19& APPENDIX. 



fled or compounded to suit the occasion. No one who has paid much 

 attention to the subject, can have escaped noticing a confirmation of 

 this opinion, in the extreme readiness of our western Indians to bestow, 

 on the instant, names, and appropriate names — to any new object pre- 

 sented to them. A readiness not attributable to their having at com- 

 mand a stock of generic pollysyllables — for these it would be very awk- 

 ward to wield — but as appears more probable, to the powers Of the syn- 

 tax, which permits the resolution of new compounds from existing roots, 

 and often concentrates, as remarked in another place, the entire sense 

 of the parent words, upon a single syllable, and sometimes upon a single 

 letter. 



Thus it is evident that the Chippewas possessed names for a living 

 tree mittig, and a string aidb, before they named the bow mittigvidb, — 

 the latter being compounded under one of the simplest rules from the two 

 former. It is further manifest that they had named earth akki, and (any 

 solid, stony or metalic mass) dbik, before they bestowed an appellation 

 upon the kettle, akkeek, or akkik, the latter being derivatives from the 

 former. In process of time these compounds became the bases of other 

 compounds, and thus the language became loaded with double and tri- 

 ple, and quadruple compounds, concrete in their meaning and formal in 

 their utterance. 



When the introduction of the metals took place, it became necessary 

 to distinguish the clay from the iron pot, and the iron, from the copper 

 kettle. The original compound, akkeek, retained its first meaning, ad- 

 mitting the adjective noun piwabik (itself a compound) iron, when ap- 

 plied to a vessel of that kind, piwabik akkeek, iron kettle. But a new 

 combination took place to designate the copper kettle, miskwdkeek, red- 

 metal kettle ; and another expression to denote the brass kettle, ozawd- 

 bik aJckeek, yellow metal kettle. The former is made up from misko- 

 wabik, copper (literally red-metal — from miskwa, red, and dbik, the ge- 

 neric above mentioned) and akkeek, kettle., Ozawabik, brass, is from 

 ozawd yellow, and the generic dbek — the term akkeek, being added in 

 its separate form. It may, however, be used in its connected form of 

 wukkeek, making the compound expression ozawabik wukkeek. 



In naming the horse paibaizhikogazhi, i. e. the animal with solid 

 hoofs, they have seized upon the feature which most strikingly distin- 

 guished the horse, from the cleft-fboted animals which were the only 

 species known to them at the period of the discovery. And the word 

 itself affords an example, at once, both of their powers of concentration, 



