OPTHEIIUMANFAMILY. 497 



remaining stock languages represented in the Table. In tlie south Avas the Creek 

 and its several cognate dialects, and the Cherokee; in the west the Pawnee, 

 also spoken in several dialects. These languages have been distinct for many cen- 

 turies. If the forms of consanguinity prevailing in each are spread out in diagrams 

 and compared with those before presented, the indicative features of the common 

 system will be found definitely and distinctly preserved. The terms of relationship 

 in each stock language have lost their identity ; but those in tlie same are still 

 readily identified, although dialectically changed ; thus showing that each nation 

 received the system, with the terms, from a common source ; and that the system 

 is as ancient as the first development of each independent language. There arc 

 now six great currents of Indian speech, subdivided into sixty independent dialects, 

 giving six different lines of evidence supported in the aggregate by sixty qualified 

 witnesses, all testifying to the same great fact, namely; that this system of relation- 

 ship, in its radical characteristics, existed in the original stock, from which these 

 several stocks were mediately or immediately derived ; and that it was transmitted 

 to each, and to their several subdivisions, with the streams of the blood. 



Upon the evidence of unity of origin contained in this system of relationship 

 these several stocks have been organized into the Ganowanian family, and a posi- 

 tion is now claimed for them as a family of nations, whose common origin has been 

 established. 



There are several other stock languages yet remaining the concurrent testimony 

 of whose system of relationship to the same effect might be added. Tliese are the 

 Athapasco-Apache, the Salish, the Sahaptin, the Shoshonee, the Kootenay, and the 

 Village Indians of New Mexico, which would increase the number of independent 

 lines of evidence to ten or more, and the number of independent witnesses to 

 upwards of one hundred. Whilst these are important to illustrate the general 

 prevalence of the system, and to determine the right of these several stocks to be 

 admitted into the Ganowanian family, they are not necessary to the completeness 

 of the argument. It cannot be made more convincing by adding to its fulness. It 

 has been demonstrated that the system has been propagated, in repeated instances, 

 into several dialects of the same language from an original parent dialect. 

 Further than this, it has been shown that it is still the same system in all the dia- 

 lects of ten or more stock languages. The inference from these facts is unavoidable, 

 that it was propagated into these several languages from a common parent language 

 lying back of all of them. This conclusion is not only reasonable and probable, but 

 there seems to be no alternative. Thus the great antiquity and mode of propaga- 

 tion of the system become fully demonstrated. 



From the foregoing considerations the following conclusions are deemed estab- 

 lished : — 



First, that the present existence of this system of relationship amongst the nations 

 comprised in the Ganowanian family is conclusive evidence that these nations were 

 derived from a common source ; and are, therefore, genealogically connected 



Second, that the system was transmitted to each of these nations with the 

 streams of the blood. 



Third, that the stability of its radical forms through centuries of time is veri- 



63 May, X870. 



