440 REVIEWS — AMERICAN PHILOLOGY. 



This song Mr. Schoolcraft renders, " "Who makes the anishenahba 

 my fellow walk about." Now there is no word in it having the meaning 

 "my fellow," and none to signify "walk" nor translated in that way 

 does it in the slightest degree elucidate the symbol (a winged human 

 figure) to which he refers. The proper translation of the words is 

 " Who is he on account of whom a human being flies V 



Again at page 401, Vol. I. we have the following : 

 "4. To the great spirit 

 In ah wah owh mon e do 

 In ah wah owh mon e do 

 I au ah jim ind 

 Gee zhik oong a bid" 



which Mr. Schoolcraft renders thus : " Look thou at the spirit ; it is 

 he that is "spoken of who stays our lives who abides in the sky," but 

 of which the correct translation is " Lo this God ; Lo this God is he 

 of whom it is told that he is in the sky," there being no word that in 

 the slightest degree approaches to the meaning of "who stays our 

 lives," the second line which Mr. Schooolcraft so translates being, as 

 even the merely English speaking reader can satisfy himself, a repeti- 

 tion of the first. 



These examples, which are only slight specimens of what we could 

 adduce from almost every page of the first volume in which Indian 

 phraseology and its interpretation are professedly given, will serve to 

 show that we were fully warranted in coming to the perusal of Mr. 

 Schoolcraft's second volume with no very sanguine expectations as to 

 the result of his researches into the genius of a class of languages with 

 which it was already plain to us he had so little personal acquaintance. 



On the treatise in the second volume we would in the first place 

 remark that we find in it the same misrepresentation of the meaning of 

 words as marks the author's attempts at interpretation in the first 

 volume. Thus we have a-dit-tag plural a-dit-ta-gin interpreted as fruit, 

 fruits, when they really signify " that thing which is ripe — those things 

 which are ripe;" thus giving a false idea of the genius of the language 

 which contains no generic word for fruit, but only specific words for the 

 different kinds of fruit ex. gr. an apple, a plum, just as it contains no 

 word for " time," but only for the natural divisions of it, a day, a 

 month, a year. Again at page 369 ish-pa-de-nah is translated a "hill," 

 though it is a verb in the indicative present, 3rd pers. sing., signifying 



