causes will ultimately produce the same effects. A nation of hunters cannot exist, as such, when brought in contact with an agricultural and industrious people. They must be deeply impressed with the conviction that their ultimate fate depends exclusively on themselves.

The obstacles to be surmounted, before deep-rooted habits can be eradicated and a total change be effected, are undoubtedly great, and should be fully understood. If the missions to the Eskimaux have been so much more successful, than those amongst the more southern Indians, it has been principally, because a profitable cultivation of the soil was impracticable in that frozen region, and that, as the inhabitants must continue to draw their subsistence from the sea or the chase, it was only requisite to regulate and not necessary to change their habits.

The attempt may be hopeless with respect to men beyond a certain age; and the effort should be directed towards the children. For that purpose, it is sufficient, that the parent should be thoroughly convinced of the absolute necessity for a change, without requiring him to do himself what perhaps has become impracticable. If that point could be accomplished, and the Indians would permit their children to be brought up by us, the success of the experiment would depend on those appointed to superintend its execution. Moral and religious education will not be neglected. In the present state of those people, no greater demand need be made on their intellectual faculties, than to teach them the English language; but this so thoroughly, that they may forget their own. That, without which all the rest would be useless, is the early habit of manual labor. They must be brought up to work, to till the ground, in short, in the same manner as our own people, as the sons of our industrious farmers. They have land of their own, and will not, when reaching manhood, be obliged to work for others. They have an abundant quantity of land, and may, if they please, be perpetuated and multiply as ourselves. There is no reason why, if they become an agricultural people, the sixty thousand southern Indians should not, within less than a century, increase to one million.

SECTION VI.

INDIAN LANGUAGES.

THE Vocabularies appended to this essay will enable the reader to judge, whether the preceding classification of the Indian languages is correct. Those of the Mohawk, Seneca, Cherokee, Muskhogee, Choctaw, and Caddo, were prepared according to a model circulated by the War Department at the request of the author of this essay. But, in framing a general comparative vocabulary, the selection of the words was controlled by the existing materials; and many have been omitted, because they were found only in a few of the vocabularies, either manuscript, or already published, which could be obtained. It happens, however, that the greater number of words of which we have the equivalents in most Indian languages, belong to that class, which has generally been considered as so absolutely necessary in any state of society, that the words of which it consists must have been in use everywhere in its earliest stages, and could not have been borrowed by any nation from any other. Whenever therefore a sufficient number of words of that description have been found to be the same or similar in two or more languages, such languages have generally been considered as of the same stock, and the nations which spoke them, as having belonged to the same family, subsequent to the time when mankind was divided into distinct nations. The same principle has been adopted in the classification of the Indians; and its correctness has been proved in every instance, where it had been previously ascertained, by the unanimous testimony of the missionaries, traders, and interpreters, that two or more languages were certainly dialects of the same, or kindred tongues. But such is the tendency of languages, amongst nations in the hunter state, rapidly to diverge from each other, that, apart from those primitive words, a much greater diversity is found in Indian languages, well known to have sprung from a common source, than in kindred European tongues. Thus, although the Minsi were only a tribe of the Delawares and adjacent to them, even some of their numerals differed. It is proper however to observe, that commerce may have communicated to barbarous tribes in the other hemisphere, the numerals used by more

civilized nations; and that, as between hunters and hunters there are rarely any objects of exchange, numerals cannot in America have been borrowed by one tribe from another. The pronouns of the first and second person belong also in the Indian languages to the class of primitive words. No definitive opinion can, for want of sufficient materials, be formed with respect to prepositions.

An apprehension of being deceived by false etymologies, or accidental coincidences, has perhaps led into a contrary error. The only case where any language has been placed as belonging to a certain family, without conclusive proof, is that of the Minetares. But there are several, and particularly the Choctaw and Muskhogee, which have been set down as forming distinct families, that will probably be found, on further investigation, to belong to the same. Some of the vocabularies are not sufficiently copious; in many instances, affinities will be discovered through the medium of kindred dialects; and, in order to have a full view of the subject, we should have not only a small collection of primitive words, but dictionaries including derivatives. Thus, for instance, the numeral, one, in Choctaw is, achufa, and, in Muskhogee, humma, between which there is not the slightest affinity. Yet it is revealed by the Choctaw word for once, which is himmunna. It is therefore highly probable, that the number of distinct families of Indian languages will be found to be less than has been here stated; though, at the same time, that of subordinate dialects is undoubtedly greater.

