118 JOURNEY TO THE SHORES 



which the miserable father dashed the 

 morsel from his lips and deplored the loss 

 of his child. Misery may harden a dispo- 

 sition naturally bad, but it never fails to 

 soften the heart of a good man. 



The origin of the Crees, to which nation 

 the Cumberland House Indians belong, is, 

 like that of the other Aborigines of Ame- 

 rica, involved in obscurity; but- the re- 

 searches now making into the nature and 

 affinities of the languages spoken by the 

 different Indian tribes, may eventually throw 

 some light on the subject. Indeed, the 

 American philologists seem to have suc- 

 ceeded already in classing the known dia- 

 lects into three languages: — 1st. The Flo- 

 ridean, spoken by the Creeks, Chickesaws, 

 Choctaws, Cherokees, Pascagoulas, and 

 some other tribes, who inhabit the southern 

 parts of the United States. 2d. The Iro- 

 quois, spoken by the Mengwe, or Six Na- 

 tions, the Wyandots, the Nadowessies, and 

 Asseeneepoytuck. 3d. The Lenni-lenape, 

 spoken by a great family more widely spread 

 than the other two, and from which, together 



