RACE AND LANGUAGE. 343 



The Iroquois, Algonkins, and Mpongwes, we are reminded, are bar- 

 barous peoples, and can only have barbarous languages ; which is 

 about as philosophical as it would be to affirm that barbarous tribes 

 must necessarily have barbarous complexions, barbarous hair, and bar- 

 barous lungs. Careful comparison of all the known facts will show 

 that the structure and capabilities of a language depend entirely on 

 the natural capacity of the people with whom it originated, and not 

 at all upon their degree of culture. Ai-e we to forget that our own 

 Teutonic and Celtic ancestors were barbarians? 



Another difficulty, and perhaps the greatest which has stood in 

 the way of the linguistic classification, has been that which has arisen 

 from the mixture of races. The negroes of the Southern States and 

 of the West Indies speak not African, but Indo-European languages. 

 Berbers in North Africa speak Arabic. Iberians in Spain speak a 

 Latin tongue. Black and woolly-haired tribes in Melanesia speak 

 Malaisian dialects. Throughout the globe these transfusions and 

 comminglings of language and race have been going on for ages. 

 How, then, can we employ as a means of distinction an element, like 

 the linguistic, which is continually varying ? 



The answer to this objection is plain and conclusive. It is pre- 

 cisely the same answer that a chemist (to revert to our former com- 

 parison) would give to a similar objection. " How can your pretended 

 elements," he might be asked, "be made the foundation of a science, 

 when they are constantly occurring in new combinations and strange 

 forms, where they can not be recognized ? Your oxygen and hydro- 

 gen gases, put together, become a liquid in which no quality of 

 either can be traced. Your carbon is at one time a diamond, and at 

 another time a coal. Do you really mean to offer these constantly- 

 varying substances as the first elements and bases of a science ? " 

 " Certainly I do," he would reply ; " and it is in these very combina- 

 tions and changes of form that a careful analysis has found the 

 clearest evidences and the true value of our science." 



Such is exactly the answer of the ethnologist. Analyze carefully 

 the dialects, nominally English, French, or Spanish, which are spoken 

 by the negro populations of America, and we find in them the best 

 possible evidence of the origin of the people who speak them. We 

 find the European words presented in a corrupt state, broken, dis- 

 torted, often hardly recognizable, the pronunciation strange, the 

 grammar peculiar. Looking still more carefully, we find many words 

 of African origin scattered through the speech. If history were silent, 

 these facts alone would satisfy us that there is here a combination of 

 languages, of which we could detect the various origins. A further 

 experience would show us that in every such case, where a mixture of 

 language exists, there has been invariably a mixture of blood. When- 

 ever a negro or Indian community speaks a dialect which is mainly En- 

 glish or French or Spanish, we may be certain that there is in that com- 



