198 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Yol. ix. 



identical, the former being fone^ the latter fune. Now in the 

 Choctaw, strange to say, foni is bone and ^eni boat. The day 

 is nitclii in LooChoo and the sun is nitji in Japanese, and these 

 correspond to the Choctaw TieetoA; and the Muskogulge neetahusa. 

 Man is hito, otoko in Japanese, and hatak in Choctaw ; while 

 woman is tackki in Loo Choo and tekchi in Choctaw. The 

 Choctaw eebiik and the Chickasaw skoboch head, find their equi- 

 valents in the Loo Choo hosi and the Japanese kabi. So, house 

 is chookka in Choctaw and chukutsche in Japanese ; rain being 

 ema in the former and ame in the latter. These instances will 

 suffice to indicate, what I have more fully set forth in the Cana- 

 dian Journal, the radical unity of the Cherokee-Choctaw and 

 Peninsular vocabularies. What better proof of a common origin 

 could be demanded than that which is presented in a comparison 

 of the Japanese otoko-no-fone, "the man's bone," with the Choctaw 

 hatak-iri-foni ; or of the Loo Choo takki-noo-eebee^ " the woman's 

 finger," with the Choctaw tekchi-in-ibbak ? The Japanese past 

 tense in ta and the Loo Choo in tee, which find their equivalent 

 in the Choctaw tok^ illustrate the final check that marks the 

 ibbak of the latter as compared with the eebee of the former, 

 and refer the philologist to the allied Koriak Tchuktchi which 

 abounds in such terminations. While it is true that the Koriaks 

 have been frequently regarded as the parent stock of American 

 tribes in general, I am not aware that any writer has ever speci- 

 fically placed them in relations with the Cherokee- Choctaw con- 

 federacy. To find Koriaks in Alaska has been deemed a reason- 

 able enough thing, but snow in harvest would have been thought 

 as likely a phenomenon as Tchuktchis in Tennessee. Thus we 

 find Chateaubriand gravely asserting that the Chickasaws, a 

 Choctaw tribe, came from Peru at the time that the Natchez 

 immigrated from Mexico. Tennessee and Mississippi are the 

 elephant of the Chickasaws and Natchez, Peru and Mexico their 

 tortoise, but we ask in vain on what does the tortoise stand, for 

 of all American populations the Mexican is the hardest to affiliate. 

 I willingly admit that the Chickasaws, with all the other mem- 

 bers of the Cherokee-Choctaw confederacy, belong to the same 

 parent stock as the sun-worshipping Peruvians, but, inasmuch 

 as this parent stock is found in the north-west, evidence of no 

 common character would be required to render probable a retro- 

 grade movement from South to North America. To sum up the 



