102 DANIEL WILSOX ON TUE HUEON-IROQUOIS OF 



stated : " The directors have ascertained that there are several thousand of this tribe in 

 both Quebec and Ontario, and that Chief Joseph (Ouesakeurat) of Oka, the translator, is 

 quite competent thus to give, with their help, a good and useful version of the Gospels to 

 his own jieople." The report of the following year states that an edition of a thousand 

 copies had been printed. The Oka Indians, in so far as they are Iroquois, are descendants 

 of the Indians of the Five Nations who, under the influence of the French missionaries 

 left their own people, and removed to Lower Canada. They were chiefly Mohawks, but 

 included representatives of the other " nations." The language which they still speak is 

 substantially the same as the Mohawk, though with characteristic local modifica- 

 tions. Chief Joseph in his translation employs the printer's substitute of the cypher 8 

 which was introduced at an early date by the French missionaries to represent both 

 the French ou and the English iv. Proper names, such as Abraham, Jacob, Mary, etc., are 

 printed for the most part, with the labials, in ordinary type. But where the true Indian 

 orthoepy is reproduced, "Matthew " becomes ^atio; thus "Joseph, the husband of Mary," 

 is rendered 8ose nSnSari; and the same influence of the absence of the labials is seen in 

 the forms which such names occasionally assume in the old Mohawk Prayer Book, e.g: 

 Wary for " Mary," Agivereah for " Abraham," etc. 



Chief Joseph Ouesakeurat was educated at St. Mary's College, Montreal, and was for 

 a time employed as secretary by the Sulpician Fathers at Oka. On subsequently joining 

 the Methodist Church, he studied for four years in preparation for missionary work among 

 his own people, so that his translation must be accepted as the work of an educated native 

 Iroquois. A comparison between the language of this recent translation and that of the 

 old Mohawk Prayer Book is full of interest. At a first glance the difference appears to be 

 much greater than proves to be the case on close investigation ; and is due, in a large 

 degree, to mere variations in orthography, such as are inevitable wherever two or more 

 students attemjit independently to reduce an unwritten language to definite form. Thus 

 we find takSaienlta, takicayenha ; nonSenlsiake, neamvunjake, etc. Other changes involve a 

 little more modification of the words ; e.g., kariSaneren, karihwanenmh ; the aiesasennaien of 

 the eastern Iroquois, would be in the Mohawk ahf/esasunrii/osteh, etc. ; but only one word in 

 the following Iroquois version of the Lord's Prayer deviates essentially from the Mohawk. 

 That is takSariSakSilen, which I had rendered, from its place in the context, " lead us." Its 

 probable derivation and true significance are discussed below. The Mohawk equivalent 

 would be takwashui-iniht. Situated as the scattered members of this old race now are, 

 widely severed, and precluded from intercourse, such dialectic diversities must tend to 

 increase. Changes both in diction and gi-ammatical forms have necessarily arisen, not 

 only from the long separation of the Iroc[uois of eastern Canada from their western con- 

 geners, but also from their admixture with Onondagas and others speaking different 

 dialects ; nevertheless the language is still substantially the same. The French mis- 

 sionaries, recognizing the fact already noted, that in none of the Iroquois languages is any 

 distinction made between the d and /, the g (hard) and k, or the o and u, have simpli- 

 fied the alphabet by using only the t, k, and o. The h is used for the aspirate, though 

 sometimes it is the sign of the gutteral ch ; and the en and on represent nasal sounds 

 familiar to the French ear. The English orthography of the language is at once more 

 complex and less consistent with its orthoepy, in the effort to represent unfamiliar Indian 

 sounds. In the Rev. J. A. Cuoq's "Lexique do la Langue Iroquoise," he gives " Kahnaioake, 



