INTRODUCTION

Much has been written by scholars in recent times on the Asiatic extraction of the American peoples; and the attempt has been made, particularly in the United States, to prove such a relationship. This exceedingly interesting subject opens to the investigator a boundless field; but one whose paths are dark and difficult to make clear. Many good reasons can be given for an Asiatic descent of the Americans; on the other hand, objections can be made which cannot easily be set aside. In either case strikingly similar traits have been found in the peoples of the two continents, as may be seen from Delafield's new work, where everything that can be said on the subject has been brought together.[222]

As the traveller stands in front of the long lines of the old Indian burial mound near St. Louis, he can easily believe that he has before him one of the south Russian kurgans. Moreover, surprising correspondences are found from a comparison of the works of art, as well as the intellectual and moral characteristics, of the peoples of Mexico and Peru with those of India and Egypt. But we search in vain for Mongols in North America. When one has seen the Hindoos, Kalmucks, Bashkirs, and Chinese, he will find that the features and complexion of the type of man now inhabiting North America are very different from those of the Asiatic peoples; and will feel justified in regarding the Americans as a distinct race.

The most firmly-grounded objections to the theory of the Asiatic extraction of the Americans seems to lie in the difference in the color of the skin and in the slight relationship of the languages; for the few words related to American, which have so far been sought out with great difficulty in the Asiatic languages, do not appear to have much weight.

D'Orbigny[223] assumes that there are different races among the peoples of America. But even if it is necessary, for the sake of clearness, to make various subdivisions in such an extended and varied population, on the basis of distinguishing characteristics, nevertheless such a division is difficult and arbitrary. If representatives of all these peoples could be brought together, a classification would present fewer difficulties; but great distances often separate related tribes, and memory rarely suffices for making these exact comparisons. I cannot render a decision on D'Orbigny's supposition that in the American branch of humanity the North Americans form a different race from the South Americans, since I have become acquainted with only a small number of the South American nations.

One claim, which seems to me to have decided probability, is that the ancient Mexicans migrated from the more northern parts of the continent of America. There are many indications of this. The hieroglyphic painting of the migration of the people, which later rose to a higher culture in Mexico, which was discovered by Boturini and brought out by Delafield, is, from this standpoint, a highly interesting document.[224] The drawings of the present North American Indians still show many similarities to those of old Mexican pictures, although it must be said that they are much rougher, cruder, and more childish.[225] Therein, also, foot prints are represented when it is desired to show a continued movement of the figures; and other correspondences have already been pointed out. In various places in the account of my travels, I have sought to call attention to them and to the conjectured southward migration of the Americans. The skulls, however, which have been taken from the old burial grounds on the Wabash, do not show that flattening of the heads that is portrayed on Delafield's first plate; but their crowns are rounded just as nature formed them.

All conjectures over the origin and relationship of these peoples must await the more trustworthy conclusions which it will be justifiable to draw from the relationship of their languages; only through more exact knowledge of them can we hope to make progress in this broad and obscure field. Several of the North American dialects are already fairly well known to philologists; for a majority of the rest there are, at least, vocabularies which allow a superficial classification according to relationship. Distinguished American philologists, Duponceau, Pickering,[226] Edwin James, Gallatin, and several others have accumulated much material, but there has been no comprehensive work on the subject. This lack has in part been filled by Mr. Albert Gallatin, whose learned work is in the hands of the publishers.[227] Since at the present time the attention of travellers is being directed more and more to this highly interesting subject, these materials are likely to be largely increased in the near future, and to give American scholars the chance of constantly perfecting their work. Some authors, among them McKenney, in his History of the Indian Tribes of North America,[228] do not seem to attach much value to vocabularies collected by travellers. To be sure, these often are handled in a thoughtless and superficial manner; but it must be remembered that in the interior of North America excellent interpreters of the Indian languages may now be found, and that the Indians themselves often fluently speak several languages. Through these agencies interesting contributions to our knowledge of the dialects referred to may always be expected.

