536 THE GEOEGE CATLIN INDIAN GAIjLEEY. 



tie if any nee;! of looking for the Hebrew language, or either of the others, for the- 

 reasons that J have already given ; for the feeble colonies of these or any other foreign. 

 people that might have fallen by accident upon the shores of this great continent, or 

 who might have approached it by Behring'a Straits, have been too feeble to give a 

 language to fifteen or twenty millions of people, or in fact to any portion of them, 

 being in all probability in great part cut to pieces and destroyed by a natural foe, 

 leaving enough, perhaps, who had intermarried, to innoculate their blood and their 

 customs ; which have run, like a drop in a bucket, and slightly tinctured the charac- 

 ter of tribes who have sternly resisted their languages, which would naturally, under 

 such circumstances, have made but very little impression. 



JEWISH ANCESTRY. 



Such I consider the condition of the Jews in North America, and perhaps the Scan- 

 dinavians and the followers of Madoc, who by some means, and some period that I 

 cannot name, have thrown themselves upon the shores of this country, and amongst 

 the ranks of the savages, where, from destructive wars with their new neighbors, they 

 have been overpowered, and perhaps with the exception of those who had intermar- 

 ried, they have been destroyed, yet leaving amongst the savages decided marks of 

 their character, and many of their peculiar customs, which had pleased and been 

 adopted by the savages, while they had sternly resisted others, and decidedly shut- 

 out and discarded their language, and, of course, obliterated everything of their his" 

 tory. 



THE INDIAN LANGUAGE. 



That there should often be found contiguous to each other several tribes speaking 

 dialects of the same language is a matter of no surprise at all ; and wherever such 

 is the case there is resemblance enough also, in looks and customs, to show that 

 they are parts of the same tribes, which have comparatively recently severed and 

 wandered apart, as their traditions will generally show; and such resemblances are 

 often found and traced nearly across the continent, and have been accounted for 

 in some of my former letters. Several very learned gentlemen, whose opinions I would 

 treat with the greatest respect, have supposed that all the native languages of Amer- 

 ica were traceable to three or four roots, a position which I will venture to say will 

 be an exceedingly difficult one for them to maintain whilst remaining at home and 

 consulting books, in the way that too many theories are supported; and one infi- 

 nitely more difficult to prove if they travel amongst the diflferent tribes, and collect their 

 own information as they travel.* I am quite certain that I have found in a number of" 

 instances tribes who have long lived neighbors to each other, and who, from con- 

 tinued intercourse, had learned mutually many words of each other's language, and 

 adopted them for common use or mottoes, as often or oftener than we introduce the 

 French or Latin phrases in our conversation, from which the casual visitor to one of 

 these tribes might naturally suppose there was a similarity in their languages, when 

 a closer examiner would find that the idioms and structure of the several languages 

 were entirely distinct. 



* For the satisfaction of the reader I have introduced in the appendix to this volnme, Letter B, a 

 brief vocabulary of the languages of several adjoining tribes in the Northwest, from ■which, by turn, 

 ing to it, they can easily draw their own inferences. These words have all been written down by my- 

 self, from the Indian's mouths, as they have been correctly translated to me ; and I think it will at 

 once be decided that there is very little affinity or resmblance, if any, between them. I have therein- 

 given a sample of the Blackfoot language, yet of that immense tribe who all class under the name 

 of Blackfoot there are the Cotonn6s and the Grosventres des Prairieis, whose languages are entirely 

 distinct from this, and also from each other ; and in the same region, and neighbors to them, are also- 

 the Chayennes, the Knisteneaux, the Crows, the Shoshones, and Pawnees, all of whose languages 

 are as distinct and as widely different as those that I have given. These facts, I think, without my 

 going further, will fully show the entire dissimilarity between these languages, and support me, to a> 

 certain extent, at all events, in the opinion I have advanced above. — G. Catlin. 



