342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



been frustrated by various causes. One of these lias been the igno- 

 rance which has until lately prevailed in regard to the number and true 

 character of the existing linguistic stocks. It is not very long since 

 most philologists seemed unable to extend their views beyond the 

 Aryan, Semitic, and Chinese families of speech. All other idioms 

 were looked upon as little better than formless gabbles, unworthy of 

 serious study. Duponceau, the father of American philology, was the 

 first to bring to the notice of scholars the important fact that among 

 the languages of America there are some which in happiness of con- 

 struction and in power of expression deserve to rank as high as the 

 Indo-European tongues, and far higher than the Chinese or even the 

 best of the Semitic languages. His assertions, though confirmed by 

 abundant evidence, were long in overcoming the earlier prejudices. 

 But they are now accepted by the highest authorities. More than fifty 

 years after the date of Duponceau's first treatise, Professor Max 

 Mtiller expressed his surprise that " this most tempting and prom- 

 ising field of philological research has been allowed to lie almost fal- 

 low in America — as if these languages could not tell us quite as much 

 of the growth of the human mind as Chinese or Hebrew or Sanscrit." 

 And to emphasize his meaning he adds : "To my mind the structure 

 of such a language as the Mohawk is quite sufficient evidence that 

 those who worked out such a work of art were powerful reasoners 

 and accurate classifiers." * Not less decided is the opinion expressed 

 by Professor Whitney, in his " Life and Growth of Language," con- 

 cerning the Algonkin speech. " There are," he writes, " infinite possi- 

 bilities of expressiveness in such a structure ; and it would only need 

 that some native-American Greek race should arise, to fill it full of 

 thought and fancy, and to put it to the uses of a noble literature, and 

 it would be rightly admired as rich and flexible, perhaps, beyond any- 

 thing else that the world knew." Nor is it only in America that lan- 

 guages of this superior quality are found. Dr. R. N. Cust, in his 

 work on the " Modern Languages of Africa," has given us the opinions 

 expressed by the able French and English and American missionaries 

 and grammarians who have written on the remarkable Mpongwe lan- 

 guage, spoken on the western coast of that continent, near the equator. 

 They speak, with one accord, of its "beauty and capability," its 

 " elaborate structure and musical tone," its " regularity, exactness, and 

 precision," its " order and philosophical arrangement," and especially 

 Its " wonderful capacity for conveying new ideas," making it needless 

 for the missionaries to borrow foreign words in their biblical trans- 

 lations. 



It is true that the objectors, though partially silenced by such 

 authorities, are not altogether convinced. There is still an objection 

 occasionally urged, founded not on fact but on an error in reasoning. 



* From a letter of Professor Max Muller to the writer, quoted in "The Iroquois Book 

 of Rites " (1883), vol. ii of Brinton's " Library of Aboriginal American Literature." 



