25 
been thought that because an Indian distinguishes perhaps only 
three or four colours, and possesses few abstract nouns, his vocabulary 
is very limited. Nothing could be further from the truth. If he 
distinguishes few colours it is because fine discrimination in colour 
has no value in his life. He will differentiate, in matters that are 
important to liim, where Europeans may make no distinction. Thus 
Eskimo has one term for falling snow, another for granular snow, a 
third for a snow-drift, and several others; whereas English possesses 
but the one word “ snow,” and must employ descriptive phrases to 
separate its varieties or manifestations. It is true that the vocabu- 
laries of Indian languages are .small when compared with European 
dictionaries, even if we eliminate from the latter all derivative forms 
and count only the stem words. Thus the latest dictionary of the 
Eskimo dialect of West Greenland, ^ one of the best known American 
languages, contains less than two thousand six hundred stem words. 
At least half of these words, however, are in everyday use, whereas 
European dictionaries are filled with scientific, technical, poetical, and 
semi-obsolete words that are never employed in ordinary conversa- 
tion and are known to comparatively few individuals. The vocabu- 
lary of an uneducated English peasant, it is often stated, rarely 
exceeds seven hundred words, which is no more than that of an 
Eskimo. 
In addition, the Indian, like the European peasant, talks con- 
cretely, his vocabulary being more suitable for descriptive narrative 
than for the expression of abstract ideas. Abstract terms are indeed 
rare, although they could readily have been developed by the use of 
approj)riate affixes. That they were not so developed we may 
ascribe, perhaps, to the primitive economic conditions and to the 
absence of a leisured class devoted to intellectual pursuits. There 
were Indian philosophers who pondered deeply and spent much time 
in silent meditation; but they seldom revealed their thoughts to 
others or sought the stimulus and discipline that come from open 
discussion and debate. So their meditations tended to revolve around 
concrete things and their languages reflected the concreteness of their 
thoughts. 
In their chants and religious ceremonies the Indians employed 
many words, archaic or descriptive, that were not current in ordinary 
1 ScIniltz-LoientKt’n, Den GronJandske Ordbog. (KoVinhavn, 1926.) 
86959—31 
