AMERICAN LANGUAGES. 65 



which was the great and almost sole foundation of American agriculture, was ex- 

 clusively of American origin, indigenous in Mexico and other tropical regions, from 

 whence it spread in different directions. 1 



A few years later he had an opportunity to give a degree of completeness to his 

 philological observations, and to mature his views upon the general subject of Ame- 

 rican archasology. The results of studies continued through a period of more than 

 twenty-five years, are given in his most copious and elaborate introduction to the 

 principal article of the second volume of the Transactions of the Ethnological 

 Society, printed in 1848. The article is entitled " Hale's Indians of Northwest 

 America, and Vocabularies of North America," being composed of ethnological 

 materials collected by Mr. Hale, while attached, in the capacity of Philologist, to 

 the United States exploring expedition of 1838-42. 



Mr. Gallatin's Introduction occupies one hundred and sixty-four closely printed 

 8vo. pages; and, when we reflect that, at the time of its publication, he was eighty- 

 seven years of age, we cannot but be surprised at the clearness of his ideas and the 

 youthful vigor of his style. To any one else, the labor of analysis and comparison 

 involved in his essays, would, at almost any period of life, be fatiguing, however 

 agreeable ; but to him it seemed only a source of amusement and recreation. His 

 mind was well adapted by nature to such investigations ; the subject was one with 

 which he had become familiar; and his latest efforts indicate no diminution of 

 activity or interest. 



In this, his last important work, most of his previous conclusions are repeated, 

 as confirmed by enlarged observation. A table is given of thirty-two distinct 

 families of languages in and north of the United States; but care is taken to 

 explain that this division is made without any reference to their grammar, or 

 structure ; " as, however differing in their words, the most striking uniformity in 

 their grammatical forms and structure appears to exist in all the American 

 languages, from Greenland to Cape Horn." 



As a fact bearing upon the antiquity of American dialects, which, from an original 

 identity of nomenclature, have by some means become so diversified, it is stated 

 that the tenacity of even unwritten languages has been proved by a multitude of 

 instances ; and that those of the same tribes cannot have materially altered during 

 the last three hundred years — the vocabulary taken by Cartier, in the middle 6f 

 the sixteenth century, being still recognized as belonging to the Iroquois family, 

 while, with the aid of a few words found in the narrative of De Soto's expedition, 

 Mr. Gallatin had been able to trace his march as far west as the Mississippi. Mr. 



* 



1 Dr. Bachman doubts whether the native country of maize is positively determined. He says: " We 

 have as yet been unable to find any spot, either in North or South America, where it may be said to 

 be indigenous. In every locality where it has been found, it had been planted by the Indian tribes, 

 and was only preserved from extermination by artificial culture. Liunaius, Willdenow, Pursh, &c, 

 regarded it as a native American production; on the other hand, Crawford, and several other botanists, 

 who travelled extensively in India, have expressed an opinion that it was a native of the warmer parts 

 of Asia." — Doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race Examined, &c, p. 281. 

 9 



