INDIANS (LANGUAGES OF AMERICAN.) 



t>9 





these languages at the present day : " The first sort 

 of verb substantives is made by adding any of these 

 terminations to the word yeuoo, aoo, ooo (i. e., yeu- 

 oo, aoo, 0-00} with due euphonie ; and this is so, be 

 the word a noun, as wosketomp-o-oo (he is a man), or 

 adnoun, as wompiyeu-oo (it is white), or be the word 

 an adverb, or the like." 



As to the copiousness of these languages, Mr Du 

 Ponceau observes, that it has been said, and will be 

 said again, " that savages, having but few ideas, can 

 want out few words, and therefore that their lan- 

 guages must necessarily be poor;" to which opinion 

 he replies by this appeal : " Whether savages have 

 or have not many ideas, it is not my province to 

 determine : all I can say is, that, if it is true, that 

 their ideas are few, it is not less certain that they 

 have many words to express them. I might even 

 say, that they have an innumerable quantity of 

 words; for, as Colden justly observes, they have the 

 power of compounding them without end." As a 

 further proof, he adds the fact, that Mr Zeisberger's 

 dictionary of one of the Iroquois languages the 

 Onondago (in German and Indian) consists of seven 

 quarto manuscript volumes, equal to 1775 full pages 

 of writing, consisting of German words and phrases, 

 with their translation into Indian; upon which he 

 justly remarks, " that there are not many dictionaries 

 of this size; and, if this is filled, as there is no reason 

 to doubt, with genuine Iroquois, it is in vain to speak 

 of the poverty of that language." 



We add one more testimony of an ancient date, 

 respecting the North American dialects. It is that 

 of the celebrated Roger Williams, who was distin- 

 guished for his knowledge of the Indian languages. 

 So long ago as 1648, he published his valuable little 

 work (reprinted by the Rhode Island Historical 

 Society, 1827), called "A Key into the Language of 

 America," that is, of New England; and, La describ- 

 ing his work, he says, " The English for every In- 

 dian word or phrase stands in a straight line directly 

 against the Indian ; yet sometimes there are two 

 words for the same thing, for their language is ex- 

 ceeding copious, and they have five or six words 

 sometimes for one thing.'' The same copiousness is 

 found to exist in the languages of Middle America, 

 as was made known to the European world, long 

 ago, by Clavigero, in his History of Mexico; and 

 also in the languages of the southern part of our 

 continent, as will be found in the valuable History of 

 Chile, by the abbe Molina. We must content our- 

 selves with barely referring to these works on the 

 present occasion, as our principal object is the lan- 

 guages of North America; but in regard to those of 

 Middle and South America, the reader will find, in 

 the works here cited, and in some others, a thorough 

 refutation of the strange opinions of speculative 

 writers, who have presumptuously passed judgment 

 upon a subject, before they had the means of becom- 

 ing acquainted with it, and decried what they could 

 not comprehend. 



We are not yet possessed of sufficient data for 

 determining how many principal stocks, or families 

 of languages, there are in North America. Mr Jef- 

 ferson, in his Notes on Virginia, upon information 

 which is admitted to be very imperfect, has hazarded 

 an opinion, that they are very numerous; and then he 

 proceeds, from this assumed state of facts, to draw an 

 inference in contradiction of the received opinion of 

 the Christian world as to the age of the earth. His 

 reasoning, which has been too hastily adopted into 

 some popular works in general use, is as follows : 

 " But, imperfect as is our knowledge of the tongues 

 spoken in America, it suffices to discover the follow- 

 ing remarkable fact. Arranging them under the 

 radical ones to which they may be palpably traced. 



and doing the same by those of the red men of Asia, 

 there will be found, probably, twenty in America for 

 one in Asia of those radical languages, so called; 

 because, if they were ever the same, they have lost 

 all resemblance to one another. A separation into 

 dialects may be the work of a few ages only; but for 

 two dialects to recede from one another till they 

 have lost all vestiges of their common origin, must 

 require an immense course of time, perhaps not less 

 than many people give to the age of the earth. A 

 greater number of those radical changes of language 

 having taken place among the red men of America, 

 proves them of greater antiquity than those of Asia." 

 This celebrated writer, however, was in a great 

 error as to what he assumes to be a " remarkable 

 fact." The " radical" languages of this continent, 

 instead of being so numerous as he supposes, will be 

 found, so far as we may judge from the actual, not 

 assumed, facts of which we are now possessed, to be 

 very few in number. The various dialects of North 

 America, for example, eastward of the course of the 

 river Mississippi, appear to be all reducible to three, 

 or, at most, four principal stocks, namely 1. the 

 Karalit, or language of Greenland and the Esqui- 

 maux ; 2. the Iroquois; 3. the Lenape, or Delaware; 

 and 4. the Floridian stock. With the Esquimaux be- 

 gin those comprehensive grammatical forms, which 

 characterize the American languages, and form a 

 striking contrast with those of the opposite European 

 shores, in Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and other 

 countries, indicating strongly, tliat the population of 

 America did not originally proceed from that part of 

 the old continent. The Iroquois dialects are spoken " 

 by the Six Nations, the Wyandots or Hurons, and 

 other tribes towards the north. The Lenape, or De 

 laware stock, is the most widely extended of any of 

 the languages spoken eastward of the Mississippi. 

 It is found in different dialects, through the extensive 

 regions of Canada, from the coast of Labrador to 

 the mouth of Albany river, which falls into Hud- 

 son's bay, and from thence to the Lake of the Woods; 

 and it appears to be the language of all the people 

 of that country, except the Iroquois, who are by far 

 the least numerous. Out of Canada, few of the 

 Iroquois are found. All the rest of the Indians, who 

 now inhabit this country, to the Mississippi, speak 

 dialects of the Lenape stock. When the Europeans 

 arrived here, these Indians were in possession of all 

 the sea coast from Nova Scotia to Virginia. Hence, 

 as we are told, they were called IVapanachki, or 

 Alenakis (men of the East), and, by La Hontan, and 

 some other writers, Algonkins. In the interior of 

 this range of the sea coast, also, we find dialects of 

 the Lenape. The Floridian stock, as its name indi- 

 cates, comprehends the languages spoken on the 

 southern frontier of the United States. 



Of all these languages, the Delaware, in the north 

 and the Cherokee, in the south (the latter being at 

 present classed under the Floridian stock) , are the best 

 known to us the former, by means of Mr Du Pon- 

 ceau's correspondence with Mr Heckewelder, and by 

 his edition of Mr Zeisberger's Delaware Grammar ; 

 and the latter, by means of the missionary establish- 

 ment in the Cherokee country, as well as from thn 

 newspaper printed by the natives themselves, who 

 have made greater advances in civilization than any 

 other Indian nation of the north. We shall accord- 

 ingly illustrate the general subject of this article by 

 examples from these languages, which, being of two 

 entirely different stocks, will give as much infbrma 

 tion on this subject as the general reader will desire, 

 and as will be consistent with the plan of our work. 

 We shall follow the order of our own grammars. 



1. The Article. In Eliot's ancient Grammar of 

 the Massachusetts' dialect, and in Zeisberger's Gram- 



