Orozco y Berra, Geografía de las lenguas y carta etnográfica de México (1864)
The first attempt to map and classify all the languages of Mexico, printed at Mexico City in 1864. Its author states in the introduction that he knows none of the languages he classifies and has proceeded "siguiendo única y exclusivamente la autoridad" — the authority being the grammars written by Spanish missionaries over three centuries. It is therefore a measurement of what that philological corpus made possible, and, in the same pages, of what had already been lost.
Why this wins its question: The usual English-language handling of Mexican indigenous languages treats the colonial artes and vocabularios either as instruments of evangelisation or as accidental preservation, and treats nineteenth-century classification as a separate, secular enterprise. The page that joins them is Orozco y Berra's page xi, where a Mexican liberal official with no motive to flatter the colonial church states that he knows none of the languages, that he has analysed and compared nothing, and that his entire classification is the missionaries' and grammarians' judgements taken as demonstrated truths. Quoted here from the 1864 sheets alongside the footnote that shows the chain running from an eighteenth-century Jesuit manuscript to an 1862 New York printing to an 1864 Mexican family tree — and alongside page 52, where the same author writes that the conquest made Castilian dominant, lists the states in which the indigenous languages have perished outright, and says plainly what happened to those who would not be domesticated. The contribution and its cost are established from one book, by one witness, on facing evidence.
Key takeaways
- The first classification and mapping of all Mexico's languages, printed in 1864, rests by its author's explicit declaration on the grammars written by Spanish missionaries — he says he knows none of the languages himself.
- Orozco y Berra defends the method of authority as a good one and asks to be judged on the sources he names rather than on his word.
- The footnotes show the chain in operation: an eighteenth-century Jesuit manuscript grammar of Pima, printed in New York in 1862, carries the argument for a language family in 1864.
- The same book records that Castilian is now dominant, that the indigenous languages have perished entirely in seven states or parts of states, and that those who refused the missions were "perseguidos y exterminados".
- It ranks its own three parts by credibility and puts the section on tribal migrations last, telling the reader to admit nothing in it without profound examination.
- It argues with Hervás's 1800 catalogue rather than copying it, and claims — with reason — to present far more than Hervás and Balbi together.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The book is a Mexico City imprint of 1864. Its title page reads "Geografía de las lenguas y carta etnográfica de México, precedidas de un ensayo de clasificacion de las mismas lenguas y de apuntes para las inmigraciones de las tribus", by "el Lic. Manuel Orozco y Berra", printed "México, Imprenta de J. M. Andrade y F. Escalante, calle de Tiburcio núm. 19, 1864". The three parts named on the title page — classification, migrations, geography of the languages — are the book's own division of itself.
The method is declared, and the declaration is a disclaimer. Orozco y Berra writes that the reason for not believing in his essay of classification "es, que soy del todo ignorante en las lenguas del país", that he understands nothing of their grammatical systems or their dictionaries and has neither analysed nor compared them, and that he classified them "siguiendo única y exclusivamente la autoridad; es decir, adopté como verdades demostradas las opiniones que los autores de las gramáticas asientan acerca del parentesco ó afinidad de las lenguas". He took as good, on the same footing, "los dichos de los misioneros, como versados que estuvieron y peritos que fueron en los idiomas de los indígenas". The classification of Mexico's languages in 1864 rests, by its author's own statement, on the missionary artes and vocabularios.
He defends the method rather than apologising for it, and gives the reason a reader should accept it: "El método de autoridad es uno de los buenos que pueden emplearse, y en la práctica nada tiene de nuevo. En el presente caso, los lectores quedarán mas satisfechos conociendo las fuentes de donde emanan mis inducciones, que si tuvieran que atenerse á mi sola palabra." What he claims as his own is the general catalogue of the languages of Mexico, "que he formado tan completo como me ha sido posible, y del que dan idea apenas aproximada las obras de Hervás, Balbi, etc., cuyas noticias reunidas no llegan ni con mucho á lo que yo presento".
