draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

When Uriarte and his Jesuit companions arrived at the Portuguese-controlled settlement of São
Paulo de Olivença in Amazonas, Brazil, 259 the Jesuit Superior, Francisco Javier Aguilar (b. 1720
Montilla, Spain – d. 1789 Rimini, Italy) (Jouanen 1943:723), demanded that they burn all of their
papers. 260 Uriarte made a final attempt to hand off his compendio, now the only record of his diaries
in his possession, to José Basave, special commissioner appointed to oversee the Jesuit exodus. The
fates of the compendio and the original version of the diaries that Uriarte sent to Echeverría remains
unknown.
Uriarte is reported to have rewritten his diaries upon his arrival in Italy, beginning in December
1771 and finishing in early 1776 (Espinosa Pérez 1955:428). The level of detail throughout the
diaries (e.g., names, exact dates, etc.) is impressive, especially if Uriarte actually worked entirely
from memory, as is reported. In fact, the level of detail leads us to suspect that Uriarte was indeed
able to smuggle some set of papers relating to his diaries out of the New World, although Uriarte
does not specifically mention any such surviving papers. 261
The Omagua passages found in Uriarte’s diaries on the whole demonstrate a relatively strong
control of Omagua grammar, although we have annotated them at points where the Omagua is either
ungrammatical or exhibits the effects of calquing from Spanish. For some passages, Uriarte provides
an in-text translation into Spanish, which is also given here. The English translations provided are
our own. We contextualize each example to aid in their interpretations, and the Omagua passages
are separated into sections according to the part and section number in which they are located in
the original manuscript on which the published versions are based.
8.1 Part II, Section 71
In May 1756 a group of Portuguese soldiers, having deserted a military camp (Sp. real) on the Rio
Negro, arrived at San Joaquín seeking rest, shelter and food. 262 Uriarte accepted them, but insisted
that, along with being well-mannered residents of the community, they must participate actively in
the church.
The soldiers acceded, and Uriarte remarks that a lay Omagua church official (Sp. fiscal mayor),
with the surname Maiquitari, used to shout out the utterance given in (8.1) whenever a Portuguese
soldier was late for Sunday church activities or a fiesta. 263
(8.1) a. ¡Carayoa, María Chicucati!
b. ¡Carayoa, MaríaChicucati!
c. kaRayoa, maRiaSiRukate!
kaRayoa 264 maRiaSiRu =kate
Portuguese church =all
259 See Ferrer Benimeli (2000, 2001) for a review of the Jesuits’ route, and Espinosa Pérez (1955:427-428) for a
summary.
260 See Uriarte ([1776]1986:535-536) for the original narration of these events.
261 Uriarte ([1776]1986:239) does report, however, that he was able to hide a Tikuna ecclesiastical text in a book
and subsequently smuggle it to Italy. We assume that the Tikuna ecclesiastical texts that are included in his published
diaries (Uriarte [1776]1986:618-621) derive from this text. Furthermore, two Austrian Jesuits, Franz Xavier
Plindendorfer (b. 1726 Wegscheid) (Jouanen 1943:742) and Franz Xavier Veigl, are reported to have sequestered
some subset of their personal papers in their pillow sacks (Uriarte [1776]1986:536), suggesting that other Jesuits
may have at least been able to do the same.
262 See Uriarte ([1776]1986:241-245) for a more detailed account of these events.
263 The utterances are presented in the same multilinear format found in the preceding chapters and outlined in §3.1.
108