62 DANIEL WILSON ON THE HUEON-IROQUOIS OP 



with the sanction of the director of the G-eological Siiryey, comparative vocabularies of 

 Indian tribes of British Columbia have been collected by Dr. George M. Dawson, and Mr. 

 W. Fraser Tolmie, which form a valuable contribution to Canadian ethnography. Miich 

 has yet to be done before the multifarious dialects can be reduced to form, and classified 

 in distinct groups pertaining to their determinate stocks. Some are mere dialects, such as 

 the prevailing condition of nomad life so largely tends to develop, owing to the frequent 

 breaking up of dismembered tribes, or the adoption of refugees, or survivors of con- 

 cjuered tribes, into the larger band. This peculiarly tends to beget an intermingling of 

 vocabularies, and new modifications of speech. Others have only acc[uired their dialectic 

 character in the scatteriug of tribes broken up into small bands, and consequently present a 

 very limited range of vocabulary. Until recently the tendency has been to assume an un- 

 derlying irnity of speech for the whole American languages, based on the polysynthetic, or 

 holophrastic characteristic ascribed to the whole ; just as by an exaggerated estimate of 

 the prevalence of a predominant head-form, one physical type was long assumed to char- 

 acterize the American race from Hudson Bay to Terra del Fuego. Perhaps, so far as 

 language is concerned, the present tendency is towards the opposite extreme. Major 

 Powell, the efficient chief of the Ethnographical Bureau at "Washington, recognizes eighty 

 groups of languages in North America, between which no affinity is thus far apparent. 

 Fifty-five of those he believes to be satisfactorily determined as distinct stocks. On the 

 other hand, Professor Whitney, after noticing the complexity of the enquiry when directed 

 to the native American languages, thus j)roceeds : " Yet it is the confident opinion of 

 linguistic scholars that a fundamental unity lies at the base of all these infinitely varying 

 forms of speech ; that they may be, and probably are, all descended from a single parent 

 language." ' 



The history of the Huron-Iroc[uois race, and especially of the Six Nation Indians, 

 since the settlement of the main body for the past century on their reserves on tke Grand 

 Eiver, in the Province of Ontario, curiously illustrates the pertinacity with which they 

 have cherished the dialectic varieties of a common tongue. But while the essential 

 differences of language everywhere constitute one of the most obvious distinctions of 

 race : it is interesting to note the recognition by the Indians of affinities of dialects, and 

 the distinction between even remote kinship based on such evidence, and a radical 

 diversity in language and race ; as in the readmissiou of the Tuscaroras to the Iroquois 

 family of nations. According to Brebeuf, the kinship of the Attiwendaronks of the Niagara 

 peninsula was recognized by the Hurons in that designation, which classed them by a 

 name signifying a " people of a language a little different." " Peter Jones Kahkewa- 

 quonaby, a civilised Ojibway, adopted into the Mohawk nation, in speaking of the tradi- 

 tions of the Indians as to their own origin, says : " All the information I have been able 

 to gain in relation to the question amounts to the following. Many, many winters ago 

 the Great Spirit, Keche-Manedoo, created the Indians. Every nation speaking a different 

 laugirage is a second creation, but all were made by the same Supreme Being." ' 



Among the races of the northern continent, none more fitly represent their special 

 characteristics, east of the Rocky Mountains, than the great Huron-Iroquois family. Their 



' Whitney's Study of Language, p. 348. 



■•^ Relation, 1641, p. 72. 



' Peter Jones and the Ojebway Indians, p. 31. 



