ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE DAKOTA OR SIOUX INDIANS. 435 



its relations ; in its manifokl diversities, its dialects, and, if possible, also 

 in its varions and successive phases of development, in its primary 

 forms or its original condition. 



So far as we know, the Dakota language, with several cognate tongues, 

 constitutes a separate class or family among American Indian languages, 

 of which we may speak on some other occasion. But the question at 

 present is, whence does the Dakota, with its related American tongues, 

 come? From what trunk or parent stock is it derived? Ethnologists 

 are wont to point us to Asia as the most probable source of the pre- 

 historical immigration from the Old World to this continent. Hence, 

 they say, many if not all of our Indians must have come from East- 

 ern or Middle Asia, and in considering their respective tongues, one 

 must still find somewhere in that region some cognate, though perhaps 

 very remotely related set of languages, however much the affinity exist- 

 ing between the Indian tongues and these may have gradually become 

 obscured, and in how many instances soever, througli a succession of 

 ages, the old family features may have been impaired. But they further 

 allow, of course, that these changes may have taken place to such an 

 extent that this affinity cannot be easily recognized, and may be much, 

 even altogether, obliterated. 



When w^e consider the languages of the great Asiatic continent, of 

 its upper and eastern portions more particularly, with a view of dis- 

 covering any remaining trace, however faint, of analogy with or simi- 

 larity to the BaJcota tongue, what do we find "? Very little ; and the 

 only group of Asiatic languages in which we could possibly fancy we 

 perceived any kind of dim and vague resemblance, an occasional ai:ialogy 

 or other perhaps merely casual coincidence with the Sioux or Dakota 

 tongue, would probably be the so-called "Ural-Altaic" family. This 

 group embraces a very wide range, and is found scattered in manifold 

 ramifications through parts of Eastern, ISTorthern, and Middle Asia, 

 extending in some of its more remote branches even to the heart of 

 Europe, where the Hungarian and the numerous tongues of the far- 

 spread Finnish tribes offer still the same characteristics, and an unmis- 

 takable impress of the old Ural-Altaic relationship. 



In the following pages we shall present some isolated glimpses of 

 such resemblances, analogies, &c., with the Sioux language as strike us, 

 though we need not rej^eat that no conclusions whatever can be drawn 

 from tliem regarding any affinity, ever so remote, between the Ural- 

 Altaic languages and the Dakota tongue. Tliis much, however, may 

 perhaps be admitted from wluit we have to say, that at least an Asiatic 

 origin of the Sioux or Dakota Nation and their language may not be 

 altogether an impossibility. 



In the first place, we find that as in those Ural-Altnic languages, so 

 in a like manner in the Sioux or Dakota tongue, there exists that 

 remarkable syntactical structure of sentences which we might call a 

 constant inversion of the mode and order in Avhich tve are accustomed to 



