REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 41 



WORK IN PHILOLOGY. 



Linguistic studies were ijushed forward energetically during the earlier years of 

 the existence of the Bureau, partly as a means of classifying the Indians in such 

 manner as to guide grouping on reservations. A considerable portion of the material 

 collected was, after the immediate practical use, placed on file for comparison and 

 study with a view to the discovery of the principles of linguistic development. 

 During the fiscal year the Director has reviewed these records in conjunction with 

 those pertaining to sociology and sophiology, and has made progress in developing 

 the principles of philology and applying them to the ethnic problems jn-esented by 

 the American aborigines. In primitive society language grows in two ways : On the 

 one hand there is a steady enrichment and difl^erentiation due to the coining of 

 expressions for new ideas ; on the other hand there is a spasmodic enrichment and 

 modification, both in terms and in grammatic structiire, produced by the shock of 

 contact (whether peaceful or bloody) with other peoples — the changes consequent 

 on conquest being especially important, as has been shown by different philologists. 

 At the same time both the lexio and the stritctural forms — i. e., both words and sen- 

 tences — are simplified through the natural tendency toward economy in expression. 

 These and other processes connected with the growth of language have been indi- 

 cated in some detail in earlier reports. 



Now, on examining the aboriginal languages of America, it is found that many of 

 them are interrelated in such manner as to indicate specific courses of development, 

 and in all such cases the dominant process has been the union or blending of more 

 or less diverse elements, both lexic and structui'al. This blending can be explained 

 only as a record of intertribal contact, and the cases are so numerous — indeed, they 

 are characteristic of all of the aboriginal tongues — as to indicate that practically all 

 of the native languages have been built up and shaped chiefly by the combination 

 and blending of antecedently distinct and presumptively discrete tongues. This 

 conclusion as to the development of oral speech in America is corroborated by the 

 simpler history of the development of the so-called gesture speech, which was widely 

 used by the Indians as a partial substitute for, and convenient supplement to, oral 

 speech as an intertribal language. When the course of development ascertained by 

 these comparisons is so extended as to apply to the entire assemblage of native Amer- 

 ican peoples, it at once becomes evident that the sixty linguistic stocks and five 

 hundred dialects extant at the time of the discovery (themselves the product of long- 

 continued combination and blending of distinct tongues, as the researches have 

 shown) are indubitable records of still more numerous and still. more widely distinct 

 languages of an earlier time, and the more carefully the record is scanned the more 

 numerous and the more distinct do the original components appear. 



It is accordingly a necessary inference that a vast number of distinct, albeit sim- 

 ple if not inchoate, tongues originally existed in North America, and that the sub- 

 sequent history has been chiefly one of linguistic integration. It is a corollary of 

 this proposition, which is but the generalization of all known facts relating to the 

 aboriginal languages of America, that the Western Hemisphere must have been peo- 

 pled by the ancestors of the modern Indian tribes before the birth of language 

 among them. Both the main proposition and the corollary run counter to earlier 

 opinions entertained in this and other countries; yet they are not only sustained by 

 the u orecedentedly rich collection of linguistic facts preserved in the Bureau 

 archi .s or published in the reports, but by the cumulative evidence obtained through 

 the researches concerning the arts, industries, institutions, and beliefs of the Ameri- 

 can aborigines. A more detailed report on this subject is in an advanced stage of 

 preparation. 



Dr. Albert S. Gatschet has continued the collection of linguistic material pertain 

 ing to the Algonquian Indians, and has made progress in the preparation of the 

 comparative dictionary of Algonquian terins. The new material collected during 

 the year was obtained chiefly among the Passamaquoddy Indians living in the woods 



