2o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and Ojibways, who speak dialects of the great Algonkin stock, but he 

 recognized no connection between their speech and that of the Black- 

 feet. Later inquirers, and at first even Gallatin himself (after study- 

 ing a brief list of Blackfoot words), took the same view. Subsequent 

 investigations satisfied that distinguished philologist that his first im- 

 pressions were incorrect, and that the Blackfoot language really be- 

 longed to the Algonkin stock. More recently the French missionaries 

 have made the same discovery, " by studying," as M. Lacombe writes 

 to me, " the grammatical rules of these languages." From the exten- 

 sive comparative list of words and grammatical forms in the Black- 

 foot, Cree, and Ojibway languages, with which he has favored me, it 

 appears that while the Blackfoot is in its grammar purely Algonkin, 

 many of the most common words in its vocabulary are totally differ- 

 ent from the corresponding words in the Algonkin tongues. Others 

 which are found, on careful examination, to be radically the same as 

 the corresponding Algonkin terms, are so changed and distorted that 

 the resemblance is not at first apparent. These facts admit of but one 

 explanation. They are the precise phenomena to which we are accus- 

 tomed in the case of mixed languages. In such languages (of which 

 our English speech is a notable example), we expect the grammar to 

 be derived entirely from one source, while the words will be drawn 

 from two or more. Furthermore, wherever we find a mixed language, 

 we infer a conquest of one people by another. In the present instance, 

 we may well suppose that when the Blackfoot tribes were forced west- 

 ward from the Red River country to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, 

 they did not find their new abode uninhabited. It is probable enough 

 that the people whom they found in possession had come through the 

 passes from the country west of those mountains. If these people were 

 overcome by the Blackfeet, and their women taken as wives by the 

 conquerors, two results would be likely to follow. In the first place, 

 the language would become a mixed speech, in grammar purely Al- 

 gonkin, but in the vocabulary largely recruited from the speech of 

 the conquered tribe. A change in the character of the amalgamated 

 people would also take place. The result of this change might be 

 better inferred if we knew the characteristics of both the constituent 

 races. But it may be said that a frequent if not a general result of 

 such a mixture of races is the production of a people of superior intel- 

 ligence and force of character. 



The religion of these tribes (applying this term to their combined 

 mythology and worship) resembles the language. It is in the main 

 Algonkin, but includes some beliefs and ceremonies derived from some 

 other source. In their view, as in that of the Ojibways, the Dela- 

 wares, and other Algonkin nations, there were two creations the pri- 

 mary, which called the world into existence, and the secondary, which 

 found the world an expanse of sea and sky (with, it would seem, a few 

 animals disporting themselves therein), and left it in its present state. 



