REVIEW — AMERICAN PHILOLOGY. 439 



force of circumstances, whicli during a period of upwards of thirty years 

 have placed him in the extreme soHtude of the forest in contact with 

 the aborigines, under auspices extremely favorable to the acquisition 

 of their language, and to the collection and examination of facts and 

 materials, * * * and the situation he has filled has opened sources 

 of information of which the assertion may be ventured, it is believed, 

 without presumption, that he has wanted neither opportunities, dis- 

 position, nor assiduity to avail himself of;" again, at page 355 he says 

 " I have deemed this much necessary to satisfy public curiosity and to 

 justify grammatical positions, which if they are sometimes stated 

 with much confidence, are the result of full convictions, mature inquiry, 

 and ample opportunities." 



How far the claims thus set up to be henceforth regarded as an au- 

 thority in all that concerns the North American languages is sustained 

 by the character of what he has brought forward as the result of his 

 inquiries into this interesting subject, it is now our business to examine. 



"We freely confess that the first of those ponderous and expensive 

 volumes did not lead us to expect much from the compiler in the way 

 of elucidation of the grammatical or etymological structure of the 

 Indian Languages. We believed that the glaring errors into which 

 he has there fallen in giving what he supposed to be the meanings of 

 the several Indian Songs that he had laid before his readers, arose 

 from the unfaithfulness or incompetence of the interpreter whom he 

 had employed for the purpose ; but we never could have imagined that 

 the compiler laid claim to anj-- thing like an intimate acquaintance 

 with the languages, of the meaning as well as the pronunciation of 

 whose vocables he has there shown such ignorance. 



It would lead us too far away from the main object of this paper 

 to give many examples of this misrepresentation of the meaning of 

 Indian songs which struck us so forcibly in looking over the first 

 volume, but we cannot resist the temptation to take one or two of 

 them at random. Page 384, Vol. I. " No 4 depicts the symbolical 

 union of a meda with a bird. He affects to have all space at his com- 

 mand and to be gifted with powers of supernatural locomotion. 



Ah-wa-nan 

 Ba-bah-mis-saud 

 Ween-jeeh 

 Uh-nish-an-aw-ba' ' 



Ah-wa-nan 

 Wan-je 



Should have been 

 written, to make <! ^i i i 

 any sense at all, I Ba-bah-mis-sad 

 [_ Un-ish-ah-nah-ba 



