104 



may have passed into America : and the resemblance 

 between tiie Indians of America and the eastern inhabi- 

 tants of Asia, would induce us to conjecture, that the 

 former are the descendants of the latter, or the latter of 

 the former : excepting indeed the Eskimaux, who, from 

 the same circumstances of resemblance, and from iden- 

 tity of language, must be derived from the Greenland- 

 ers, and these probably from some of the northern parts 

 of the old continent. A knowledge of their several 

 languages would be the most certain evidence of their 

 derivation which could be produced. In fact, it is the 

 best proof of the affinity of nations which ever can be 

 referred to. How many ages have elapsed since the 

 English, the Dutch, the Germans, the Swiss, the Nor- 

 wegians, Danes and Swedes have separated from their 

 common stock? Yet how many more must elapse be- 

 fore the proofs of their common origin, which exist in 

 their several languages, will disappear ? It is to be la- 

 mented then, very much to be lamented, that we have 

 suffered so many of the Indian tribes already to extin- 

 guish, without our having previously collected and de- 

 posited in the records of literature, the general rudi- 

 ments at least of the languages they spoke. Were vo- 

 cabularies formed of all the languages spoken in North 

 and South America, preserving their appellations of the 

 niost common objects in nature, of those which must 

 be present to every nation barbarous or civilized, with 

 the inflections of their nouns and veri)S, their principles 

 of regimen and concord, and these deposited in all the 

 public libraries, it would furnish opportunities to those 

 skilled in the languages of the old world to compare 

 them with these, now, or at any future time, and hence 

 to construct the best evidence of the derivation of this 

 part of the human race. 



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 radi- 

 cal 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 



