60 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF INDIAN LANGUAGES. 
apparently unlimited. Their highest aim is to express in a single word “not only all 
that modifies or relates to the same object, or action, but both the action and the object ; 
thus concentrating in a single expression a complex idea, or several ideas among which 
there is a natural connection.”* There is hardly any modification of which the action 
of a verb is susceptible which may not be effected by means of inseparable particles 
having the character of adverbs: “thus the action may be intended, or be about to 
be done; it may be done well, better, ill, in a different manner, quickly, attentively, 
jointly, probably, rarely, repeatedly, habitually”: it may be affirmed, doubted, ques- 
tioned, denied, prohibited. A single example will illustrate this, and I select one 
which Mr. Bancroft (History of the United States, vol. iii, p. 259) has used for a simi- 
lar purpose, in his observations on “ the synthetic character of the American languages.” 
“The Indian never kneels; so, when Eliot translated Ineeling [Mark, i, 40] the 
word which he was compelled to form fills a line, and numbers eleven syllables.” 
As an instance of extreme synthesis this word — wut-ap-pe'sit-tuk-qus!-sun-noo-weht- 
unk’-quohi—is well taken, but its significance is by no means limited, as Mr. Bancroft 
supposed it to be, by that of the English participle “kneeling.” In the verse cited it 
stands as the translation of the words “kneeling down to him” of the English text, or, 
more exactly, for “he kneeled down to him”—EHliot having substituted the indicative 
mood for the participle, as Indian syntax requires. We have thus five English words 
represented by the Indian synthesis. But the denotation of the latter is not yet ex- 
hausted. Hliot might have found, in the Massachusetts or any other Algonkin dialect, an 
equivalent for the verb “to kneel”, in its literal and primary signification—“ to rest on 
the bended knees” or (active-intransitive) “to assume the position of kneeling.” In 2 
Chron., vi, 13: Daniel, vi, 10: Acts, xx, 36, he translated “ he kneeled down” by ap-pel-sit- 
tuk-qus'-sin; but in the verse first cited, something more than the mere act of bending the 
knees or resting on them is implied. The verb here connotes supplication, submission, 
and worship, and all this is expressed in the eighth and ninth syllables (-noo-weht-) of the 
Indian synthesis, the whole of which may be translated, literally: “ He, falling down 
upon his knees, worshiped [or made supplication to] him.” Thus the one Indian word 
of eleven syllables requires for its accurate interpretation eight or ten English words and 
at least eleven syllables. 
This tendency to synthesis is not manifested only in the grammatical structure. 
It may be traced far back to the roots of the language, and characterizes the primary 
verbs as truly as it does the many-syllabled cluster-words of later growth. Father 
Le Jeune, a Jesuit missionary in Canada in 1634, mentions as a peculiarity of the lan- 
guage of the Montagnars “the infinite number of words which signify many things 
together,” and which yet had no etymological affinity with any of the words which 
signify those things severally; and he gave as an example the Montagnais verb piouan, 
meaning “the wind drives the snow,” but in which no trace appears of the words for 
*Gallatin, in Trans. Am. Antiquarian Society, vol. ii, p. 165. 
tGallatin, in Trans. Am. Ethnological Society, vol. ii, p. exlii. 
#Duponcean pointed out this word as the longest he had met with in any Indian language 
except the Chippeway (of Schoolcraft), in which “‘there were some verbal forms of thirteen and fourteen 
syllables. (Mémoire sur le Systeme Grammatical etc., p. 143.) A more remarkable illustration of “the 
Indian way of compounding words” was given by the Rey. Experience Mayhew, preacher to the Indians 
on Martha’s Vineyard, in a synthesis of twenty-two syllables, signifying ‘‘our well-skilled looking-glass 
makers”—Nup-pahk-nuh-t6-pe-pe-nau-wut-chut-chuh-qu6-ka-neh-cha-e-nin-nu-mun-n6-nok. (MS. Letter, 1722.) 
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