PREFACE 



The Handbook of American Indian Languages, the first Part 

 of which is here presented, had its inception in an attempt to pre- 

 pare a revised edition of the "Introduction to the Study of Indian 

 Languages," by Major J. W. Powell. 



During the first twenty years of the existence of the Bureau of 

 American Ethnology much linguistic material had been accumulated, 

 b}' filling in the schedules contained in Major Powell's Introduction, 

 and in this manner many vocabularies had been collected, while the 

 essential features of the morphology of American languages remained 

 unknown. 



It seemed particularly desirable to call attention, in a new edition 

 of the Introduction, to the essential features of the morphology and 

 phonetics of American languages, and to emphasize the necessity of 

 an analytical study of grammar. The object next to be attained by 

 linguistic studies of American languages is a knowledge of their pho- 

 netic processes and of the psychological foundation of their structure. 

 The former of these objects has hardly been attempted ; knowledge of 

 the latter has been obscured by the innumerable attempts to represent 

 the grammars of Indian languages in a form analogous to that of the 

 European grammars. 



It was originally intended to give a somewhat elaborate intro- 

 duction, setting forth the essential psychological characteristics of 

 American languages ; but with the development of the plan of work 

 it was found necessary to relegate this discussion to the end of the 

 whole work, because without a somewhat detailed discussion of the 

 A^arious languages the essential points can not be substantiated by 

 reliable evidence. 



I have not attempted to give either exhaustive grammars or 

 exhaustive discussions of phonetics, because the object of the whole 

 work has been to describe as clearly as possible those psychological 

 principles of each language which may be isolated by an analysis of 

 grammatical forms. A detailed discussion of phonetics and of the 

 probable historical development of grammatical forms belongs rather 

 to detailed studies of linguistic stocks, which should be the next step 

 in the progress of our knowledge of American languages. 



In the collection of the material embodied in the present volume, 

 I have been liberally assisted by investigators employed b}- a number 



