13^ NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



that herb. Alore rarely they were at one time called the Nez 

 Perces, or Indians with Little Holes through their Noses; a 

 name better applied to Indians west of them. 



South of Lake Erie were the Eries, another large branch of the 

 family, and all along the Susquehanna, from the New York line 

 to the sea, including part of Delaware, was still another branch, 

 the Minquas of the Dutch, the Andastes of the French. All these 

 spoke dialects of the Iroquois tongue, and may have radiated in 

 their later migrations from some spot near the east end of Lake 

 Erie. As yet separated by hostile tribes from the New York Iro- 

 quois were tw^o southern branches, the Tuscaroras and Cherokees, 

 the former one day to become the sixth nation, and the latter to 

 be a stubborn foe of the confederacy. 



In Canada, New England and southern New York were the 

 Algonquin tribes, and others of these were encountered when the 

 Hurons, Eries and Neutrals were out of the way. 



From the Algonquins all were distinguished by language and 

 partially by habits of life. The Algonquins used labials freely; 

 the Huron-Iroquois not at all, and their language has been much 

 discussed. Father Brebeuf said, in 1636: "The variety of com- 

 pounds is very great ; it is the key to the secret of their language. 

 They have as many genders as ourselves; as many numbers as 

 the Greeks." Prof. Max Miiller wrote : " To my mind the struc- 

 ture of such a language as the Mohawk is quite sufficient evidence 

 that those who worked out such a w^ork of art were powerful 

 reasoners and accurate classifiers." 



Mr Horatio Hale, the eminent Canadian philologist, said: 



A complete grammar of this speech, as full and minute as the 

 best Sanscrit or Greek grammars, would probably equal and per- 

 haps surpass those grammars in extent. The unconscious forces 

 of memory and of discrimination required to maintain this com- 

 plicated machine, and to preserve it constantly exact and in 

 good working order, must be prodigious. 



Mr Hale also said : 



Philologists are well aware that there is nothing in the lan- 

 guage of tlVe American Indians to favor the conjecture (for it is 

 nothing else) which derives the race from eastern Asia. r)Ut in 



