CONTUSION OF IDIOMS. 
315 
and in the south and south-west, the Quichua, the Guarano, 
the Omagua, and the Araucan. By appropriating to them- 
selves tliese languages, the grammatical forms of which are 
very regular, and almost as fixed as those of the Greek and 
Sanscrit, the missionaries would place themselves in more 
intimate connection with the natives whom they govern. 
The numberless difficulties which occur in the system of a 
Mission consisting of Indians of ten or a dozen different 
nations woidd disappear with the confusion of idioms. Those 
which are little diffused would become dead languages ; but 
the Indian, in preserving an American idiom, would retain 
his individuality — his national character. Thus by peaceful 
means might be effected what the Incas began to establish 
by force of ai’ms. 
How indeed can we be surprised at the little progress 
made by the Cbaymas, the Caribbees, the Salives, or the 
Otomacs, in the knowledge of the Spanish language, when 
we recollect that one white man, one single missionary, finds 
himself alone amidst five or six hundred Indians? and that 
it is difficult for him to establish among them a govemador, 
an alcalde, or a fiscal, who may serve him as an interpreter? 
If, instead of the missionary system, some other means of 
civilization were substituted, if, instead of keeping the 
whites at a distance, they could bo mingled with the natives 
recently united in villages, the American idioms would soon 
be superseded by the languages of Europe, and the natives 
would receive in those languages the great mass of new 
ideas which are the fruit of civilization. Then the intro- 
duction of general tongues, such as that of the Incas, or the 
Guaranos, without doubt would become useless. But after 
having lived so long in the M issions of South America, after 
having so closely observed the advantages and the abuses of 
the system of the missionaries, I may be permitted to doubt 
whether that system could be easily abandoned, though it 
is doubtless very capable of being improved, and rendered 
mare conformable with our ideas of civil liberty. To this it 
may be answered, that the Homans* succeeded in rapidly 
* For the reason of this rapid introduction of Latin among the Gauls, 
T believe we must look into the character of the natives and the state 
of their civilization, and not into the structure of their language. The 
brown-haired Celtic nations were certainly different from the race oi 
