THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE. 123 



the Portuguese is from the Roumanian. All these languages — the 

 Lenap6 (or Delaware), the Micmac, the Massachusetts, the Mohegan, 

 the Ojibway, the Cree, the Miami, the Blackfoot, and the rest — are 

 remarkable for their abounding inflections, their subtle distinctions, 

 their facility of composition, and their power of expressing abstract 

 ideas. It was Duponceau, the father of American philology, who 

 first brought these qualities to the notice of students more than sixty 

 years ago, in his published correspondence with the missionary 

 Heckewelder (1816), in his preface to his translation of Zeisberger's 

 Delaware Grammar (1827), and in his famous ''Memoire" on the 

 subject, which received from the French Institute the " Yolney Prize," 

 in 1835. From his preface to the Delaware Grammar a few para- 

 graphs may be cited, which will amply confirm all that I have stated 

 on this question. After describing their happy mode of forming 

 compound words, he adds : — " They have also many of the forms of 

 the languages which we so much admire — the Latin, Greek, Sanscrit, 

 Slavonic and the rest — mixed with others peculiarly their own. 

 Their conjugations are as regular as those of any language that we 

 know, and fov the proof of this I need only refer to the numerous 

 pai-adigms of Delaware verbs that are contained in this gi-ammar, in 

 which will be found the justly admired inflections of the languages of 

 ancient Europe." "There is," he adds "no shade of idea in respect 

 to the time, place, and manner of action which an Indian verb cannot 

 express." As an instance, he gives the Delaware phrase for " if you 

 do not return," and compai'es it with a similar expression in European 

 tongues. The Delaware is, " mcMatsh gliqjpiweque,'' which is thus 

 explained : matta is the negative adverb, no ; tsh is the sign of the 

 future, with which the adverb is inflected ; ghippmeque is the second 

 pei-son plural, in the present subjunctive, of the verb ghqipiechton, to 

 return. The sentence thus clearly expresses every idea intended to 

 be conveyed, including both the futurity and the uncertainty. " The 

 Latin phrase, nisi veneris, expresses all these meanings ; but the 

 English, " if you do not come," and the French, " Si vous ne venez 

 2XIS," have by no means the same elegant precision. The idea 

 which in Delaware and Latin the subjunctive form conveys directly 

 is left to be gathered in the English and French from the words if 

 and si ; and there is nothing else to point out the futurity of the 

 action. And where the two former languages express everything 



