers found difficulty in assimilating a strange loan word. Gabrielino and Fernandeño are the only members of the vast Uto-Aztecan family which show a word for 'one' like pukú

For 'five', 'six', and 'seven', variants recorded by Gould in the 1880's exhibit a prefixed particle na lacking in Harrington's text. As in central Chumash these words contain the terms for 1, 2, and 3; but the preceding element syet', corresponding to the central Chumash yit'is, here has the prefix s-. This looks like the 3rd person singular marker of the subject. The particle na- in this language is a subordinator signifying 'when'. The whole can then be interpreted as meaning 'when, where 'one' recurs', or something similiar. 'Twelve' is of course 'three fours', and 'thirteen' means '12 + 1', maintaining the old quaternary system. But 20 is '2 tens' and 100 is '10 tens' showing the European influence which is expected in the twentieth century. Perhaps, also kaškom for 10 has undergone Ventureño shaping.

As stated above, Obispeño or Northern Chumash is the most divergent form of Chumash speech. The numerals there are the object of a recent study (Klar 1980; see below). The numerals are here quoted from the publication of Thomas Coulter, an English scientist who was in California in 1832-34; the record is slightly edited, to eliminate obvious typographical and other errors. The recording is so early (but was made about sixty years after the founding of the mission at San Luis Obispo) that no European influencing can be detected. Coulter was so perceptive that he ended his record with 'sixteen' in contrast with many later (and earlier) workers who wanted to find a decimal system in Chumash.

1	tskhumu
2	eshiu
3	misha
4	paksi
5	tiyewi
6	ksuasyu
7	ksuamishe
8	shkomo
9	shumochimakhe
10	tuyimili
11	tiwapa
12	takotia
13	wakshumu
14	wakleshiu
15	waklmishe
16	peusi

These words, strange as they at first seem, soon reveal the underlying quaternary base. In 6 and 7 we can discover compounds containing 2 and 3; in 13, 14, and 15 we have further compounds with 1, 2, and 3. 16 is a root word, possibly related to the pet'a of the central dialects. 9 probably commences with 1.

In Klar's discussion, the Obispeño for 1, not elsewhere present in Chumash, is attributed to a borrowing from Uto-Aztecan, where a similar term is the standard word for this numeral. We have seen the ubiquitous phenomenon of borrowing in Chumash numerical sequences (and will see further examples), and must concede the possibility. According to Klar, when tskhumu displaced paksi from the 'one' slot, this paksi was transferred to the next critical point, the 4 slot, and the term for 4 was moved ahead by four steps to 8, here displacing the otherwise universal (for Chumash) malawa. This is all ingenious, and so far as we can tell may well be true.

In the numerals for 5 and 10 we see apparently non-Chumash words, that is, borrowing. For Klar, tiyewi derives from Buena Vista Yokuts, where it means 10 and was claimed as the source for Ynezeño č'iyaw, '10'. If this theory is not accepted, for semantic and/or phonetic reasons, we could fall back on the assumption of unknown origin; in any event, both this word and that for '10' illustrate the invasion of the Chumash system by a quinary or decimal based sequence. As for tuyimili, 10, no source has been found, unless we recognize such in the Esselen tomoila, '10' (the Obispeño word has usually been taken to be the source of the Esselen, not vice versa).

tiwapa, '11', was surely adopted from the Hometwoli (Buena Vista Yokuts) döwāp (Kroeber 1963, p.211). From the same source Kitanemuk, a Uto-Aztecan language of the Tehachapi region, also took its term for 11. But our records tell us nothing of the history of takotia, '12'; all other Chumash words meaning 12 contain the term for 4, which clearly is not present here.

When I was a student in the twenties and thirties of this century it used to be said that those engaged in the search for cognates in language families would be well advised to commence their search in the semantic areas of the numerals and of body part terms. It now seems that theory was clouded because of the data employed, which was largely of Indoeuropean origin. We have seen above that borrowing of numeral words from language to language appears to have been very frequent in aboriginal California. This contrasts with an Indoeuropean language such as English: here the first ten numerals have, except for phonological changes, remained basically unaltered for perhaps five thousand years. I do not think enough is known about the evaluation of numerical systems to assign reasons for the difference in the rate of change. In any event, when Europeans came to California in the eighteenth and nineteeth century, bringing with them new linguistic patterns to be imitated, the natives were prepared by their earlier history to adapt their counting systems to those of the newcomers. I now look at a few examples of such change.

Mrs. Yee, my Barbareño informant, gave -- in the 1950's -- for the numerals in that language, native terms for 1 to 12 and for 16. All the others were transliterations of Spanish words. Thus, for 13, 14, and 15, I received tilesi (Spanish trece), katolsi (Spanish catorze), and kinsi (Spanish quince). The strength of the old system is shown by the survival of the first twelve terms and of 16, which of course were critical points in the native system.

We have seen that the Cruzeño record shows for 20 and for 100 expressions meaning 'two tens' and 'ten tens'. Recordings of the later 19th and early 20th century show similar constructions in all Chumash languages; such constructions merely illustrate the decay of the native systems.

A somewhat different manifestation of foreign influence is seen in the following example. About 1890 Juan E. Pico, a literate speaker of Ventureño, was engaged by H.W. Henshaw, an investigator for the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, D.C., to record Chumash data for him. In a letter of Pico to Henshaw of 1891 a list is given of the Ventureño terms for quantities greater than 100 (Heizer 1955, p.189). The word for 100 here appears as chijipsh. This is surely our old friend, the inherited word for 16, now given a new function. In the native system it expressed the product of the basic four when multiplied by itself; in 1890 it was used as the name of the new basic term 'ten' when multiplied by itself. That is, its function remains unaltered, although its meaning is quite different. The replacement of the native system by the intrusive decimal one in the counting after 'ten' freed the old term for 16 for a new employment; an appropriate one was found for it.

How did the Chumash come to count by fours? I could learn nothing about this from Mrs. Yee. She was born too late to remember any information about it. I was grateful indeed that she knew the language so fluently, a piece of good fortune that could not have been expected in the middle of the 20th century. The amount of ethnographic material she could give me was, in contrast, very scanty. I have seen it stated in the literature on quaternary counting systems that some speakers of such languages could report the practice of holding sticks between the fingers; but I have never heard of that practice among the Chumash, and Mrs. Yee knew nothing of it. If a linguist, equipped with the knowledge available today, could have worked with these Indians a century or more ago, he would surely be able to give us an answer to the question posed in the first sentence of this paragraph. But it was too late, by the 1950's and 60's; the tradition had been lost. It is, I fear, hoping for too much to think that it was already written down in the past and has been overlooked.