INDIAN TRIBES OF THE MISSOURI VALLEY. 233 
the censors of the purity with which their language is spoken. They have not unfrequently 
told me that all the words obtained from certain of the more common men of the tribe 
were useless, inasmuch as they did not speak their own language correctly. Among all 
the tribes with which I have been acquainted, physical and mental superiority have 
always taken the lead in the affairs of the nation, without regard to birth, and this is a 
result growing out of the nature of their nomadic and precarious life. Life to them is, to 
a great extent, a struggle for existence, and therefore the position of an Indian in his 
tribe is an almost certain index of his mental status. For this reason, in securing informa- 
tion or in acquiring the language of a tribe, it will be found most advantageous to consult 
only the chiefs and leading men, and this is the course that I have endeavored to pursue 
in collecting the materials for this memoir. Whenever I have been obliged to accept the 
aid of women or ordinary men, I have always submitted the results to a chief to be veri- 
fied or rejected. 
In these preliminary papers, the orthography employed by Mr. Riggs and Professor 
Turner in the Dakota Grammar and Dictionary published by the Smithsonian Institution, 
has been adopted in part. It is to be hoped that the Smithsonian Institution, which 
takes the deepest interest in all researches relating to the aboriginal inhabitants of our 
country, will recommend some uniform system, and reduce all the Indian languages to a 
single standard of pronunciation. In the following vocabularies, the consonants are used 
with their common English sounds, when it could be done, and this is understood when 
not expressly mentioned. 
a is sounded as in ah, father; when followed by a consonant, a* is used, otherwise it is short, as a in fat. 
e has the sound of a in face, or e in they; short when followed by a consonant, as in met. 
z, aS In marine ; i short as in pin. 
0, as in note, or short o as in got. ! 
w as oo in food; short as in hut. 
ai has the sound of 1 in line. 
au, as in now, how. 
é has the aspirated sound of ch in chin, church. 
g always the hard sound, as in go, give. 
h represents a strong guttural sound, like that of ch in the Gaelic word Loch, or the German ich ; also re- 
sembling the Arabic kha. 
y denotes the nasal sound, similar to the French x in bon, or the English 2 in drink. 
ks has the sound of 2 in maxim. 
ts is sounded as in Betsy. 
wh as in what, when. 
% has the sound of z in azure or s in measure. 
* As a rule, a vowel is long when ending a syllable, and short when followed by a consonant. ‘The exceptions 
to this rule are indicated thus: 4, lone; 4, short. 
