60 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



by persons of all these different nations, it is evident that they could not be com- 

 pared, with any reasonable expectation of determining their affinities, without a 

 careful reduction to some common standard of orthography. Dr. Barton attempted 

 it in his own researches; other philologists were less careful; and even Vater was 

 led into many mistakes arising from this difficulty. 



The investigations of the Committee of the Philosophical Society were no sooner 

 published than they excited a deep interest in that able scholar and lexicographer, 

 Mr. John Pickering, of Massachusetts, and led him to prepare a treatise on the 

 orthography of the Indian languages of North America, with a view to obviating 

 the embarrassments that had been experienced. This was printed by the American 

 Academy, in the 4th volume of its Memoirs. 1 Becoming more engaged in the sub- 

 ject, Mr. Pickering wrote a valuable introduction to Eliot's Grammar, republished 

 by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1822, with elaborate notes by Mr. 

 Duponceau ; and, the year following, prepared his edition and extension of the 

 work of Dr. Edwards, which was printed by the same Society. The able and 

 learned article on Indian languages, in the appendix to the sixth volume of the 

 Encyclopa;dia Americana, was also written by him. 



In that article, Mr. Pickering refers to Mr. Duponceau as " the first to discover 

 and make known to the world the remarkable character which pervades the abori- 

 ginal languages of America from Greenland to Cape Horn," and states that it is 

 from his writings we derive nearly all that is known of the general characteristics 

 of those dialects, while his theory has been confirmed by all subsequent observa- 

 tions. 



Mr. Duponceau attributed the origin of his own interest in this subject to 

 his undertaking a translation of Zeisberger's Delaware Grammar on behalf of the 

 Committee of the Philosophical Society, and to his correspondence with Hecke- 

 welder, of whom he always spoke in terms of the highest respect and regard. He 

 continued to promote inquiry by various contributions to the transactions of the 

 Philosophical Society, and crowned his labors in this department of science by his 

 elaborate memoir on the grammatical system of the languages of the North Ame- 

 rican Indians, to which the Royal Institute of France awarded the prize founded 

 by Volney for the encouragement of philological studies. 2 That work was pub- 

 lished by the Royal Institute, in 1838, and constitutes a volume of four hundred 

 and sixty-four pages, embodying the substance of the author's information scien- 

 tifically arranged, and the views that had resulted from his investigations. These 

 views differ from those already presented in a single particular. An apparent 

 exception to the rule of uniformity in the structure of the American languages was 

 pointed out to Mr. Duponceau by Don Manuel Najera, a Mexican. This was in 

 the case of the Otomis, a rude tribe of central Mexico, whose language is mono- 

 syllabic, like the Chinese. Najera demonstrated that peculiarity in a Latin treatise, 



' Mr. Pickering's system of orthography was adopted by the American Board of Commissioners for 

 Foreign Missions, and has been used in their numerous publications. 



" Memoir sur 1c systeme grammatical des langues de quelques nations Iudiennes de 1'Amerique du 

 Nord." 



