192 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIX. No. 47& 



doubtless asked them if tbe word meant war, and, receiving a 

 negative reply, he at once inferred that as it must be an 

 archaic word for war its signiflcation had been forgotten by 

 the Indians; for was it not still the component element in a 

 compound meaning war and warrior ? This inference, how- 

 ever, was erroneous. 



Since it is compounded with the verb-stem ■keq-te\ it must 

 like on du'-ta' signify something which had to be borne on 

 the back by the warrior. Under the heading, " Meubles, 

 mesnages, outils," i. e., "Family or household goods, tools, 

 etc.," Fr. Gabriel Sagard, in his " Dictionnaire dela Langue 

 Huronne " (1632), wrote "Ballet, Oscoera.'' In the fifth 

 edition of the " Dictionnaire de I'Academie Francoise," Paris, 

 1825, there are two forms of the word "ballet" given; one 

 of these is "balle," signifying a large pack of goods, bound 

 with cords, and wrapped in coarse linen cloth, and the other 

 is " ballot," meaning a large pack or bundle of family or 

 household goods. The word bale is evidently the correct 

 rendering of this word. But it is very improbable that a 

 bale as such formed a part of the family and household 

 goods and tools of the early Hurons. It is likely, however, that 

 oscoej'a signified a mat woven from the common Indian hemp 

 (Apocynum Cannabinum), and thus merely a form of the 

 modern Mohawk, and perhaps proethnic, oska'ra', flax, hemp, 

 tow, the Tuskarora form of which is %i' ska re, meaning shawl, 

 blanket, bedding, bed-cover, whatever is spread to lie upon; 

 being found in yd-(ka-re^'-kua, "one uses it to spread," 

 vrhich is a descriptive name of a carpet. Father Bruyas (on 

 page H5, op. cit.) has " Gentskaron, estendre, mettre la 

 natte," i. e., to spread or lay the mat or mattress; and 

 " Gentskare, S. natte, avoir une natte," i. e., a mat, to have 

 a mat, mattress. Pere Pierre Potier (op. cit.) has "kaskara, 

 tout ce qui sert a coucher,"i. e., all that which is used for bed- 

 ding. It is thus seen that the noun-stem --sitar- has the 

 same meanings that -ndut-, the stem of on du'-ta^ has, but it 

 has a wider application in the modern vocabulary. There is 

 no attempt made here to connect these stems etymologically, 

 but a similar sematologic development only is shown in the 

 two stems. 



The stem of ka sfce" 'ra' is -ske'^ '-r- or better -sfce" 'r-. In 

 the stems -skar- and sfce'^ 'r. we have two generic noun stems, 

 having the same consonnatic sounds, sustaining one to the 

 other the same positions in the two stems respectively, but 

 differing in the interconsonantic vowel which vocalizes them. 

 Nevertheless, it is assumed that these two stems are derived 

 from one and the same proethnic source. It is clear that 

 the stem -skai'- is the older form, in that it is the simpler of 

 the two. The change of the mid-stem vowel a to e" is ex- 

 plained by the presence of the "interrupted explosive," repre- 

 sented by an apostrophe before a following r and by the 

 presence of a fc immediately before the vowel changed. The 

 cause of the change was the "interrupted explosive," which 

 became a part of the stem by analogic metathesis, a proced- 

 ure which is not unknown in this language. So that there 

 exists no formidable phonetic difficulty in the way of regard- 

 ing the two stems -skar- and -ske^^^r- as derivatives from one 

 and the same proethnic form, having the meanings possessed 

 by the stem -skar-, already given above. Thus, it appears 

 that fca-sfce" 'j'a' meant a mat or mattress; and this is the 

 meaning which is absolutely required by the verb stem -heq- 

 te' with which it is compounded. 



Thus, both the compound-stems -sfce"'-}'a keq-te' and -ndu- 

 ta-keq'-te' were denotive of a custom of the Iroquoian war- 

 rior when on the war-path. The pronominal prefixes have 

 been suppressed for brevity's sake. Prefixing the pronoun 



of the third person masculine singular of the anthropic gen- 

 der, ro-, to the first, we have j'O-sfce" '-ra-fceg'-te', "he bears a 

 mat on the back ; " and ho-, a dialectic form of ro, to the 

 other we have ^o ndu-ta-keq'-te\ he "bears a mat on the back. "~ 

 So that in the baldest English a warrior was a " mat — or 

 mattress — bearer," in the tongues of the Iroquoian peoples. 



J. N. B. HEvnTT. 



WashlngtOD, D. C, March 15. 



FORTHCOMING SCIENTIFC BOOKS.' 



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