THE ODAHWAH INDIAN LANGUAGE. 483 



measures, ahke, land, and ahnine, a man ; and I know that the tele- 

 graph is called " Piwahbiconce-madwawag,^^ that is to say, a little 

 iron making a noise. I hope from the ahove examples the reader is 

 satisfied that his Indian friends are endeavoring to keep up with, the 

 great progress of the age, at least in words, if not materially. 



As regards adjectives, I may simply state, that they are employed 

 for the same purpose as in English ; but they are not very distinct, 

 and many of them are more like adverbs in composition, such as bene, 

 male, in Latin. Thus we say in Indian, Meno-ahnine, a good man ; 

 Meno-ahyah, he is well ; Meno-dodum, he is doing what is right ; and 

 a noun adjective seems always to be incomplete without annexing to it 

 the proper syllable or termination ; thus mahkuhda evidently means 

 black, though in its modern signification it denotes powder. When it 

 signifies an animal that is black, where in English we should use the 

 verb " is," we are obliged to increase the word by adding one or more 

 syllables ; for example, you say in English the bird is black, the Indians 

 would simply say, Mahkuhdaweze ; the thing is black, Mahkuhdawah. 

 In many cases adjectives are not used at all, thus, Ahkwa, a woman : 

 Ahkwazans, a little girl : Mitig, a tree : Mitigonce, a small tree. We 

 now come to the verb, and I think the reader will agree with me in the 

 opinion, that Indian verbs present more peculiarities than either Latin 

 or Greek verbs, at least in some respects ; they certainly differ widely 

 from the English. In the Indian language, almost every change that 

 takes place in nouns causes a change in the termination of verbs, and 

 it is by means of these terminations that the gender to which nouns 

 belong is shown. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that the gen- 

 ders of nouns affect the terminations of verbs. Before proceeding 

 further, it may be well to give the personal pronouns, which are as 

 follows : 



Singular. Plural. 



Indian. English. Indian. English, 



Nin, I, Ninahwind and Kinahwind, We, 



Kin, You, Kinahwah, Ye, 



Win, He, Winahwah. They. 



In the following examples you will perceive no change in the Eng- 

 lish verb ; viz., the man falls, ahnine pungishin ; the branch falls, 

 odikwun pungisin. In the first example, the syllable hin, shows that 

 ahnine is masculine, whilst in the latter, in, without the h, proves 

 odikwun to be of the neuter gender. Again, 



