88 GRAMMAR OF THE LANGUAGE 



year 1816, our late lamented associate, the Reverend John 

 Heckewelder, having been requested to aid our Historical 

 Committee in their investigation of the forms and struc- 

 ture of the Indian languages, was kind enough, with the 

 permission of his superiors, to confide to them that va- 

 luable manuscript for their temporary use. The Commit- 

 tee ordered it to be translated into English; and I willingly 

 undertook the task : various circumstances have hitherto 

 prevented its appearance. Several learned men, however, 

 both in Europe and in this country, having repeatedly ex- 

 pressed their wish to see it in print, its publication could 

 no longer be delayed. 



The reader must not expect to find here a philoso- 

 phical grammar, as this was not made for the use of philo- 

 sophers, but of young missionaries — its object was entirely 

 practical. The author never dreamt that the theory of 

 the Indian languages would ever become the subject of philo- 

 sophical study. He has followed the usual divisions of the 

 parts of speech ; but has not endeavoured, like the Spanish 

 American grammarians, to force the Indian forms of lan- 

 guage into too close an analogy with our own. To a cer- 

 tain degree it is necessary to explain the forms of the 

 Indian languages by those to which we are accustomed ; 

 to do otherwise would be following the old exploded me- 

 thod of teaching the Latin language by means of a giam- 

 mar written entirely in Latin ; at the same time, the peculiar 

 forms of the new idiom ought to be pointed out in a clear 

 and intelligible manner, and their principles analyzed so 

 as to lay down their rules, when differing from our own, 

 with the greatest possible perspicuity. It were to be wished 

 that our author had devoted a chapter to the syntax and 

 phraseology of the language; but that, I presume, he left 

 to be acquired by practice. Upon the whole, however, 

 I think his grammar the best that I have seen of an Ame- 

 rican dialect. It is copious and rich in examples, and 

 his paradigms of the conjugations of Indian verbs are suf- 

 ficiently numerous to give a correct idea of the manner in 



