CLASSIFICATION INTO SEVEN LINGUISTIC STOCKS 



OF WESTERN INDIAN DIALECTS CONTAINED 



IN FORTY VOCABULARIES. 



By Albert S. Gatschet. 



The languages spoken by the Indians of the eastern part of the 

 United States have in more recent times been studied industriously, and 

 partly reduced to writing, but of the languages spoken on the Pacific coast 

 and in the western territories, scarcely more than a superficial knowledge 

 has been attained. The forty vocabularies, with the appendix, given 

 below will therefore form a welcome addition to the linguistic material 

 published previously, and help to elucidate many points that heretofore 

 have remained doubtful. These word-collections were made by various 

 members of the Expedition during six field-seasons (1871 to 1876) from 

 information of trustworthy Indians, in portions of our territory widely 

 separated from each other. About two hundred of the most current terms, 

 comprising the words applied to the parts of the human body, for the 

 degrees of consanguinity, some objects of nature, the adjectives of color, 

 the numerals, the pronouns, and twenty verbs, were taken down with the 

 earnest endeavor to overcome the difficulties of fixing alphabetically even 

 the most unwieldy of the dialects studied. 



Not only is the linguist aided by such evidence in establishing 

 phonetic and other grammatic rules for each of the dialects, but quite as 

 important must be considered the help afforded the ethnologist in investi- 

 gating tribal connections and affinities, and in studying the psychology of 

 Indian life. This latter purpose, however, can be attained only by a close 



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