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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



of a conservatism which treasures and con- 

 ceals old beliefs and customs, and an eager- 

 ness for something new and more powerful. 



Judging from the facts as we find them in 

 North America, language has been particu- 

 larly conservative. Large groups which 

 have been broken up and separated from one 

 cause or another, have become so diversified 

 in all other phases of culture than language, 

 that language itself affords the only means 

 of establishing the former existence of the 

 original group. There are some interesting 

 instances of this conservatism of language. 



The INIicmac of Nova Scotia and the 

 Blackfoot of Montana and Alberta are sepa- 

 rated by two thousand miles of distance. 

 The former is a tj^)ical eastern tribe with the 

 culture of the Woodland peoples. They 

 make great use of birchbark, live upon fish 

 and game, are grouped into family hunting 

 bands, and at the present time have no 

 elaborate religious ceremonials. The Black- 

 foot, fifty years ago, were a buffalo hunting 

 tribe Uving in skin tents, with the social and 

 religious organization of their Plains neigh- 

 bors. It is doubtful if anyone would have 

 thought that the Micmac and the Blackfoot 

 were to be classed together in any respect, 

 were it not that their languages prove to be 

 definitely akin. The Blackfoot, separated 

 from the Micmac either by a migration or by 

 the intrusion of the Siouan peoples between 

 them, have been completely accultured to 

 their neighbors except in the one particular 

 (jf language. 



The Athapascan-speaking tribes offer still 

 better examples of this kind. We have a 

 large area in the Far North, the valleys of the 

 Mackenzie and the Yukon, sparsely settled 

 by the Dogribs, Chipewyan, Kutchin, and 

 other groups. The culture here is extremely 

 simple. Coming southward east of the 

 Rocky Mountains we find the Sarsi in 

 Alberta, numbering about two hundred, so 

 like the Blackfoot in culture as to be practi- 

 cally indistinguishable. They all speak an 

 Athapascan dialect, very little influenced in 

 structure or vocabulary by their Algonkin 

 neighbors, although very many of the Sarsi 

 .speak Blackfoot also. 



It wiU be seen that while in other respects a 

 people adjust themselves fairly well to new sur- 

 roundings, language contrives to persist. The 

 Athapascan group of closely related languages 

 is found in the culture areas of the Mac- 

 kenzie, the Plateaus, the Plains, the South- 



west and California. In no one of these 

 widely separated divisions do we find any 

 indication of former unity or the survival of 

 a common culture, except that the languages, 

 on even superficial examination, show that 

 they are all derived from the same source, 

 and that therefore the tribes speaking them 

 must have been at some time in close social 

 contact. 



On the other hand, particularly in Cali- 

 fornia and on the Northwest Coast of North 

 America, we find two fairly uniform cultures 

 rather distinct from each other and from 

 all others, yet each of these cultures includes 

 a large number of distinct languages. Here 

 the leveling influences of social contacts 

 and a common environment have wrought 

 imiformity except in language. 



These are the facts. What, we may ask, 

 are the causes of so great conservatism m 

 language? One of these causes may be that 

 language is acquired by the child in the home 

 before it is capable of walking about and 

 seeking any society beyond that of the 

 immediate family. The vocabulary of the 

 child is limited and is added to throughout 

 life, but the form of the language becomes 

 fixed very early. The ordinary child ac- 

 quires and is able to pronounce clearly the 

 sounds of its own language by the time it is 

 eight or nine years old. Soon after that age, 

 at fourteen or fifteen, it becomes incapable 

 of hearing and reproducing the unfamihar 

 sounds of a foreign language perfectly. The 

 process of acquiring a language is so difficult 

 for an adult that it is attempted only imder 

 exceptional circumstances. There may be 

 something too in the fact that speech, hav- 

 ing been once acquired, often becomes very 

 largely an unconscious reflex process. A 

 highly organized language of the usual 

 American type is so thoroughly a unit that 

 it is generally not possible to mix two unre- 

 lated languages. The old must be discarded 

 in its entiretj^ and the new language adopted 

 in its place. The feeling of the identity of 

 the social group is however too closely bound 

 up with language to allow such changes. 



That languages in North America have 

 given way and been discarded by the people 

 who formerly spoke them for the languages 

 of their neighbors, may have happened 

 repeatedly; but since language is the last 

 element of culture to disappear, when it does 

 go there is nothing left, and all evidence of 

 former differences and likenesses is lost. 



