1. "That the American languages in general, are rich in words and in grammatical forms, and that in their complicated construction, the greatest order, method and regularity prevail.
2. "That these complicated forms, which I call poly synthetic, appear to exist in all those languages, from Greenland to Cape Horn.
3. "That these forms appear to differ essentially from those of the ancient and modern languages of the old hemisphere."
In a late learned dissertation[14] on this subject, it is stated that in nearly the whole territory contained in the United States, and in British and Russian America, there are only eight great families, each speaking a distinct language, subdivided in many instances, into a number of dialects belonging to the same stock. These are the Eskimaux, the Athapascas (or Cheppeyans,) the Black Feet, the Sioux, the Algonkin-Lenape, the Iroquois, the Cherokee, and the Mobilian or Chahta-Muskhog. The Shawanoes belong to the Algonkin-Lenape family, and speak a dialect of that language. It bears a strong affinity to the Mohican and the Chippeway, but more especially the Kickapoo. Valuable vocabularies of the Shawanoe language have been given by Johnston and by Gallatin in their contributions to the American Antiquarian Society, which may be consulted by those disposed to prosecute the study of this subject.
The Shawanoes have been known since the first discovery of this country, as a restless, wandering people, averse to the pursuits of agriculture, prone to war and the chase. They have, within that period, successively occupied the southern shore of lake Erie, the banks of the Ohio and Mississippi, portions of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, and eastern Pennsylvania; then again the plains of Ohio, and now the small remnant of them that remains, are established west of Missouri and Arkansas. They have been involved in numerous bloody wars with other tribes; and for near half a century, resisted with a bold, ferocious spirit, and an indomitable 021 hatred, the progress of the white settlements in Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and especially Kentucky. The Shawanoes have declined more rapidly in numbers[15] than any other tribe of Indians known to the whites. This has been, and we suppose justly, attributed to their wandering habits and their continual wars. Although one of their villages is said once to have contained four thousand souls, their present number does not exceed eighteen hundred. They have ever been considered a courageous, powerful and faithless race; who hare claimed for themselves a pre-eminence not only over other tribes, but also over the whites.[16] Their views in regard to this superiority were briefly set forth by one of their chiefs at a convention held at fort Wayne, in 1803.
"The Master of Life," said he, "who was himself an Indian, made the Shawanoes before any other of the human race; and they sprang from his brain: he gave them all the knowledge he himself possessed, and placed them upon the great island, and all the other red people are descended from the Shawanoes. After he had made the Shawanoes, he made the French and English out of his breast, the Dutch out of his feet, and the long-knives out of his hands. All these inferior races of men he made white and placed them beyond the stinking lake.[17]
"The Shawanoes for many ages continued to be masters of the continent, using the knowledge they had received from the Great Spirit in such a manner as to be pleasing to him, and to secure their own happiness. In a great length of time, however, they became corrupt, and the Master of Life told them that he would take away from them the knowledge which they possessed, and give it to the white people, to be restored, when by a return to good principles they would deserve it. Many ages after that, they saw something white approaching their shores; at first they took it for a great bird, but they soon found it to be a monstrous 022 canoe filled with the very people who had got the knowledge which belonged to the Shawanoes. After these white people landed, they were not content with having the knowledge which belonged to the Shawanoes, but they usurped their lands also; they pretended, indeed, to have purchased these lands; but the very goods they gave for them, were more the property of the Indians than the white people, because the knowledge which enabled them to manufacture these goods actually belonged to the Shawanoes: but these things will soon have an end. The Master of Life is about to restore to the Shawanoes both their knowledge and their rights, and he will trample the long knives under his feet."
It has been already stated that, for a series of years, the several tribes of Indians residing in the territory now forming the state of Ohio, made violent opposition to the settlement of the whites, west of the Alleghanies. Among the most formidable of these were the Shawanoes. The emigrants, whether male or female, old or young, were every where met by the torch, the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. The war-cry of the savage was echoed from shore to shore of the beautiful Ohio, whose waters were but too often reddened with the blood of women and children. Many of those who escaped the perils of the river, and had reared their log-cabins amid the cane-brakes of Kentucky, were doomed to encounter the same ruthless foe, and fell victims to the same unrelenting cruelty. While the feelings are shocked at these dreadful scenes of blood and carnage, and the Indian character rises in hideous deformity before the mind, it is not to be forgotten that there are many mitigating circumstances to be pleaded in behalf of the aborigines. They were an ignorant people, educated alone for war, without the lights of civilization, without the attributes of mercy shed abroad by the spirit of christianity. They were contending for their homes and their hunting grounds—the tombs of their forefathers—the graves of their children. They saw the gradual, but certain, encroachments of the whites upon their lands; and they had the sagacity to perceive, that unless this mighty wave of emigration 023 was arrested, it would overwhelm them. They fought as savage nature will fight, with unflinching courage and unrelenting cruelty. But it was not alone this encroachment upon their lands, which roused their savage passions. The wanton aggressions of the whites oftentimes provoked the fearful retaliation of the red-man. The policy of the United States towards the Indians has generally been of a pacific and benevolent character; but, in carrying out that policy, there have been many signal and inexcusable failures. The laws enacted by congress for the protection of the rights of the Indians, and to promote their comfort and civilization, have, in a great variety of cases, remained a dead letter upon the statute book. The agents of the government have often proved unfaithful, and have looked much more to their own pecuniary interests, than to the honest execution of the public trusts confided to them. Nor is this all. There has ever been found upon the western frontiers, a band of unprincipled men who have set at defiance the laws of the United States, debauched the Indians with ardent spirits, cheated them of their property, and then committed upon them aggressions marked with all the cruelty and wanton bloodshed which have distinguished the career of the savage. The history of these aggressions would fill a volume. It is only necessary to recall to the mind of the reader, the horrible murder of the Conestoga Indians, in December 1763, by some Pennsylvanians; the dark tragedy enacted on the banks of he Muskingum, at a later period, when the Moravian Indians, at the three villages of Schoenbrun, Salem, and Gnadenhuetten, were first disarmed and then deliberately tomahawked by Williamson and his associates; the unprovoked murder of the family of Logan; the assassination of Bald Eagle, of the gallant and high-souled Cornstalk, and his son Elinipsico: we need but recall these, from the long catalogue of similar cases, to satisfy every candid mind, that rapine, cruelty and a thirst for human blood are not peculiarly the attributes of the American Indian.
But there are still other causes which have aroused and kept in activity, the warlike passions of the Indians. They have been successively subjected to English, 024 Dutch, French and Spanish influence. The agents of these different powers, as well as the emigrants from them, either from interest or a spirit of mischievous hostility, have repeatedly prompted the Indians to arm themselves against the United States. The great principle of the Indian wars, for the last seventy years, has been the preservation of their lands. On this, the French, English and Spanish have in turn excited them to active resistance against the expanding settlements of the whites. It was on the principle of recovering their lands, that the French were their allies between the commencement of hostilities with the colonies, in 1754, and the peace of 1762; and subsequently kept up an excitement among them until the beginning of the revolution. From this period, the English took the place of the French, and instigated them in a similar manner. Their views and feelings on this point, may be gathered from their own words: