PREFACE.
The study of American Ethnology has always been fettered by the want of anything like reliable grammars and dictionaries, and while compelled to rely on scanty and erroneous vocabularies must ever remain in its infancy. Yet a vast number of tribes were the scenes of missionary labors of zealous and educated men who carefully studied the language of their flocks and have left behind them grammatical treatises and dictionaries more or less complete, the value of which in a philological point of view over the random words taken down in a few hours by a traveller, must be too apparent to need any discussion or proof. It is time that ethnologists should appeal for the Algonquin to some better authority than La Hontan, for Huron to something more full than Sagard. Many works have fallen into my hands which I deem it important to the cause of science to put within the reach of scholars; and the present volume will be a specimen of this Library of American Linguistics. The encouragement of a few will enable me to carry out the plan, and on them I rely, promising to perform my task of editing with all possible fidelity to the original.
The original manuscript of the present volume is preserved in the Mazarin Library at Paris, and is supposed to be of the close of the seventeenth century. It is apparently the work of one of the Jesuit Fathers whose missions in New York extended from the middle of the seventeenth to the close of the first decade in the succeeding century.
A copy was carefully made under the supervision of my kind friend, the Rev. Felix Martin of the Society of Jesus, who on his return to Canada submitted it to the Oblate Father Antoine, missionary at the Sault St. Louis. This competent Mohawk scholar on comparing it with specimens of the various dialects at his mission, and an analysis of the five Iroquois dialects, pronounced it to be Onondaga, noting as the most striking differences the substitution of h for the Mohawk r, and in the preterites of i for the Mohawk on.
A comparison with various vocabularies of the tribes which composed the "Complete Cabin" left me under no doubt as to the correctness of this opinion, and I have accordingly styled it an Onondaga-French Dictionary.
The fuller and later labors of Zeisberger and Pyrlaeus give us the same language half a century further down the stream of time, enabling the ethnologist to acquire a full knowledge of its genius, structure and limits.
The language as here given is singularly free from European words; not even Ni8 the general corruption of Dieu being given for God. The conjugations are not however as full as in other treatises on these dialects, lacking three of the fifteen persons usually given in each tense, and what is still more peculiar all the verbs are of the paradigm K, none being found of that in W.
The work is here produced as it was in the original, no liberty having been taken, except that of throwing together in front some grammatical notes interspersed through the work, chiefly at the end of the letter A, and under the words Nom, Pronom, etc., and the insertion in brackets under their respective letters of some words grouped in these notes. The object of this will be apparent, as it avoids confusion and facilitates reference.
NEW YORK, Jan., 1860. J.G.S.
Note du transcripteur: Le text Onontagué contient un caractère inusité ayant la forme d'un 8 avec la partie supérieure ouverte. A défaut de pouvoir reproduire ce caractère, nous avons utilisé le 8. L'auteur ne donne aucune indication sur la prononciation de ce caractère. On trouvera aussi les voyelles e, a et o parfois accentuées d'un trait horizontal.
Transcriber's note: The Onondaga text contains an unusual character that has the shape of a 8 open at the top. Being unable to reproduce that sign, we have used the 8. The author does not provide any indication as to the pronunciation of that letter. The vowels a, e and o are also occasionally accentuated with a dash.