In an examination of the tribes of America, the multiplicity of their languages is very striking. These languages are often confined to quite small tribes; their origin is quite correctly explained by Mr. Gallatin.[229] From the interesting work of this scholar it appears, however, that a certain similarity of character belongs to this multitude of tongues—a circumstance that testifies to their common origin as well as to the antiquity of the American population.[230] All this material thus gains value in the eyes of the philologist; and in this connection it is with pleasure to be noticed, that with the extension of these investigations the interest in them in America constantly brings forward diligent co-operators.

Such work would be far easier and much more useful if all the vocabularies were compiled and copied on the same principles. Most of those in existence have been written down by Englishmen, or Anglo-Americans; and as a rule they, like the French, cannot, as Gallatin admits, correctly reproduce the Indian gutturals;[231] yet it is characteristic of all these languages that they abound in gutturals. Another defect in the usual vocabularies, lies in the omission of accents; for these, also, are peculiarly characteristic of the American languages. One of the dialects which I investigated is so difficult to write, that even after the greatest effort I could reproduce but a few words—I refer to that of the Grosventres of the prairies, sometimes called by the English Fall Indians.[232] For this tongue, even the fur trade company had not been able to find an interpreter; and was compelled to carry on all business with those Indians in the Blackfoot language. Most of the other languages of the Missouri Valley can more easily be reproduced by the Germans and Dutch than by other nations; because, as has already been explained, their own speech abounds in gutturals and regularly has hard endings. Consequently the English vocabularies for these tribes are always more or less defective. Pickering felt this very decidedly, and has consequently proposed for his countrymen a notation of tones which is analogous to the German, and which, if it comes into use, will produce most beneficial results. Pickering's scheme requires that the vowels be pronounced in America as follows:

In short, he adopts the German system, completely. In place of the German æ and œ, or ä and ö, he proposes to write in English ae and oe; in place of c to use k, a change that will avoid many misunderstandings; and when the pronunciation is hard, to use z, etc. If this system had been used earlier, a smaller number of errors would have crept into the works on this subject, and into the translations from one language to another. For instance, my vocabularies of the Brazilian peoples have in places been very incorrectly reproduced by French translators.

Another defect in the usual English system, for such vocabularies, arises from the division of all words into syllables, a method which Duponceau very rightly censured; for in this way the correct pronunciation of the words is generally lost. When the word with its accents has been written as a whole, the division into syllables is the next task, in order thus to reach conclusions regarding its inflection and derivation—something quite indispensable for the philologist. A word divided in the English style into its component parts, could be correctly pronounced neither by a German nor by a Frenchman; besides, every language has its own intonation, not common to others. I have, therefore, held it to be the surest way of making the Indian words intelligible to all my readers, to call to my aid the pronunciation of several nations. For instance, on and an, in the Indian languages are spoken, sometimes as in German, sometimes as in French; in such cases I have noted in a parenthesis the system according to which the word or syllable is to be pronounced. Other notes of this character have seemed necessary, and these require the following explanations:—

(1) Sharp c is designated as in French by ç.

(2) Guttur. denotes guttural, i.e., the German or Dutch pronunciation.

(3) aº or oª denotes full a or o, somewhat like aw in English. Here I might have written o͡a; but by using aº and oª, I also indicate that the sound of the lower letter predominates.

(4) d. d. N. (durch die Nase) denotes through the nose: i.e., a nasal sound.

(5) When the sign ½ follows a letter, it means that it is to be only half pronounced, somewhat as the first e in the German word gegangen, or the second e in the English word achievement.

(6) I have tried to indicate the length of a syllable by adding an h, a plan which I preferred to the ordinary signs ∽ or ⏝, since these might easily be confused in printing.

(7) A g is often heard at the end of the syllables on and an; consequently I have written them ong and ang. This is the German system, as I have indicated by the word "German." It is assumed that the philologist will be familiar, at least in general, with German as well as with French and English pronunciation.

(8) As the French acute accent seemed to me entirely adequate for indicating the correct intonation of the Indian words, I have chosen it to show on what letter or syllable the emphasis is to be placed. Occasionally, owing to haste or lack of time, it may have been forgotten or omitted.

