Analysis of the Cherokee Language 
VV. C. DUNCAN'S ANALYSIS OF THE 
CHEROKEE LANGUAGE. 
'T^O classify and define the words of an Indian tongue, to as- 
certain and codify its mysterious laws of expression, and, 
by means of literary associations, so wed it to our own as to give 
it a guarantee of prospective existence commensurate with that 
of the English, has hitherto been regarded as one of the most 
difficult problems in the science of language. 
Prof D. W. C. Duncan, of Charles City, Iowa, is one of the 
few men that have ever had the courage to undertake such a 
work, and the still fewer that have enjoyed a fitness for its execu- 
tion. The language which he now has in the crucible of reduc- 
tion is the Cherokee. By the accidents of birth, the tongue he 
is dealing with is, in one sense, to him a familiar vernacular. 
Besides this natural advantage, he enjoys that of a finished clas- 
sical education, together with an instinctive taste for linguistic 
research, especially in the more remote and hitherto untrodden 
fields of that kind of learning. 
He says, " Human language is not always and necessarily ex- 
pressive ; it is sometimes in the main only sjiggestive. Where 
there is an affluence of thought, there is a corresponding wealth 
in the means of expression. In that case, language naturally be- 
comes much more elaborate and complicated in its structure. 
But in the lower grades of social life, where the sphere of ideas 
is small, there exists but little motive for linguistic improvement. 
The words are generally few in number, and limited in mean- 
ing. Many of them indeed can hardly be called words ; they 
are more like unintelligible exclamations, whose office it is, not to 
imprint an idea, or a thought, upon the apprehension of the per- 
son addressed, as do the words of a cultured tongue ; but rather 
to arrest the attention and direct it to the subject in hand, leaving 
the desired impressions to arise in his mind as the result of his 
own observation and reflection. In these rudimentary tongues 
