APPENDIX. ' 4-11 



XXIII. 



Difficulties of Studying the Indian Tongnes of the United States. 

 'By Dr. Alexandek Wolgott, Jr. 



Dr. Wolcott will be remembered b}'' tlie early inhabitants of 

 Chicago, when that place was still a military post and the site of 

 an Indian agency, the latter of which trusts he filled. In 1820, 

 the Pottowattomie tribe of Indians and their confederates — the 

 Illinois — Chippewas, and Ottowas — possessed the whole surround- 

 ing regions, roving as lords of the prairies. These numerous and 

 fierce hunter-tribes, who traded their peltries for fineries, had 

 many horses, loved rum and fine clothes, and despised all re- 

 straints, came in to him, at his agency, as the mouthpiece of the 

 President, to transact their affiirs, and they often lingered for 

 days and weeks around the place, which gave him a good oppor- 

 tunity of becoming familiar with their manners, customs, and 

 history. 



Dr. Wolcott was a man of education, of high morals, dignified 

 manners, and noble sentiments, with decidedly saturnine feelings, 

 and a keen perception of the ridiculous. Constitutionally averse 

 to much or labored personal effort, his leisure hours, in this 

 seclusion from society, were hours devoted to reading and 

 social converse, and his attention was appropriately called by 

 Gen. Cass to the "Inquiries," No. 21, above referred to. The 

 reply which he at length communicated was written in so 

 happy a vein, that I obtained permission to publish the sub- 

 stance of it, in 1821, in my Travels in the Central Portions of 

 the Ilississipjn Yalley^ p. 381. It declares an important truth, 

 which all must concur in, who have attempted the study of the 

 Indian languages, for they are required to perform the prior 

 labor of ascertaining and generalizing the principles of their 

 accidence and concord. When I first came to St. Mary's, in 1822, 

 and began the study of the Chippewa, I asked in vain the simple 

 question how the plural was formed. It was formed, in truth, in 

 twelve different ways, agreeably to the vowels of terminal sylla- 

 bles; but this could not be declared until quires of paper had 

 been written over, the whole vocabulary explored, and days and 

 nights devoted to -it. ]\[y first interpreter could not tell a verb 



