[HALE] AN IROQUOIS CONDOLING COUNCIL 63 
evidence of deficiency in analytic power is a fallacy which was long ago 
exposed by the clear and penetrative reasoning of Duponceau, the true 
father of American philology. As he has well explained, analysis must 
precede synthesis. In fact, the power of what might be termed analytic 
synthesis—the mental power which first resolves words or things into 
their elements, and then puts them together in new forms—is a creative 
or co-ordinating force, indicative of a higher natural capacity than the 
act of mere analysis. The genius which framed the word teskenon- 
kweronne is the same that, working with other elements, produced the 
steam-engine and the telephone.” Elsewhere I have said that “the 
wealth of forms and the power of expression in the language have im- 
pressed every student. Two hundred and fifty years ago the scholarly 
Jesuit, Brébeuf, compared it to the Greek, and found it in some respects 
superior. In our own day this opinion has been reinforced by an author- 
ity of the greatest weight. Professor Max Miiller, who learned the 
language from a Mohawk undergraduate at Oxford—now an esteemed 
physician in Canada,—has written of it in terms of singular force. To 
his mind, he declares, the structure of the language ‘is quite sufficient 
evidence that those who worked out such a work of art were powerful 
reasoners and accurate classifiers.” Powerful reasoners and accurate 
classifiers! To appreciate the full strength of these expressions, we must 
consider whether they could be properly applied to the framers of the 
great classical tongues of the old world, the Aryan and the Semitic ; and 
we must honestly decide that they could not. The irrational and con- 
fused gender system of the Aryan, and the imperfect tense system of the 
Semitic stock, must exclude them from the comparison. It is a note- 
worthy fact that the two foremost philologists of Europe and America, 
Max Müller and Whitney, both devoted students and admirers of the 
Aryan speech, have compared that speech in its highest developments 
with the leading American tongues, and both, though differing widely 
in their linguistic theories on other points, have pronounced in the strong- 
est terms their opinion of the structural superiority of these American 
languages.” 
In the next line of the hymn the singer greets the chief ’s kindred, 
who are the special objects of the public sympathy. Then he salutes the 
oyenkondonh, a term which has been rendered “ warriors.” This render- 
ing, however, may have a misleading effect. The word has nothing to 
do with war, unless in the sense that every grown man in an Indian com- 
munity is supposed to be a soldier. Except in this hymn the word is now 
disused. It is apparently derived from onkwe (which in one dialectical 
form becomes yenkwe), meaning simply “man.” It comprises all the 
men (the manhood or man-kind) of the nation, as in the following verse 
the word wakonnykih, which is also obsolete, signifies all the women of 
the people. If there are any barbarians by whom women are treated as 
