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Daily Evening Bulletin.

TUESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 8, 1863.

New Works on the Indian Languages of California and Sonora.

Mr. Shea has lately issued two new numbers of his valuable series of the aboriginal languages relating to Indians of this coast, copies of which have just been received in California. The first is Grammar of the Pima, or Nevome–a language of Sonora, from a manuscript of the 18th century, (about 1785,) edited by Buckingham Smith, late Secretary of the United States legations to Spain and Mexico, 1 vol., 8vo. pp. 125. The work contains a catechism and confession in the Nevome language, of 31 pages, and a lengthy and well digested treatise on the grammatical structure of the aforesaid idiom. This curious and valuable essay was procured a few years ago by Mr. Smith, at Toledo, in old Spain. He assumes that it was made by one of the Jesuit missionaries, but this is evidently the work of one of their successors, a Franciscan, from its monastic motto. It seems to have been in use at the town of Movas or Mavis, in the Lower Pimeria, on the upper waters of the Rio Yaqui, not far from Ures, as appears from the 1855 map of Jacob Monk, of Baltimore. The Pima language, it seems from this work and other authorities of the Spaniards, extends from the northern parts of the State of Sinaloa to beyond and along the Gila river, to the river of [Tamo???] or Colorado, into South California (!) and west from the Sea of Cortes to the country of the Taraumaras, in the Sierra Madre of West Chihuauas. It included in its affiliations the Papagos, Opatas, Yaquis, Mayos, Pimas, Seris, Eudeves, Nevomes, Heves, and other less known populations, whose language is still recorded in the geographical terms of the States of Sonora and Sinaloa, and also of Arizona, and who are all assumed by later historians and philologists to have been intruders from more northern countries. The Moquis and Zunis seem to be related to them. At the present time they are wild [illegible] [illegible] [illegible] 70,000 souls ; but in 1750 they were estimated at double that number. This language covers one of the most extensive districts of North America, and its populations, when first known to the Spaniards, about 1535, were nearly all found to be cultivators of the soil, and living in scattered villages like the Pimas and Maricopas of the Gila in 1863. The history and character of the Pima nations, in connection with the Aztec chronicles of Mexico, has caused more discussion among the learned men of Europe and America than probably and other people on the continent.

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The second work of the series alluded to is A Volcabulary of the Language of the Mission of San Antonio in Alta California (sometimes called the Sextupays or Tetachoyas.) It is by Padre Buenaventura [Setjar?] of the Order of San Francisco with grammatical notes by the editor of the Series, who is one of the most distinguished of the Indian philologists. It occupies 72 octavo pages, and was compiled by the old Californian between 1772 and 1807, in which latter year he died at San Antonio Mission, in Monterey county. In 1823, this Mission, contained about 890 Indians ; but in 1863 you can hardly count a baker's dozen of them.

These two works are of great value in archaeological science, in showing the path of the ancient Indian invasions and migrations from north to south, and east to west. Though language is subject to great changes, it is yet permanent in its principles. The English language of to-day is widely different from the English language of the days of King Alfred, but still it is no other than the same Anglo-Saxon idiom, and by it, its speakers can be traced all through North Western Europe, and twisted up into all sorts of dialects in its shiftings and wanderings. Somer assert that the monks from Ireland first taught the Saxons and Britons the purer English, but this semms to be too much of bull to swallow without the horns. AST