68 ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



The process, in fact, is simply that of condensing a sentence into a single word; 

 it may be by running the several words together, somewhat clipping a portion or 

 all of them; or by using their most emphatic and expressive syllables, and insert- 

 ing vowels or consonants when required for euphony. The Delaware word 

 " nadliolineen," is composed of the first syllable of the verb naten, to fetch, of the 

 last syllable of the noun amochol, a boat, and of ineen, a termination giving a per- 

 sonal application to any word or phrase, and corresponding in sense to the English 

 vs. A free translation of the compound is, " Come and fetch us across the river in 

 a canoe." In the condensed form it becomes a verb, that is conjugated through 

 all the moods and tenses. The third person singular, indicative, is nadholawall — 

 " He is fetched over the river in a canoe." In like manner, " Wunaquim," an acorn, 

 is formed from wunipach, a leaf, nach, a hand, and quim, a nut. Thus it signifies 

 the nut of a tree whose leaves are in the form of a hand. 1 



The Indian seldom makes use of terms that are either abstract or arbitrary. He 

 does not say a tree, a man, or a horse; but the word employed indicates some par- 

 ticular tree, man, or horse, identified by certain qualities or circumstances connected 

 with it, and often by the gender to which it belongs. Thus many ideas are em- 

 braced in a name ; and a combination of words, or parts of words, suggesting all of 

 them, is required in its construction. 



Mr. Gallatin adduces, from the English, such words as "incompatibleness, incom- 

 municableness, congregationalist, &c," as not differing essentially, either in the 

 number, nature, or arrangement of the elements of which they are composed, from 

 a large portion of the Indian compounded words. But words derived from other 

 languages, with changes to adapt them to English idioms, cannot be regarded as 

 perfect analogies. There is a fine illustration of holophrasm in the perhaps fanciful 

 derivation, that we have somewhere seen, which, from the Latin "euro data ver- 

 mibus, deduces ca-da-ver, a dead body, or corpse. 



The want of general and abstract terms would necessarily give rise to a poly- 

 synthetic method of expression, as the characteristics of every object of thought 

 or observation must be included in the term that denotes it. The habit may have 



and parts of words, are detached and attached so as to form others, conveying simple or complex ideas, 

 and sometimes without any apparent connection between the new word and its roots." 



The above is from an article in the North American Review of July, 1828, said to be written by 

 Governor Cass. It is, professedly, a notice of one of Mr. Schoolcraft's publications, and also of a vindi- 

 cation of Heckewelder's Indian History communicated to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania by its 

 President, William Rawle. It is, however, principally devoted to a repetition and justification of the 

 doubts the writer had formerly expressed of the accuracy of Heckewelder's philosophical investigations 

 and knowledge of the Delaware language, and to an exposition of his own views of the idioms of that 

 and other Indian dialects. He differs from Edwards and Duponceau on some points of grammatical 

 construction (perhaps it would be more correct to say, points of grammatical definition), but concurs in 

 the general ethnological principle that, except in those elements of universal grammar which are com- 

 mon to all tongues, these languages have no affinity, either in etymology or construction, to any others 

 that are known to us. 



1 These examples are taken from Heckewelder's Illustrations of Delaware Idioms, in his correspond- 

 ence with Mr. Duponceau, Letter XVIII. 



