24 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV, No. 336 



guages, and dialects are to linguistic science what family, genera, 

 and species are to biology. 



There is an important question which may be considered at this 

 point : To what extent is linguistic relationship to be interpreted 

 as blood relationship ; in other words, how far does linguistic 

 classification answer for race classification ? In cosmopolitan 

 America, where nearly all speak English, and yet a very large pro- 

 portion are of foreign parentage, it is obvious that a pure linguistic 

 classification of individuals would largely misinterpret the facts of 

 parentage and race. Nevertheless, taken in connection with 

 readily ascertained facts, it will not mislead even in such an ex- 

 treme case, and usually a language classification of a tribe or 

 people actually does express race relationship. 



To return to the Aryan family. Not only are we able by means 

 of language to class together as related members of one great 

 family the above-mentioned languages, which apparently are so 

 diverse in the sound and form of their words, but by means of 

 word analysis we can reconstruct the past history of the peoples 

 who spoke them, and can get a glimpse even of the mode of life, 

 customs, arts, and religious beliefs of our remote Aryan ancestry. 

 The process by which this is done is sufficiently simple, although, 

 like many other simple processes, its application is not so easy. 

 When we find in the greater number of the languages of a linguistic 

 family the same fully formed word with the same meaning, we are 

 justified in believing that it existed before the separation of the 

 family, and that the thing it signifies was already known to the 

 parent body. Applying the rule to the case of the Aryan family, 

 we learn, that, contrary to earlier theories, our forefathers came 

 from a cold region, since eastern and western Aryan tongues con- 

 tain names for the birch and pine, and these are the only two tree 

 names common to both branches. The same process continued 

 shows us that the family relations were defined much as they are 

 with us to-day, and that marriages were monogamous. The old 

 Aryans held the land in common, and redistributed it from time to 

 time among the members of the clan. The houses were built of 

 wood, and were entered by means of a door. The communities 

 were settled in villages with a recognized chief or head, and the 

 villages were connected by roads over which travelled pedlers car- 

 rying their wares for sale. All were free men. They worshipped 

 natural objects and natural phenomena, more particularly the sun. 

 They believed in the evil spirits of night and darkness. They 

 were a pastoral people, and cattle and sheep formed their chief 

 wealth. They also had goats, pigs, dogs, geese, and bees. They 

 had domesticated the horse, though they did not ride, but employed 

 him, like the ox, for drawing carts. They still used stone imple- 

 ments, though gold and silver and bronze were known. Charms 

 were chiefly I'elied upon to cure disease. Future events were 

 divined from the flight of birds. These are a few of the facts 

 among many which linguistic science has revealed to us pertaining 

 to the life and achievements of our Aryan ancestry before the 

 historic period. Surely no contemptible record this for a new 

 science. 



Let us now turn our attention to the Indian languages of this 

 country, and see what progress has been made in the attempt to 

 classify them. It may be premised that no part of the known 

 world affords a better opportunity for the study of the nature of 

 language and its processes of growth than America. The Indian 

 languages are by no means the most primitive at present spoken 

 by man ; and it may surprise some of my hearers to be told that 

 in respect of some of their characteristics they compare favorably 

 with Greek and other classic tongues, though the classic languages 

 as a whole belong to a much higher stage of development. In- 

 stead of being mere jargons of words, disconnected with each 

 other and capable of expressing only the simplest ideas, as I find 

 many intelligent people believe, they are in some directions singu- 

 larly highly developed ; and not only are they capable of serving as 

 the vehicle of every thought possible to their possessors, but their 

 vocabularies are extensive, possess many synonymes, and furnish 

 the means of discriminating the nicest shades of meaning. 



As a body they are still in that stage of development in which 

 the various processes of language-making may be studied with 

 comparative ease. Just as the various natural processes by which 

 mountains are levelled and the earth's surface carved out and re- 



modelled are more apparent, and more readily studied by the geol- 

 ogist, in the still primitive West, so Indian languages offer to the 

 scrutiny of the linguistic student a similar unfinished condition 

 highly favorable for analysis and study. 



For the past fifteen years Major Powell and his assistants of the 

 Bureau of Ethnology, with the aid of many collaborators in various 

 parts of the country, have been accumulating vocabularies by means 

 of which to classify Indian languages. The present provisional re- 

 sults of the study of the large amount of material accumulated 

 show that in the territory north of Mexico there were at the time 

 of the discovery fifty-eight distinct Indian linguistic families, con- 

 taining some 300 or more languages and dialects. 



So far as Language is a competent witness, she has exhausted 

 all the evidence thus far accumulated when she has grouped the 

 Indians in fifty-eight families. Back of this point she may not 

 now go, except as a theorist and in pure speculation. So far as 

 she is entitled to speak authoritatively, these fifty-eight families are 

 separate entities, which never had any connection with each other. 

 But she recognizes her own limitations too well to dare to state 

 positively that this is the interpretation that must be placed upon 

 the results she has attained. When facts from which to draw de- 

 ductions fail, men may and do resort to theories. Let us glance 

 at the two broad hypotheses which have been based upon the de- 

 velopment theory of language. The first is in effect that all the 

 present languages of the earth are not so unlike that they may not 

 have been developed from a single original parent language. By 

 this view the original language is supposed to have changed and 

 developed into all the various forms of speech that are now spoken 

 or that have ever been spoken. According to this view, the families 

 of languages as at present classified have no other significance 

 than as groups of related tongues, the once existing connection of 

 which with other tongues cannot now be proved, because through 

 the process of change the connecting links have been lost. 



The second hypothesis assumes that there must have been at 

 least as many original languages as there are now existing families : 

 it assumes, in other words, that the families of speech are funda- 

 mentally distinct, and therefore cannot have had a common origin. 

 The first theory postulates that from original unity of language has 

 come infinite diversity ; the second, that the tendency has ever 

 been from original diversity towards unity. 



Widely different as are these two theories of the origin of lin- 

 guistic families, they agree in one essential particular : they both 

 remove the origin so far back in time as to make it practically 

 impossible to prove the truth or falsity of either theory. Both of 

 these hypotheses have able advocates ; but for a variety of reasons, 

 which time will not permit me to give, the second is deemed the 

 more plausible. At all events, it best explains many difficulties. 



There is abundance of archajologic evidence showing that man 

 has resided on this continent for a very long period ; and the char- 

 acter of the remains prove that the farther back in time we go, the 

 ruder being he was. Linguistic testimony is to the same effect ; 

 and there is no a prio>-i reason why man may not have lived upon 

 this continent ages before he learned to talk, — no reason, for that 

 matter, why America may not have peopled the earth, if the earth 

 was peopled from a single centre, or why, if there have been 

 several centres of origin for mankind, the Indians, as they them- 

 selves believe, may not have originated here where they were 

 found. 



Obviously the fifty-eight families are as likely to have originated 

 here as anywhere else ; for remember that every country has lin- 

 guistic families of its own to account for. Is there, then, any pos- 

 sible theory which will meet the case ? There is certainly one 

 that is possible, if not probable. It is the theory, that, whether 

 born from the soil or an emigrant from other lands, our Indians 

 spread over the entire continent before they acquired organized 

 language, and that from not one but from fifty-eight centres sprung 

 up the germs of speech which have resulted in the different families 

 of language. This theory accords with the idea that there may 

 have been but one origin of man, and that in any event all the In- 

 dians from the Arctic to Patagonia are of one race. It does not 

 forbid the supposition that the Indian was an emigrant from 

 other shores, though it permits the thought that the American In- 

 dian may have originated on American soil. 



