Notes on the Indians of Sonora, Mexico
(Aleš Hrdlička (1869 – 1943) was a Czech anthropologist wh...)
Aleš Hrdlička (1869 – 1943) was a Czech anthropologist who lived in the United States after his family had moved there in 1881.
Between 1898 and 1903, during his scientific travel across America, Hrdlička became the first scientist to spot and document the theory of human colonization of the American continent from east Asia only some 3,000 years ago. He argued that the Indians migrated across the Bering Strait from Asia, supporting this theory with detailed field research of skeletal remains as well as studies of the people in Mongolia, Tibet, Siberia, Alaska, and Aleutian Islands. The findings backed up the argument which later contributed to the theory of global origin of human species that was awarded by the Thomas Henry Huxley Award in 1927.
Aleš Hrdlička founded and became the first curator of physical anthropology of the U.S. National Museum, now the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in 1903. He was the founder of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
Hrdlicka writes:
"My field-work in physical anthropology in 1902 included a visit to several of the scientifically important but little-known tribes of Sonora. This paper, the result of the visit, embodies the casual observations made, together with whatever reliable information I was able to gather, on the present state of these Indians, to which are added some preliminary notes on their physical characters.
"From the narratives of pioneer explorers or their companions it is learned that Sonora in the sixteenth century was inhabited by several populous and a number of minor tribes and divisions of natives. Some idea of the number of the Indians soon after the discovery can be gained from the assertion that in 162 the converts of Sonora and Sinaloa alone numbered 86,340, and in 1624 they were estimated at over 100,000.
"The various tribes, as distinguished by different languages, and apparently many parts of tribes, were referred to by the early Spaniards under distinct names, usually those of their settlements. For example, it is recorded that Diego de Guzman reached a village called Yaquimi, and the name, in the form of " Yaqui," was extended to the river flowing by the village, to the people of the village, and to their congeners along the river. Such was the case also with the Nevomi or Nevome, and Nuri, farther up the stream, and subsequently in many localities to the northward ; indeed there is no historical evidence that any of the numerous names applied to tribes, found in early records of Sonora, were those used as tribal names by the Indians before the advent of the whites.
"The principal peoples early found in Sonora were, to use their historical names, the Mayos, Yaquis, Opatas ; Heris, Ceris or Serfs ; Pimas, Papagos, some Yuma and possibly Cocoor Co-Maricopas ; also the much later noticed and probably not truly indigenous Apache. There were likewise the Nevomes, apparently a separate band of either the Pimas or Yaquis ; the Eudeves, Sahuaripas, etc., various divisions of the Opatas ; the Jovas, who were, it seems, different in origin from the Opatas ; l the Tepocas or Tepopas, Sobas and probably Guaymas, who were parts of the Serfs; etc. The Pimas were divided into the "Bajos" and " Altos " (Lower and Upper), and probably included the Corazones, Nuris, and others."
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