CANADA, A TYPICAL EACE OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 6è 



philological sciemn' before we can hope for any trustworthy solutiou of the problem 

 of which philology undoubtedly oilers the most hopeful key. 



In no respect are the Huron-Iroquois more correctly adducible as a typical race of 

 American aborigines than in the ab.sence of all evidence of their ever having 

 acquired any of the arts upon which civilization depends. We look in vain in their voca- 

 bularies for terms of science, or for names adapted to the arts and manufactures on which 

 social progrL»ss depends. But they had developed a gift of oratory, for which their 

 language amply sufficed, and from which we may infer the presence in this race of 

 savages of latent power.s, capable of wondrous development. " Their languages show, in 

 their elaborate mechanism, as well as in their fulness of expression and grasp of thought, 

 the evidence of the mental capacity of those who speak them. Scholars who admire the 

 inflections of the G-reek and Sanscrit verb, with their expressive force and clearness, will 

 not be less impressed with the ingenious structure of the verb in Iroquois. It comprises 

 nine tenses, three moods, the active and passive voices, and at least twenty of those forms 

 which in the Semitic grammars are styled conjugations. The A^ery names of these forms 

 will suffice to give evidence of the care and minuteness with which the framers of this 

 remarkable language have endeavoured to express every shade of meaning. "VVe have the 

 diminutive and augmentative forms, the cis-locative and trans-locative, the duplicative, 

 reiterative, motional, causative, progressive, attributive, frequentative, and many others." ' 

 To speak, indeed, of the Iroquois as, in a consciously active sense, the framers of all 

 this would be misleading. But it unquestionably grew up in the deliberations around 

 the council fire, where the conflicting aims of confederate tribes were swayed by the 

 eloquence of some commanding orator, until the fiercest warrior of this forest race learned 

 to value more the siiccessful wielding of the tongue in the Kmionsionni, or figurative Long 

 House of the League, even than the wielding of the tomahawk in the field. At the 

 organization of the confederacy, the Oanyengas or Mohawks were figuratively said to have 

 " built a house," rodinonsonnih, or rather to have " built the long house" in which the 

 council fire of the Five Nations was kindled. Of this the Senecas, lying on the extreme 

 west, were styled the " door-keepers," and the Ouondagas, whose territory was central, 

 were the custodians. The whole usage is rhetorical and figurative. Under such influences 

 the language of the Huron-Iroquois was framed, and it grew rich in emotional and persua- 

 sive forms. It only needed the evolution of a true alphabet out of the pictorial symbolism 

 on their painted robes or the grave posts of their chiefs, to inaugurate a literature which 

 should embody the orations of the Iroquois Demosthenes, and the songs of a native 

 Homer, for whom a vehicle of thought was already prepared, rich and flexible as poet 

 could desire. 



So far as the physical traits of the American aborigines furnish any evidence of 

 ethnical affinity they irnquestionably suggest some common line of descent with the 

 Asiatic Mongol ; and this is consistent with the agglutinate characteristics common to a 

 large class of languages of both continents. But, on the other hand, the characteristic 

 head-form of the Huron- Iroquois, as well as that of Algonkin and other northern tribes, 

 deviates alike from the brachyce])halic type of the southern Indian nations of this con- 



' Hale's Indian Migrations as evidenced by Language, p. 3. 



Sec. IL, 1884. 9. 



