444 REVIEWS AMERICAN PHILOLOGY., 



of those primitives which, although never disjunctively used, denotes 

 in its modified forms the various senses implied by our words instrument, 

 contrivance, machine :" of which we may safely say that such a prim- 

 itive word exists nowhere nor never did, except in the writer's imagina- 

 tion, the forms that he gives being derived from verbs \\\je-ga, keesh- 

 Jte-booje-ga he divides crosswise taush-ke-hoo-je-ga he cuts down the 

 middle or lengthwise from which by changing the verbal termina- 

 tion " ga " into the nominal " gun " the class of words that he gives 

 are all formed, keesh-ke-hoo-je-gun a cross-cut saw, taush-ke-boo-je- 

 gun a saw to cut lengthwise, hence a saw-mill. The correctness of 

 this analysis will be at once seen by examining such words as wee-de- 

 ga~mah-gun (Mr. Schoolcraft says that the termination "gun " is always 

 a contraction for je-gun) a companion, a wife ke-ke-noo-ah-mah-gun 

 a person under instruction, a disciple ; where the termination, "gun" 

 could not possibly be a contraction iov jee-gun, instrument, machine, 

 even did such a primitive exist in the language. 



Two more instances of the errors into which Mr. Schoolcraft's want 

 of knowledge of the language of whose interpretation and genius he 

 claims to be considered the exponent, leads him we will select from his 

 chapter on substantives, and then pass to that on adjectives. At page 372 

 he gives the following Indian sentence " Waub-oo-jeeg oo-ge-me-gah- 

 naun naud-ah-wa-se-wun" which he translates " Wauboojeeg fought 

 his enemies." Even had the word naud-ah-wa-see signified " enemy" 

 naud-ah-wa-se-wun would not express "his enemies," as it wants the 

 possessive prefix which is never dispensed vyith in Indian as the pos- 

 sessive pronoun is frequently in Greek and Latin, but naud-ah-wa-see 

 does not signify "enemy" but "Sioux Indian," and therefore the sen- 

 tence quoted is good Ojibwa, meaning however, "Wauboojeeg fought the 

 Sioux." The error is just as if a school-boy should translate " Csesar 

 vicit Gallos" by " Csesar conquered his enemies." Again at page 376 

 he represents the word and-ah-yaun which he pretty correctly interprets 

 by the English word "my home" (it should rather have been "at my 

 home ") as a substantive ; whereas it is the subjunctive and participial 

 form of the verb " dah " he dwells, and signifies " where I dwell," and 

 this at once accounts for the want of the possessive pronominal prefix, 

 as there is no idea of possession about the word and the word an-dah- 

 yaun-in that he gives as the plural really signifies " whenever I dwell," 

 " wherever I dwell." 



From Mr. Schoolcraft's chapter on adjectives, we would be led to 



