10 BUBEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bmx. 99 



Linguistic Notes 



The Cherokee language (Iroqiioian stock) has often been studied, 

 but through various vicissitudes only very few of the results have 

 been published. But two attempts to pubhsh a grammar of it have 

 been made — one by J. Pickering (cf. p. 1), another by Von der 

 Gabelentz. (See BibUography.) 



Pickering's attempt was not any better than could be expected at a 

 time when so little of American Indian linguistics was known, and 

 Von der Gabelentz's sketch, though interesting, is based on material 

 gleaned from very inadequate sources. Neither of the two have 

 found, for example, the typical Iroquoian system of pronominal 

 prefixes in the Cherokee verbal series, nor the difference between the 

 static and active verbs. 



There are still two Cherokee dialects extant^ the Yv^estern (often 

 called "Upper") dialect, spoken by the majority of the Cherokee 

 in Oklahoma and by a few families in Graham County, N. C, and the 

 Central (often called "Middle") dialect, spoken by the Cherokee on 

 the Qualla Reservation, where these investigations were made. There 

 is historic evidence of a tliird dialect, which may be called the Eastern 

 (it has sometimes been referred to as the "Lower") dialect; the last 

 Indian, as far as we know, who spoke this dialect died in the begiuning 

 of this century. 



There is a possibility that one (or two?) more dialects existed in the 

 past, but there is veiy scant and inadequate evidence of this. 



The differences existing between the two dialects that are still 

 spoken are small indeed, nor does the extinct dialect seem to have 

 diverged much from the two others. Allowing for such phonetic 

 shifts as West. Dial, -tl-> Cent. D. -ts-; W. D, aGi-> C. D. e-; 

 C. D, -W. D. -1-^ East. D. -r-, the vocabulary is practically the 

 same; in the morphology there do not seem to be other differences 

 than can be explained by these phonetic shifts; the syntaxis can not 

 yet be compared as our knowledge of the Eastern dialect is so scanty; 

 nor has the Western dialect been adequately studied. 



The formulas as written in the Ay. manuscript and in the majority 

 of the other manuscripts that have since been collected are mostly 

 written in the Central dialect. Still, a lot of Western dialect forms are 

 to be found in them and there are also a great many archaic, ritualistic 

 expressions the meaning of which is rapidly disappearing. (Cf. 

 Ritual Language, p. 160 et seq.) 



I have given in the interlinear analysis a translation as correct and 

 conveying the Cherokee meaning as faithfully as was found possible. 

 Rather than speculate on probabilities or advance conjectures that 

 can not be proved, I have indicated by a query mark those elements 

 that can not be satisfactorily analyzed. If query marks are met with 



