INDIANS (LANGUAGES OF AMERICAN.) 



which the makes, t-iilirr calls upon it to present its 

 f jot. or simply express her fondling admiration. In 

 the same manner, pildpe (a youth) is formed from 

 piltit (chastf, innm-nil.) and lendpe (a man). It is 

 difficult t find a more elegant combination of ideas, 

 in a single word, of any existing idiom. I do not 

 know of any language, out of this part of the world, 

 , h words are compounded in this manner. 1'he 

 procen consists in putting together portions of dif- 

 t'rrent words, so as to awaken, at the same time, in 

 tin- mind of tin- hearer, the various ideas which they 

 separately express. But this is not the only manner 

 in which the American Indians combine their ideas 

 into words. They have also many of the forms of 

 the languages which we so much admire the Latin, 

 Greek, Sanscrit, Slavonic, &c. mixed with others 

 peculiarly their own. Indeed, the multitude of ideas, 

 which in their languages are combined with their 

 verbs has justly attracted the attention of the learned 

 in all parts of the world. It is not their transitive 

 conjugations, expressing, at the same time, the idea 

 of the person acting and that acted upon, that have 

 excited so much astonishment. These are found also, 

 tlioiiji not with the same rich variety of forms, in 

 the Hebrew and other Oriental languages. But, when 

 two verbs, with intermediate ideas, are combined 

 together into one, as in the Delaware n'schingiwi- 

 poma (I do not like to eat with him), which the abbe 

 .Molina also declares to exist in the idiom of Chile 

 iduancloclavin (I do not wish to eat with him) there 

 is sufficient cause to wonder, particularly when we 

 compare the complication of these languages with 

 the simplicity of the Chinese and its kindred dialects 

 in the ancient world. Whence can have arisen such 

 a marked diversity in the forms of .human speech? 

 Nor is it only with the verbs that accessary ideas are 

 so curiously combined in the Indian languages ; it is 

 so likewise with the other parts of speech. Take the 

 adverb, for instance. The abstract idea of time is 

 frequently annexed to it. Thus, if the Delawares 

 mean to say if you do not return they will express 

 it by mattatsch gluppiweque, which may be thus con- 

 strued : matta. is the negative adverb no ; tsch (or 

 tsh) is the sign of the future, with which the adverb 

 is inflected ; gluppiweque is the second person plural, 

 present tense, subjunctive mood, of the verb glup- 

 piechton, to turn about, or return. In this manner, 

 every idea meant to be conveyed by this sentence, is 

 clearly understood. The subjunctive mood shows 

 the uncertainty of the action ; and the sign of the 

 future tense, coupled with the adverb, points to a time 

 not yet come, when it may or may not take place. 

 The Latin phrase nisi veneris expresses all these 

 meanings ; but the English if you do not come, and 

 the French si vous ne venez pas, have by no means 

 the same elegant precision. The idea which, in De- 

 laware and Latin, the subjunctive form directly con- 

 veys, 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 every thing with 

 two words, each of the latter requires five, which 



?et represent a smaller number of ideas." Mr Du 

 onceau, then, justly asks, to which of all these gram- 

 matical forms is the epithet barbarous to be applied? 

 This very cursory view of the general structure of 

 the Indian languages, exemplified by the Delaware, 

 will at least convince us, that a considerable degree 

 of art and method has presided over their formation. 

 Mr Du Ponceau has summed up the general results 

 of his laborious and extensive investigations of the 

 American languages, including the whole continent, 

 from Greenland to cape Horn, in three propositions 

 " 1. that the American languages in general are rich 

 in words and in grammatical forms, and that, in their 



complicated construction, the greatest order, method, 

 ana regularity prevail ; 2. that these complicated 

 forms, which I call poly synthetic, appear to exist in 

 all those languages, from G reenland to cape Horn ; 

 3. that these forms appear to differ essentially from 

 those of the ancient and modern languages of the old 

 hemisphere." In North America, he selected for in- 

 vestigation the three principal mother tongues, 

 namely, the Karalit (or language of Greenland and 

 the Esquimaux), the Delaware, and the Iroquois ; in 

 Middle America, the Poconchi (spoken in Guate- 

 mala,) the Mexican proper, and the Tarascan dialect; 

 in South America, the Caribbee and Araucanian lan- 

 guages. For the purpose of obtaining general results 

 like those above stated, it was not necessary or use- 

 ful, in the first instance, to go into minute details, nor 

 to confound the reader by an extensive display of 

 numerous idioms; but to take the widest possible 

 range, so as to adduce examples from quarters the 

 most remote from each other. In this manner, we 

 can take a commanding position, assume our general 

 rule, and call for exceptions. These and other results, 

 when first announced, appeared so extraordinary in 

 the languages of " savages," that superficial theorists, 

 who reliea upon their own visionary speculations, 

 and mere practical men, who trusted implicitly to 

 the loose information of illiterate Indian interpreters, 

 boldly and arrogantly called in question the correct- 

 ness of them. The learned author and his venerable 

 friend, (he reverend ftlr Hecke welder, who first drew 

 the public attention to this subject, were most un- 

 ceremoniously treated, the former as an enthusiast, 

 whose feelings had outrun his judgment, and the lat- 

 ter, as at best an innocent ignoramus, and very near, 

 if not quite, a downright impostor, in regard to a 

 language which he had studied forty years. Mr Du 

 Ponceau repelled the unworthy insinuations by an 

 appeal to facts, with a forbearance and dignity, and, 

 we may add, a knowledge of his subject, which must 

 have been felt by his adversaries as the severest of 

 reproofs. The learned author, denying that he was 

 an enthusiastic or exclusive admirer of the Indian 

 languages, founded his arguments, in reply, upon 

 incontrovertible facts, stated by missionaries and 

 other writers of our own time; but, if he had thought 

 it worth the pains, he was well aware, that proofs of 

 the same kind might have been found in very ancient 

 writers, whom even his adversaries would not have 

 suspected of enthusiasm in philology; and these 

 proofs ought to have been well known to those 

 adversaries, and ought, in candid minds, to have 

 repressed the undeserved insinuations to which we 

 allude. We shall give an example or two from the 

 earlier writers. 



The extraordinary capacity of compounding words, 

 which is so remarkable in the Indian languages, was 

 remarked upon so long ago as the time of the cele- 

 brated New England missionary, called apostle Eliot; 

 who, in his Grammar of the Massachusetts Indian 

 Language (first published at Cambridge, New Eng- 

 land, in 1666, and republished at Boston, in 1822), 

 thus speaks of it: " This language doth greatly de- 

 light in compounding of words for abbreviation, to 

 speak much in few words, thoueh they be sometimes 

 long, which is chiefly caused by the many syllables 

 which the grammar rule requires, and suppletive syl- 

 lables, which are of no signification, and curious care 

 of euphonie." Again; speaking of that very remark- 

 able feature of these languages, the want of the verb 

 to be, Eliot says : " We have no complete distinct 

 word for the verb substantive, as the learned lan- 

 guages and our English tongue have, but it is under 

 a regular composition, whereby many words are made 

 verb substantive;" of which he gives an example, 

 corresponding to the modes of formation existing in 



