INDIANS (LANGUAGES OF AMERICAN.) 



67 



gonians (q. v.), who have large, nervous frames, 

 a dark complexion, a flat nose, high cheek bones, 

 ami a large mouth. The stories of their gigantic 

 size have not been confirmed by the later voyagers. 

 (See Patagonians.) The principal tribes of South 

 America are the Galibis, Maynas, Omaguas, May- 

 puras, Yarures,Guajiros,Guajaribes, Caraibs, Macas, 

 Ottomacs, Qtiixos, Tamanacs, Chunchos, Piros, 

 Chirenes, Moxos, Chiquitos, Abiponians, Guaranis, 

 Puelches, Guaicouros, Araucanians, Toupis, Toiipi- 

 nambas, Mai-jats, Puris, Patagonians, &c. 



LANGUAGES OF AMERICAN INDIANS.* The ab- 

 original languages of the continent of America 

 exhibit various phenomena, a knowledge of which 

 will be found indispensable to a just theory of 

 speech. It is true, that we have long had our 

 systems of universal grammar, or, in other words, 

 our theories of language, as deduced from the small 

 number of European and Asiatic tongues, which have 

 been hitherto studied by the learned ; but from the 

 rapid advances made, during our own age, in com- 

 parative philology, particularly by means of the 

 unwritten dialects of barbarous nations, there is 

 reason to believe that some important modifications 

 are yet to be made in our theories. Of the various 

 unwritten languages, those of the American continent 

 present us with many new and striking facts. We 

 are informed by Mr Du Ponceau, from whose writ- 

 ings we derive nearly all that is known of the general 

 characteristics of these dialects, that there appears 

 to be "a wonderful organization, which distinguishes 

 the languages of the aborigines of this country from 

 all the other idioms of the known world, "f That 

 eminent philologist was the first to discover, and 

 make known to the world, the remarkable character, 

 which pervades, as far as yet known, the aboriginal 

 languages of America, from Greenland to cape 

 Horn. In the period which has elapsed since the 

 publication of his Report, by the American Philoso- 

 phical Society at Philadelphia, in 1819, all the ob- 

 servations which have been made on Indian lan- 

 guages, at that time unknown, have confirmed his 

 theory ; or, as he expresses it, his general result of a 

 multitude of facts collected with care. This result 

 has shown, that the astonishing variety of forms of 

 human speech, which exists in the Eastern hemi- 

 sphere, is not to be found in the Western. There we 

 find no monosyllabic language, like the Chinese and 

 its cognate idioms; no analytical language, like 

 those of the North of Europe, with their numerous 

 expletive and auxiliary monosyllables ; no such con- 

 trast is exhibited as that which is so striking to the 

 most superficial observer, between the complication 

 of the forms of the Basque language and the compa- 

 rative simplicity of its neighbours, the French and 

 Spanish ; but a uniform system, with such differences 

 only as constitute varieties in natural objects, seems 

 to pervade them all ; and this genus of human lan- 

 guages has been called (by Mr Du Ponceau) polysyn- 

 thetic, from the numerous combinations of ideas 

 which it presents in the form of words. It is also a 

 fact, says the same learned writer, that the American 

 languages are rich in words, and regular in their 

 forms, and that they do not yield, in those respects, 

 to any other idiom. These facts have attracted the 

 attention of the learned in Europe as well as in that 

 country ; but they have not been able entirely to 

 remove the prejudices that have been so long enter- 



* The subject of this article is no interesting, in regard 

 to general and comparative philology, and so little is 

 generally known respecting it, that it has been thought 

 proper to allow it a space more than proportionate to 

 the usual length of philological articles in this work. 



T Report of the historical and litertry committee to the 

 American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, drawn up 

 by Mr Du Ponceau, 1819. 



tained against the languages of savage nations. The 

 pride of civilization is reluctant to admit facts like 

 these, because they show how little philosophy and 

 science have to do with the formation of language. 

 A vague idea still prevails, that the idioms of bar- 

 barous tribes must be greatly inferior to those 01 

 civilized nations, and reasons are industriously sought 

 for, not only to prove that inferiority in point of cul- 

 tivation, which would readily be admitted, but also 

 to show that their organization is comparatively im- 

 perfect. Thus a learned member of the Berlin 

 academy of sciences baron William von Humboldt 

 in an ingenious and profound Dissertation on the 

 Forms of Languages (Ueber das Entstenen der gram- 

 matischen Formen und ihren Einfluss auf die Ideen- 

 Entwickhing, Berlin, 1822), while he admits that 

 those of the American Indians are rich, methodical, 

 and artificial in their structure, yet would not allow 

 them to possess what he there called genuine gram- 

 matical forms (dchte formeri), because, says he, their 

 words are not inflected, like those of the Greek, 

 Latin, and Sanscrit, but are formed by a different 

 process, which he calls agglutination ; and, on that 

 supposition, he assigned to them an inferior rank in 

 the scale of languages, considered in the point of 

 view of their capacity to aid the development of ideas. 

 We have understood, however, that this very learned 

 writer has, upon further examination, yielded, in a 

 great degree, it' not entirely, to the opinions of Mr Du 

 Ponceau. He certainly must have found, in the 

 Delaware Grammar of Mr Zeisberger, since trans- 

 lated and published by the Philosophical Society, 

 under the editorial care of Mr Du Ponceau, those in- 

 flected forms which he justly admires, and that the 

 process, which he is pleased to call agglutination, is 

 not the only one which our Indians employ in the 

 combination of their ideas and the formation of their 

 words. This peculiar process of compounding words, 

 as Mr Du Ponceau observes, in his preface to Zeis- 

 berger's Delaware Grammar, is undoubtedly the most 

 curious thing to be found in the Indian languages. 

 It was first observed by Egede, in his account of 

 Greenland ; and Mr Heckewelder explains it at 

 large, in the eighteenth letter of his Correspondence 

 with Mr Du Ponceau (Transactions of the Historical 

 and Literary Committee of the American Philosophi- 

 cal Society). By this means, says governor Colden, 

 speaking of the Iroquois, these nations can increase 

 the number of their words to any extent. None of 

 the languages of the old world, that we know of, 

 appear to possess this prerogative ; a multitude of 

 ideas are combined together by a process, which may 

 be termed agglutination, if the term be found agree- 

 able, but which, whatever name it may receive, is 

 not the less a subject of real wonder to the inquiring 

 philologist. One example, from the Delaware 

 language, will convey a clear idea of this process of 

 compounding; "and I have chosen," says Mr Du 

 Ponceau, " this word for the sake of its euphony, to 

 which even the most delicate Italian ear will not ob- 

 ject. When a Delaware woman is playing witli a 

 little dog or cat, or some other young animal, she will 

 often say to it, Kuligatschis, which 1 would translate 

 into English Give me your pretty little paw, or, 

 What a pretty little paw you have I This word is 

 compounded thus : k is the inseparable pronoun of the 

 second person, and may be rendered thou or thy, ac- 

 cording to the context ; uli (pronounced oolee) is part 

 of the word wulit, which signifies handsome or pretty; 

 it has also other meanings, which need not be here 

 specified ; gat is part ot the word wichgat, which 

 signifies a leg, or paw ; schis (pronounced shcess) is 

 a diminutive termination, and conveys the idea of 

 littleness : thus, in one word, the Indian woman says, 

 thy pretty little paw I and, according to the gesture 

 S 



