238 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



entire length and breadth of America. These names illustrate or indicate the 

 language of the men who colonized the continent. 

 How do we know these facts ? 



^ >(; ^ * ^ >fc :}; 



All the primitive peoples of earth are known to have used in the structure 

 of their river nomenclatures, the same common and universal syllabic expressions, 

 designated as " terms " ; and which are the ancient exponents or significants of 

 our words water and river, with their varying conditions. These terms are 

 known to man under every condition of his existence, whether civilized or bar- 

 barian ; they are traced backwards, through the intervening tongues, to the oldest 

 of all known languages. The American Indian uses the same terms in his river- 

 names that were used by all the aggressive races that overran and colonized 

 Europe, Asia, and Africa. 



Writers on language usually denominate that wide embrace of speech which 

 immediately antedates the historical tongues as the Semitic Language.^ From 

 the Semitic root have sprung three great branches — the Hebrew, the Chaldee 

 (or Aramean), and the Arabic. While each of these has had its countless off- 

 shoots and dialects, directly to these three may be traced the historical languages 

 of civilization, and in which are found all the ancient terms for water and river, 

 now known, either in purity or with mere variation and verbal corruptions, in all 

 the river nomenclatures of the world, including that of the Americas. There is 

 no corruption or abbreviation of those ancient terms known to the Oriental or 

 European languages but what an identical word is found to match it in the river 

 names of the Western Continent. And yet not only does the Indian show famil- 

 iarity with the ancient terms for water and river, but he had knowledge also of 

 other terms unknown to the ancients up to a certain period in historical annals. 

 That period embraces the Latin. 



A glance at terms themselves may enable us to have a more definite under- 

 standing of the problems before us — a more intelligent idea of the manner in 

 which the Indian showed his familiarity with the tongues of civilization. By 

 comparative illustrations, we may be able to trace the Indian down through all 

 the historical eras represented by Hebrew, Sanscrit, Celtic, Phoenician, Arabic, 

 Persian, Indo Germanic, and even through the Greek into the bosom of the 

 Roman. And if the testimonies of philology have any value in determining historic 

 truth, we may find the earliest colonists of the Western Continent in a people reaching 

 its shores from what is now a province on the western coast of the Kingdom of Italy. 



Startling as this proposition may seem, it is made in the sober conviction of 

 its truth. But to illustrate fully all the evidences showing the Indian's familiarity 

 with the historic languages of the Old World, from the Hebrew to the Roman, 



3 Lying still beyond the Semitic is what is usually denominated the Germ Language— a 

 language of brief roots, or germs, which make up the great body of known tongues. All modern 

 languages are chiefly composite— their composite character obtained from what are now gener- 

 ally regarded " dead languages," with modern types of the old. The dead languages were also 

 composite to a great extent. They were made up of those brief roots which had birth in the 

 primal speech of man— the Germ Language. 



