66 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF INDIAN LANGUAGES. 
With this understanding of the nature of Indian names, we see how tribes speak- 
ing dialects of the same language and not widely separated may come to have different 
names for the same object—as many names, possibly, as there can be framed defini- 
tions or descriptions sufficiently exact for its differentiation. One Algonkin tribe calls 
the beaver a ‘feller of trees”; another describes him as “putting his head out of the 
water,” i. ¢., air-breathing water-animal. The Chippeways and some other tribes of the 
same family name the humming-bird by the cumbrous synthesis no no no*k/aus eé; the 
Shyennes, a western offshoot of the same Algonkin stock, call it ma kd 7 tat wi kis. 
The two names have no apparent affinity. Standing side by side in a comparative 
vocabulary, their testimony would go to show the unlikeness of the languages to which 
they respectively belong. Yet both names would, probably, be alike intelligible to a 
Chippeway and a Sheyenne. When we have learned that the one means ‘an exceed- 
ingly slight (or delicate) little creature,” and the other, “the iron bird,’ we shall be 
less likely to draw a wrong inference from their external non-resemblance. 
Where such latitude is allowed in name-giving, and where a name is necessarily 
discarded when the description it gives of an object is no longer sufficient to distin- 
guish it from every other, we must not expect to find the same constancy in the vocab- 
ulary as in languages like our own, in which names hold their places not by virtue of 
their inherent significance but by prescription. And here we have the reason of some 
of the changes which have been remarked in the languages of certain tribes, of which 
something was said in another place (p. 65). Such changes are likely to be most con- 
siderable and most rapid soon after the opening of intercourse with a civilized race. 
The significance of old names is lost in the changed condition of the tribe. One syn- 
thesis displaces another which has no longer any distinguishing force ; one object after 
another is divested of the characteristic quality which had given it a name. When 
Europeans first came to New England, the Algonkin name of a pot or kettle (aukuk) 
described it as “made of earth”; but this name—still in use among the western Algon- 
kins—could not long maintain its place in the language of Indians of the Atlantic 
coast after vessels of copper and iron were generally substituted for pots of clay or 
steatite. The introduction of fire-arms, of dogs and horses, of trading cloth and 
blankets, not only called for the invention of a dozen new names but made nearly as 
many old ones useless. 
6. Characteristic particles found in composition with verbs, designating specific 
modifications of the action or special relations of the action to the subject or object of 
the verb. These are prefixed, added as terminations, or inserted between the root and 
the inflection proper. 
7. Generic formatives whick, in grammatical synthesis, discharge the office of 
appellatives or general names. . 
These two classes—characteristic particles and generic formatives—present the 
most formidable obstacles which are to be encountered in acquiring thorough knowl- 
edge of any American language. One or the other or both have place in nearly every 
synthesis. Both must be eliminated by analysis before the primary signification of the 
verbs with which they are associated can be ascertained. Biliteral or uniliteral—sylla- 
bles or mere fragments of syllables—they probably all represent, as many of them are 
known to do, independent words, some of which still maintain their places in the vocab- 
ulary, while others have yielded to phonetic decay. The critical investigation of these 
