216 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



and to have moved eastward to North Carolina and Virginia, and finally, in 1678 

 or thereabout, to the Susquehannah River in Pennsylvania. They were a party to 

 the second treaty with William Penn in 1701. Prior to 1786 the most of the 

 Shawnees had removed to the Miami River in Ohio; and after several changes of 

 residence in that State, hi which they remained until 1832, they were finally 

 removed by the general government to a reservation on the Kansas River. At the 

 present moment they are undergoing, for the third time within a century and a 

 half, the process of being uprooted and expatriated under the pressure of the never 

 ending requirements of the American people. 



The Shawnees, notwithstanding their trying and eventful experience in war 

 and in peace, have preserved their nationality and made remarkable progress in 

 agriculture and in other arts of civilized life. They have organized a representa- 

 tive government, founded upon a popular election of chiefs, have organized and 

 supported schools, constructed comfortable houses, and become strictly agricultural. 

 There are amongst them men and women of education, intelligence, and high moral 

 worth who are striving to raise themselves to useful employments, and their fami- 

 lies to independence. With a proper encouragement of these efforts a large por- 

 tion of the remaining Shawnees would ultimately become permanently civilized 

 and saved from extermination. It is seriously to be deplored that the Great 

 Republic does not awaken to an intelligent as well as judicious, administration of 

 its Indian affairs. The census of 1855 shows that they number eight hundred and 

 fifty-one. 1 



Colloquially the Shawnee is the most beautiful dialect of the Algonkin speech. 

 Any person who has heard these dialects, in their wide range and diversity, from 

 the lips of the native speaker, must have noticed the superiority in smoothness of 

 articulation of the Shawnee, the Cree, and the Ojibwa, over those of the Atlantic 

 Algonkins, and still more over the degenerate forms of the same speech at the 

 foot of the Rocky Mountain chain. The latter are distorted and roughened by 

 nasal and guttural utterances from which the former are comparatively free. 

 Amongst the central Algonkins the mental superiority was found. As compared 

 with the Iroquois and Dakotas they were an inferior stock. Whilst the dialects 

 of the latter are distinguished for vigor of pronunciation, and by a clear ringing 

 accent upon the emphatic part of each word, the Algonkin, with the exceptions 

 named, is a soft and not unmusical speech. Indian dialects unfold and contract, 

 improve and deteriorate, as the people who hold them in their keeping increase in 

 numbers and mental capacity, or fall back under adverse circumstances into feeble- 

 ness and decay. The Shawnees have withstood the external pressure upon them 

 with remarkable persistency and success ; and have continued to advance, except 

 in numbers, throughout the entire period of colonization and established empire. 



From the fact that for upwards of two centuries they had been detached, in a 

 great measure, from their immediate congeners, and had lived in intimate relations 

 with the eastern Algonkins, their system of consanguinity and affinity was sought 



1 Schoolcraft, Hist. Cond. and Pros. &c., VI, 115. 