(9) In the case of the letter j, I have not followed Mr. Pickering's scheme, for everyone knows how it is pronounced in French and in German. When it has the former value—as very often in the American languages—I have noted "French:" i.e., pronounce as in French. In no other way, it seems to me, can the soft French j be clearly indicated.

(10) The German guttural sound ch, as in the syllables ach, och, or uch, is, as Gallatin observes, difficult for Englishmen and Frenchmen;[233] but it occurs everywhere in the American languages, and the reader must learn it if he wishes to pronounce such words correctly.

(11) The r is never pronounced by these peoples as a guttural, but always with the point of the tongue against the roof of the mouth; d and r, as well as r, l, and n,[234] are quite often interchanged, or indistinctly pronounced.

(12) On the syllable in, I have often noted that n is to be pronounced as in French: i.e., the syllable in does not sound like ain in French, but merely the n is pronounced as in French; the whole sound is, therefore, almost i nasal, and only a little at the end sinks to n.

It is the duty of every traveller in distant, little-known lands to make contributions, according to his ability, to the knowledge of their languages; hence I have brought together in the following pages my own notes, however insignificant and incomplete they may be, under the difficulties which stand in the way of such work. The ignorance of the interpreters, their lack of sympathy with any kind of scientific investigation, the frequent unwillingness of the Indians to assist, superstitious and unintelligible ideas, and lack of time and leisure—these usually combine to make such examinations difficult. When, here and there, I detected some deviations from Mr. Gallatin's vocabularies, it was my duty to record them in order to aid investigation and come nearer the truth. The fault-finding spirit would certainly never prompt me to this, since we are concerned here, not with the use of the material, but with the former method of collecting it.

I have written these vocabularies, in part from the pronunciation of the Indians themselves; in part, from that of interpreters, who are usually half-breeds, and therefore thoroughly acquainted with the Indian as well as with the French or English languages—they have, at least, lived for a long time with those nations; finally, in part from the pronunciation and with the kind assistance of the Indian agent, Major Dougherty,[235] who speaks several of these languages fluently. From some tribes, owing to lack of time or interpreters, I have obtained but few words; from others, more; the most complete vocabularies are in the Mandan and Minnitarri languages, because I passed the winter among them. While I was living with the Mandans I undertook something of a grammatical study of their language; but unfortunately its continuation and completion were interrupted by illness.

Since but a moment was sometimes at my disposal for collecting a few words, I chose a list of twenty of those that frequently occur, and asked for them first, in order to make a comparison and draw conclusions regarding the relationship of the tribes. These words were as follows:

In each of the vocabularies I have noted the source from which it was obtained. The order in which the tribes are arranged is not according to linguistic relationship, but alphabetical for the sake of easier reference.

From an examination of the following examples of the languages of twenty-three peoples it appears, as is observed by the Rev. Dr. Reck, a philologist,[236] that the Sauki, Musquake, Kickapuh, Ojibua, and Krih tribes belong together—a circumstance that has long been known. The speech of the Wasaji [Osage], Konsa, Oto, Omaha, Punca, Dacota, Assiniboin, and Mandan tribes appear to be only dialects of the Dacota (Sioux) linguistic group, of which the last, which I can give most completely, has been but little known. The ten remaining tribes seem to be more foreign to one another—only between the Blackfoot and Snake (Shoshone) dialects, do we find word relationships. There are likewise many similarities between the Mandan and Minnitarri languages; but these, as I was repeatedly assured, arose only after the two peoples had lived near each other, as I have already related elsewhere in the account of my travels. The name of the deity is "manito" among the Musquake [Fox], Sauki, Kickapuh, Ojibua, and Krih tribes, all of which belong to the Algonkin, or Algic linguistic group; among the seven tribes of the Dacota group, it is "wakonda," or "wakanda," which has the same or a similar meaning in half of the tribes mentioned. The word for water is very similar among most of these people, and the name of the tobacco pipe is the same or similar in half of the dialects.

First and last, various corrections have been made in these lists; yet they remain incomplete, and further observation will add many new corrections. I must, therefore, as always, request consideration from learned critics. Finally, I must note that if in the body of my narrative some words are not written as in the vocabularies, the spelling of the latter is to be preferred.[237]