BOAS] HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES 741 



The number of the Foxes is nearly four hundred, and they live on 

 Iowa River at a place in Tama county, Iowa. They call themselves 

 Meskwa'''k%A'g^ Red-Earth People, and are known to the Ojibwa 

 and others of the north as UtAgdml^g People of the Other Shore. 

 Among their totems is an influential one called the Fox. It is told 

 in tradition that members of this totem were the first in the tribe 

 to meet the French; that the strangers asked who they were, and 

 the reply was, Wa'goA^g^ People of the Fox Clan: so thereafter 

 the French knew the whole tribe as Les Renards, and later the 

 English called them Foxes, a name which has clung to them ever 

 since. 



PHONETICS (§§2-12) 

 § 2. General Characteristics 



There is a preponderance of forward sounds, and a lack of sharp 

 distinction between Ic, t, p, and their parallels g, d, h. The first set 

 leave no doubt as to their being unvoiced sounds: their acoustic 

 effect is a direct result of their organic formation. The same is not 

 true with the second set. They form for voiced articulation, but 

 their acoustic effect is plainly that of surds: when the sonant effect 

 is caught by the ear, it is of the feeblest sort. Sometimes I is sub- 

 stituted for n in careless speech. Vowels are not always distinct, 

 especially when final. There is weak distinction between w and y, 

 both as vowel and as consonant. 



Externally the language gives an impression of indolence. The 

 lips are listless and passive. The widening, protrusion, and rounding 

 of lips are excessively weak. In speech the expiration of breath is 

 uncertain; for instance, words often begin with some show of effort, 

 then decrease in force, and finally die away in a lifeless breath. 

 Such is one of the tendencies that helps to make all final vowels 

 inaudible: consequently modulation of the voice is not always clear 

 and sharp. 



The same indistinctness and lack of clearness is carried out in con- 

 tinued discourse, in fact it is even increased. Enunciation is blurred, 

 and sounds are elusive, yet it is possible to indicate something of the 

 nature of length, force, and pitch of sounds. 



§2 