The working chain from mission manuscript to printed classification is visible in the footnotes. The section on the pima or névome is anchored to "Grammar of the Pima or Névome, a language of Sonora, from a manuscript of the xviii century, edited by Buckingam Smith. New York: Cramoisy Press. 1862. — Arte de la lengua Nevome que se dice Pima, propia de Sonora; con la Doctrina christiana y confesionario añadidos", and the argument for grouping the languages of the Gila is carried by quotations from Kino and Sedelmayr and from the Documentos para la Historia de México. An eighteenth-century Jesuit manuscript grammar, printed in New York in 1862, is doing the evidentiary work in a Mexican classification of 1864.
The book ranks its own three parts by how much credit they deserve, and puts one of them near the bottom. Of the migrations Orozco y Berra confesses that although most of his premises rest on historical authority, the consequences "no tienen otro peso que el que pueda comunicarles yo, en virtud del juicio particular mio"; that this second part "merece de las tres el menor crédito, y sin falsa modestia es la menos meditada"; and that the reader should proceed prudently, admitting his assertions only after profound examination. What he holds capital in the book is the geography of the languages, and even there he does not presume to have avoided defects.
The term "ethnographic" in the title is adopted under protest and with the argument for it quoted from someone else. Orozco y Berra reproduces Balbi's reasoning at length — that the general study of languages has no generally received name, that "lingüística", taken from the German, does not please some distinguished scholars, that "glossografía" and "glossógrafo" carry another sense in general use, and that since peoples are peoples because they speak different languages, the classification of peoples will correspond to that of languages, so "etnografía" may replace "lingüística", "glossografía" and even Malte-Brun's "idiomografía" — and then adds in his own voice: "De buena fe digo, que ignoro cuál sea la palabra propia de que deba usar... mas por extension y no teniendo otra cosa de que echar mano, la adopto sin mas réplica." The map is dedicated to José Fernando Ramírez and descends from the plan inserted in the author's Memoria of 1857.
The same book is a register of extinction, and it names the causes without softening them. Its enumeration of living and dead languages closes: of the living, it is not to be understood that they are spoken exclusively in the districts that seat them, "pues la conquista española introdujo el idioma castellano, y es al presente el dominante"; the indigenous languages "han perecido en todos los Estados de Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, parte N. de San Luis Potosí y E. de Jalisco"; and of the peoples of that whole space, those "atraidos allí los indígenas á formar las misiones, en contacto con los colonos blancos" gradually lost their customs and their speech and ended by knowing no language but Castilian, while those "que no quisieron domesticarse" were "perseguidos y exterminados". The Pericú of Baja California is recorded as wholly extinct since about the middle of the previous century, a few of the tribe surviving and speaking Spanish.
Loss also shows up as gaps in the evidence rather than as extinction dates. Of a group of Sonoran and Sinaloan tongues Orozco y Berra reports that neither the official returns nor conversation with people who know the region mention them at all, and infers from the latest classifications "que todas las nombradas al principio han desaparecido, perdiéndose las unas en el cahita, las otras en el mexicano ó en el español"; of the pacasa he cannot even guess what it was and leaves it in the catalogue "como lengua perdida"; of the putima and the baturoque only the names survive. He marks these as conjecture, "presintiéndolo mas bien que sacándolo de las lecturas que hemos hecho".
The book was written against a stated absence of attention. Having worked through the mission histories of Pérez de Ribas and Alegre and "otra porcion de crónicas y de libros mas que no recuerdo", and then Hervás's Catálogo de las lenguas, Balbi's Atlas ethnographique du globe and Prichard's six ethnographical maps, Orozco y Berra records the conclusion he drew from the European literature: that its writers "tratan con mas acierto cuanto pertenece á la China ó á la Africa central, que lo que á México corresponde". He also records that the work grew until it disgusted him, that he thought it useless and was too poor to pay for printing a book "de insípida lectura" condemned to be seen by few people.
Orozco y Berra corrects his predecessors as often as he follows them, and Hervás is the one he corrects most: on the mazapili, on the tópia and the acaxee, on the chontal of Tabasco, on the yaqui and the cahita, and on the separation of matlatzinca from pirinda, where he holds that Hervás and others "han hecho dos idiomas distintos" and two distinct tribes out of one. The 1864 classification is not a copy of the 1800 catalogue but an argument with it, conducted with more material.