PART IV. 

 VOCABULARIES OF INDIAN LANGUAGES. 



OF the following vocabularies, Mr. Say obtained that of the 

 Killisteno lan2;ua^e ; the others were taken down by nie. In 

 order to enable the philologists to establish a comparison be- 

 tween the lanjj;iiages spoken by the Indians whom we saw, and 

 those visited by t!ie party that travelled to the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, Major Long desired that the same system should be 

 adopted, viz. that accompanied by Walker's pronouncing key. 

 Had it not been for this circumstance, I would have adopted 

 the German vowels, as they appear to me more simple and 

 satisfactory. In the vocabularies which I obtained, I found 

 the nasal sounds to be very frequent, and to be exactly the 

 same as those in the French language ; in order to distin- 

 guish them, I have used the sign ii. It appeared likewise ne- 

 cessary to designate the long and short vowels in order fully 

 to convey the Indian sounds ; this I have attempted to do by 

 the introduction of the accents; the grave (^) being used to 

 distinguish the long, and the acute ( ' ) the short syllables. 

 This has rendered our present system still more complicated, 

 and has increased my regret that the valuable suggestions of 

 Mr. Duponceau and Mr. Pickering* could not be adopted. 

 The system which was proposed by the latter gentleman may 

 probably be rendered more simple, and may doubtless be made 

 the foundation of an easy and satisfactory method of noting 

 vocabularies. 



The great analogy which exists between the Sauk, Chippe- 

 wa, and Cree languages, will be readily remarked ; especially 

 by those who will attempt to pronounce the words according 

 to the key. The diflference which they present to the eye will 

 then vanish ; thus the syllable kwa used by me has the same 

 sound as that of qua used by Mr. Say. The Sauk vocabu'- 

 was taken from Wennebea, the Dacota from Renville, the Chip- 

 pewa from Bruce, and the Killisteno from a half-breed of that 

 nation. 



WILLIAM H. KEATING. 



• See Mr. Duponceau's "Dissertation on English Phonology," in 

 the Transactions of the American Pliilosophical Society, N. S. vol. I. 

 and Mr. Pickering's " Essay on the Orthography of the Indian Lan- 

 guages," in Vol. IV. ef the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts 

 and Sciences. 



