ALGONQUIAN LANGUAGES. 



429 



Rasles (S.) — Contiuued. 



Sebastian Rasles. Published from the 

 original manuscript of the author. With 

 an introductory memoir and notes by 

 John Pickering, A. A. S. 



In American Acad, Sci.and Arts, Mem. new 

 series, vol. 1, pp. 375-565, Cambridge, 1833, 4°. 

 (Congress, Eames, Pilling.) 



French-Abnaki dictionary, alphabetically 

 arranged, double columns, pp. 377-544. — Ad- 

 denda (Abnaki-French), pp. 545-546.— Partic- 

 Tilae (Abnaki-Frencb), alphabetically arranged, 

 double columns, pp. 547-565. Preceded by a 

 rciemoir, pp. 370-374, and followed by notes, pp. 

 566-574, both by Mr. Pickering. The pagina- 

 tion of the manuscript is indicated throughout. 



For a separate edition see the Addenda. 



In the appendix to his Essay on a uniform 

 orthography for the Indian languages, Mr. Pick- 

 ering gives the following description of the 

 manuscript of the dictionary : 



" The volume consists of two parts, the first 

 of which is a general Dictionary of the lan- 

 guage in French and Indian. This part consists 

 of 205 leaves (as they are numbered) about 

 one quarter part of which have writing upon 

 both sides, and the remainder, upon one side 

 only. The pages are divided, though not with 

 regularity throughout, into two columns ; the 

 first of French, and the second of Indian, con- 

 taining each about twenty five lines. The 

 second part of the volume consists of twenty 

 five leaves, almost all written upon both sides, 

 and has this Latin title — ' Particulce.'' In this 

 part the Indian words are placed first, and the 

 author gives an account of the particles, mak- 

 ing his explanations sometimes in French and 

 sometimes in Latin. 



" From a comparison which I have made of 

 several words of the language now spoken by 

 fhQ Penobscot Indians (as we call them) who, 

 at the present time, occupy a small territory on 

 the river Penobscot, it appears to be, as we 

 should naturally expect, exactly the same with 

 that of Rale's Dictionary. A few years ago 

 one page of this Dictionary, containing the 

 Indian numerals, was published in our Massa- 

 chusetts Historical CoUpctions, vol. x, p. 137; 

 but a very natural mistake, either of the 

 printer or of the transcriber, runs through this 

 extract, in constantly printing ax: instead of 

 an. This error probably arose from the un- 

 common use of the diseresis, which is here put 

 over a consonant (N) instead of a vowel as is 

 the practice in other languages. Bale seems to 

 have used the diaeresis thus in order to point out 

 when the letters an were not to have the nasal 

 sound which they had in the French language." 



Mr. Pickering's "Supplementary notes and 

 observations ' ' in the dictionary contain extracts 

 from Father Rasles' letters, a description of the 

 original manuscript, the alphabet used by the 

 author, and comments upon the Abnaki and 

 cognate dialects. From them the following 

 account is taken : 



Rasles (S.) — Continued. 



' ' Father Easles, in one of his letters, dated at 

 Nanrantsouak (Norridgewock) the 12th of Oc- 

 tober, 1723, and published in the Lettres £di- 

 fiantes, makes th3 following general remarks 

 upon the Indian languages and his mode of 

 studying them : 



'"On the 23d of July, 1689, I embarked at 

 Rochelle; and after a tolerably good vo5'^age of 

 about three months, I arrived at Quebec the 

 13th of October of the same year. I at once 

 applied myself to the study of the language of 

 our savages. It is very difficult ; for it is not 

 sufficient to study the words and their meaning, 

 and to acquire a stock of words and phrases, 

 but we must acquaint ourselves with the turn 

 and arrangement of them as used by the sav- 

 ages; which can only be attained by inter- 

 course and familiarity with these people. 



" ' I then took up my residence in a village of 

 the Ahnaki nation, situated in a forest which is 

 only three leagues from Quebec. This village 

 was inhabited by two hundred savages, who 

 were almost all Christians. Their huts were 

 in regular order, much like that of houses in 

 towns; and an enclosure of high and close 

 pickets formed a kind of bulwark which pro- 

 tected them from the incursions of their en- 

 emies. . . . 



'"It was among these people, who pass for 

 the least rude of all our savages, that I went 

 through my apprenticeship as a missionary. 

 My principal occupation was to study their lan- 

 guage. It is very difficult to learn, especially 

 when we have only savages for our tea chers. 



"'They have several letters which are 

 sounded wholly from the throat without any 

 motion of the lips ; ou, for example, is one of 

 the number, and in writing, we denote this by 

 the figure 8, in order to distinguish it from 

 other characters. I used to spend a part of a 

 day in their huts to hear them talk. It was 

 necessary to give the closest attention, in order 

 to connect what they said and to conjecture 

 their meaning. Sometimes I succeeded, but 

 more frequently I made mistakes; because, not 

 having been trained to the use of their guttur- 

 als, I only repeated parts of words, and thus 

 furnished them with occasions of laughing at 

 me. At length, after five months' constant 

 application, I accomplished so much as to un- 

 derstand all their terms ; but that was not 

 enough to enable me to express myself so as 

 to satisfy their taste. 



" 'I still had a long progress to make, in or- 

 der to master the turn and genius of their lan- 

 guage, which are altogether different from the 

 turn and genius of our European languages. 

 In order to save time, and to qualify myself 

 to exercise my office, I selected some of the sav- 

 ages, who had the most intelligence and the best 

 style of speaking. I then expressed to them 

 in my rude terms some of the articles in the 

 catechism ; and they rendered them for me with 

 all the delicacy of expression of tlieir idiom ; 

 these I committed to writing immediately, and 