The diversity which does actually exist proves only, that the separation of some of the Indian nations took place in very early times; and the difficulty of accounting for it is not greater here than on the other continent. We find there, in one quarter, the Sanscrit and the Chinese in juxtaposition, and, in another, the Basque surrounded by languages of Latin origin. The same cause, which produced that effect, may, under different circumstances, have given rise to ten, instead of two totally distinct languages. In point of fact, the number does not appear to be greater in North America than in Africa, in the northeastern parts of Asia, or in the Oceanic region. The varieties of languages and of dialects must be more numerous amongst uncivilized tribes, principally those in the hunter state, necessarily subdivided into small communities, than in populous nations united under one government. Public speaking

VOL. II.

21

in their councils is the only standard of language of our Indians. None can become fixed and stable, until that character has been imparted to it by the art of writing and the influence of powerful writers. We have proofs of the multitude, at least, of dialects, which will spring out of an oral language, in those of Germany and of Italy, and in the Patois of France. These are indeed but varieties of the French, with a greater or less residue of Latin or of the other more ancient language of Gaul;* but they still differ (much more in words than in grammatical forms), and are perpetuated, notwithstanding the long-continued influence of a common government and of a common written language. To those obvious causes of a tendency to produce changes, we may add, that inflected languages seem to be more liable to alterations, than those which, like that spoken in China, consist principally of monosyllables.

Although, for a proper study of the character of a language, a dictionary could afford but little aid, if it did not include derivatives and compound words, even our meagre vocabularies, if thoroughly investigated, might offer interesting results. Thus for instance, a single glance at the table of numerals shows, that all the Indian nations have resorted to a decimal numeration. But an examination of several of the languages will afford proof, that they must at first have counted by fives, instead of tens. Thus, in the Choctaw, the numerals seven and eight, untuklo and untuchina, are evidently derived from tuklo two and tuchina three, meaning respectively, five and two, five and three. The same will be found in various other languages, and particularly in those belonging to the AlgonkinLenape. A further investigation will also show, that, although the Knistinaux, Chippeways, Algonkins, and Abenakis use for the unity the word peyac, or paizhik, instead of nequit or ngut, as the other nations of the same stock, they must originally have had also the last word; since their numeral six is, in all of them, derived from it. It is probable, that those two

* In seventy-five French Patois, of which specimens have been lately published, no greater grammatical variations are to be found than the union of the pronoun with the verb, such as Soui for Je suis. In one, in the Ardennes, the pronoun coalesces with the noun, as in our Indian languages; M'per, and S'per, for Mon père and Son père. Mr. Heckewelder's apostrophe has, probably for the same purpose, been used by the French writer.

words were used, as a and one are, in the English language; and Mr. Schoolcraft corroborates that which with me could only be a conjecture.

It will also be found, that, in the Knistinaux and the Chippeway, the initial m is often prefixed to the noun, instead of the pronominal characteristics n, k, w, when such nouns are taken in an absolute or abstract sense, as, miskcewon, nose, miskotick, forehead, meeton, mouth, meepit, teeth, &c.; which seems to corroborate the existence of a definite article mo, discovered by Mr. Du Ponceau in Eliot's translation of the Bible.

Another feature, which may be discovered by the vocabularies, consists in the different names, by which all the Indian nations distinguish the various degrees and modifications of relationship, such as the elder brother, and the elder sister, as distinguished from the younger ones; paternal, or maternal uncle, &c. But what is remarkable, as a feature common to all, is, that women use different words from men for those purposes; and that the difference of language, between men and women, seems, in all the Indian languages, to be confined to that species of words, or others of an analogous nature, and to the use of interjections.

It is perhaps less, however, in dictionaries, than by an investigation of grammatical forms and structure, that we must study the philosophy of language and the various ways, in which man has applied his faculties to that object. We may discover in their Relations, that the Jesuits had analyzed the two principal languages spoken in Canada. The venerable Eliot had in his Grammar, published in 1666, exhibited the most prominent features of the Massachusetts dialect. And we have long been in possession of good grammars of several of the languages of Mexico and South America by the Catholic missionaries. But it was not, till after the publication of the more popular works of Egede* and of Crantz, that public attention was attracted by the peculiar character of the Karalit or Eskimau language. And the first inference was, that the Eskimaux must have been a colony from Europe, or from some other civilized country, and a distinct race from the other American Indians. In the year 1819, Mr. Du Ponceau, after having elicited with much labor, from Mr. Heckewelder, the principal features of the Delaware, and compared it with the

Alluding to his account of Groenland, rather than to his Grammar.