CANADA, A TYPICAL EACE OV AMERICAN ABOEIGINES. 99 



2. With Plur. Object. 



kadoris I am driving tliem. yodoris Slio is driving tliem. 



sudoris Thou art driving thom. yakhiyadoris We arc driving them, etc., 



radons He is driving them. Isame as verb, To Give.] 



3. With Fern, or Neut. Object. 



keyadoris I am driving her, or it. 



seyadoris Thou art driving her, or it. 



s'liakodoris He is driving lier, or it. 



yakodoris She is driving her, or it. 



The verb, To Hunt, simply changes the terminal ris of the last verb into mis. Keya- 

 (loruls, " I am hunting- her," or " it," etc. The verb, To Lend, changes it into has. Kennihas, 

 " I am lending her." It will be observed that the Feminine singular is like the plural, 

 e.g., keyawis, " I am giving her," or " them ; " keyadoris, " I am driving her," or " them." 



khfiiilias I am lending her. kcnihas I am lending hor, or it. 



sheiiHias Thou art lending her. senihas Thou art lending her, or it. 



sliakomlins He is lending her. roniluts He is lending her, or it. 



yakonilias She is lending her. yonilias She is lending her, or it. 



The examples adduced may suffice to illustrate the elaborate yet consistent symmetry 

 of the verb, compounded out of the significant roots of its various verbal and grammatical 

 members. Prefixes, suffixes, and incorporated elements of subordinate parts of speech, 

 are so combined as to furnish the most delicate shades of expression, such as the English 

 language has only acquired at a late stage by means of its auxiliary verbs : and all this 

 in the language of a people not only without letters, but lacking the very rudiments of 

 civilization, in so far as that is dependent on a knowledge of the arts. 



The euphonic changes which mark the systematic transitions in the Mohawk lan- 

 guage, though ])y no means peculiar to it, cannot fail to awaken an interest in the 

 thoughful student, who reflects on the social condition of the people among whom this 

 elaborated vehicle of thought was the constraining power by means of which their chiefs 

 and elders swayed the nations of the Iroquois confederacy with an eloquence more power- 

 ful and iiersuasive than that of many civilized nations. They have been illustrated in 

 the verb ; but the same systematic aiii^lication of euphonic change through all the transi- 

 tions of their vocabulary is seen in the elaborate word-sentences, so characteristic of the 

 extreme length to which the incorporating mode of structure of the Turanian family of 

 languages is carried in many of those spoken by the American nations. The habitual con- 

 centration of complex ideas in a single word has long been recognized, not only as giving a 

 peculiar character to many of the Indian languages, but as one source of their adaptability 

 to the aims of native oratory. From the Massachusetts Bible of Eliot, Professor Whitney 

 quotes a word of eleven syllables ; and Gallatin produces from the Cherokee another of 

 seventeen syllables. This frequently embodies a descriptive holophrasm, and so aids the 

 native rendering of novel objects and ideas into a language, the vocabulary of which is 

 necessarily devoid of the requisite terms. But in such cases the agglutinative process is 

 obvious, and the elements of the compounded word must be present to the mind of 

 speaker and hearer. The English word "almighty" is itself an example of the process. 

 It becomes in the Mohawk Prayer Book seshatstmghseragivekonh, from seshalsfeh, " you are 

 strong," and ahkwekonh, "all," or "the whole." When the missionaries first undertook to 

 render into the Mohawk language the gospels and service books for Christian worship, it 



