GATSCHET KAS. LEG. — COMMENTARY. [103] 71 



jority of languages west of it. That mighty river was well adapted 

 to form a limit between nations strangers to each other. As to 

 the Tonica people, it must be added that they dwelt on both sides 

 of the river, and we do not know the site of its original habitat. 



The phonetics of Naktche, Yuchi and Maskoki are similar in 

 other respects ; in the frequency of nasalization (cf. Cha'hta), in 

 the grouping' of certain sounds, in the alveolar pronunciation of 

 the guttural k. With no other family Iiave the Creek Indians so 

 many vocables in common as with the Yuchi, whose pristine 

 homes were on both sides of the Savannah river. This also tes- 

 tifies to a very long sojourn of both nations in adjoining tracts 

 of land ; the Yuchi have no tradition or recollection of ever hav- 

 ing changed their abode, except in recent times. No area of 

 territory caij be found west of the Mississippi, the geographic 

 names of which could lead us to assume that tribes of Maskoki 

 lineage had ever resided there, except a few spots on the western 

 bank of the Lower Mississippi, which Cha'hta Indians have oc- 

 cupied or ?ia med s'xnce. a.d. 1700. 



One of the most ancient features of an Indian language is re- 

 duplication for inflectional purposes. In this we observe a thor- 

 ough difference between Maskoki and the languages west of the 

 Mississippi river : in Maskoki, the second syllable is the redupli- 

 cated one in adjectives and verbs ; west of the river, at least in 

 Tonica, Atakapa, and Tonkawe, it is the first one. Linguists 

 able to appreciate this circumstance fully, will not deny that it is 

 of great weight in separating certain classes of linguistic families 

 from each other, and consequently to assign them different areas 

 in primordial epochs. The Sahaptin and the Dakotan excepted, 

 no other linguistic family of North America is known to me 

 which reduplicates for inflectional (not for derivational) purposes 

 in the same manner as Maskoki. 



