VIII BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [hull. 40 



resident in Mississippi. They passed through Stockbridge, in September, and were 

 provided with a letter from the Board, asking Mr. Byington to take charge of them, 

 and pilot them to their destination. He was ready at a few hours' notice. 



The company journeyed by land to Pittsburgh, where they procured flatboats, and 

 floated down the Ohio and Mississippi to a point near the mouth of the Yalobusha 

 River, whence a land journey of 200 miles brought them to their destination. . . . 



Throughout his missionary life Mr. Byington appreciated the value which a 

 knowledge of the language and traditions of the Choctaws would have to scholars. 

 From his arrival among them, therefore, he devoted assiduous labor to their language 

 with a view to comprehend its extremely difficult construction, and to render it avail- 

 able for the missionary and philological student. The first draft of his Grammar was 

 completed in 1834. It was written and rewritten, until at the time of his death, 

 which occurred at Belpre, Ohio, December 31st, 1868, he was at work upon the 

 seventh revisal. 



As left by Mr. Byington, the Choctaw dictionary consisted of live 

 paper-bound folio volumes, having entries on both sides of the leaves; 

 the whole work was modeled after the English or classical dictionary 

 of the author's time. Separate entries were therefore made of the 

 same word when used as noun, adjective, verb, etc., each followed by 

 a letter indicating the proper part of speech. The phonetic system 

 was constructed for the greater part by employing the English letter 

 representing most closely the Indian sound. Only two innovations 

 were introduced — the use of v (a true v sound not being present in the 

 Choctaw language) for the obscure a, and of lines under the vowels to 

 indicate nasalization. For these devices I have substituted the more 

 commonly used a and n . I have also changed the aspirated I (hi) 

 into I. The sh and ch have been allowed to stand, although it is now 

 customary to represent these by c and tc, respectively. Furthermore, 

 in many instances I have combined in one word syllables separated 

 by Mr. Byington and later missionaries — as, for instance, the syllables 

 indicating pronominal relations, the reflexive, the negative, and some 

 of the tense signs — for it is evident that in these cases the syllables all 

 constitute one complex. Undoubtedly absolute accuracy has not been 

 attained in this particular, but the course followed is certainly a move 

 in the right direction. With the exceptions just mentioned the mate- 

 rial is reproduced substantially as recorded by the author. It would 

 be fair neither to Mr. Byington nor to the editors, however, to pre- 

 sent the dictionary as a finished work. In the quotation given above 

 Doctor Brinton speaks of the great care which the missionary bestowed 

 on the manuscript of his grammar when preparing it for the press; 

 unfortunately he had opportunity to make only a beginning in the 

 editing of his dictionary. Many entries consisted merely of brief 

 notes to be elaborated later or of references to cases not observed else- 

 where and to be explained by further investigations. But the plan 

 which Mr. Byington had set before himself for his dictionary is one 

 not now of much value to students of American languages, and to 

 carry it to completion along those lines would involve an enormous 



