Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language Shea's Library of American Linguistics. Volume III.   By: Buckingham Smith (1810-1871)

SHEA'S

LIBRARY OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS.

III.

GRAMMATICAL SKETCH

OF THE

HEVE LANGUAGE,

TRANSLATED FROM AN UNPUBLISHED SPANISH MANUSCRIPT,

BY

BUCKINGHAM SMITH.

1861.

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.

[Footnote 1: The title of the work, in manuscript, from which the grammatical notices have been elaborated is Arte y Vocabulario de la lingua Dohema, Heve ó Eudeva; the adjective termination of the last and first name being evidently Spanish, as is also the plural terminations used elsewhere in some of the modifications of those words. We have only the definition of Heve with certainty given as "people;" to the word "nation" in the vocabulary, there being attached the remark: "I find no generic term: each (nation) has its specific name; the Eudeves are called Dóhme." Another like work, also unpublished, with the title Arte cíe In lengua Pinea has the dictionary inscribed Vocabulario en lengua Nevome .

In the uncertain relationship of the tribes to each other, better marked and measured perhaps by the proximity of their idioms than by any other means with which we are acquainted, a thought has been taken from the indistinct manner in which these different people are spoken of by those who have been among them to advance in the present title, (since we may not be at liberty to reject,) the word Dóhme for the family; and Pima generally for the common language, under which the Opata, Heve, Nevome, Sobahipurls and the rest may be placed, as they shall become known, each by its separate dialect.]