8 THE MOHAWK LANGUAGE. 



The addition of the ending Ya-wen-reh to one, two, &c., to express 

 eleven, twelve, &c., is peculiar to the Mohawk and Oneida. The 

 form for the other languages, as in Cayuga, — Wa-senh-skat-skoj-Teh, 

 simply means ten and one filed on in the sense of added. I am at a 

 loss to trace the Mohawk and Oneida form Ya-Aioen-^eh. It may be 

 derived from. O^e-rih =10, but more likely from De^a-weu-renh = over, 

 in the sense of overflowing — more than enough. You will have 

 noticed the peculiarity in the Oneida in the substitution of I where r 

 is used in the remaining dialects. In fact, this seems to be its prin- 

 cipal difference from the Mohawk. The initial R and Yor K seem 

 to have some connection with the gender, as, for instance, On-kwe for 

 mankind, in conti*adistinction from Kar-yoh — beast, is changed into 

 man by simj^ly prefixing R, and into woman by simply prefixing Y. 

 So we have Ex-ha — child, Rax-ha = a boy, and Kax-lia — a girl. 



Before subjecting a verb through it various forms, it may help us 

 to understand some of the changes which it undergoes, by first look- 

 ing at the pronouns and nouns : — 



MOHAWK. (Plural.) 

 I I-ih. We (two) Un-ke-non-ha. We Un-kjmlia. 

 My Ah-kwa-wenh. Oui's Un-kya-wenli. Ours Un-kwa-wenh. 



Me I-ih. Us Us 



Yau Jon-ka. 

 Yours Se-wa-wenh. 



They Ro-non-ha. 

 Theirs E,a-o-na-wenh. 



Dual and Plural. 

 She or it A-on-ha. They O-non-ha. 



Hers or its A-o-wenh. Theirs A-o-na-wenli. 



There is another form for she and hers applied to those for whom 

 we entertain love, respect, or esteem, viz., she = Ah-ka-on-ha ; hers = 

 Ah-ko-wenh, in which we have introduced the h we have already 

 mentioned as having some connection with the femiuine gender. 

 There is but one form for the nominative and accusative cases. But 

 the chief peculiarity is the existence of a dual element : as, however, 

 we shall see this more clearly when we come to consider the verbs, 

 it may, perhaps, be better to proceed to aai examination of the verb 

 before we say anything of this peculiarity of the language. 



We shall find great difficulty in our process of analyzing and 

 tracing the words, from the great tendency to agglutination which 



