Of course, there are many tracts of thought and learning familiar to us now which were utterly unknown to the American aborigines, and not less so to our own forefathers a few centuries ago. It would be very unfair to compare the dictionary of an Indian language with the last edition of Webster’s Unabridged. But take the English dictionaries of the latter half of the sixteenth century, before Spenser and Shakespeare wrote, and compare them with the Mexican vocabulary of Molina, which contains about 13,000 words, or with the Maya vocabulary of the convent of Motul, which presents over 20,000, both prepared at that date, and your procedure will be just, and you will find it not disadvantageous to the American side of the question.
The deficiency in abstract terms is generally true of these languages. They did not have them, because they had no use for them—and the more blessed was their condition. European languages have been loaded with several thousand such by metaphysics and mysticism, and it has required many generations to discover that they are empty windbags, full of sound and signifying nothing.
Yet it is well known to students that the power of forming abstracts is possessed in a remarkable degree by many native languages. The most recondite formulæ of dogmatic religion, such as the definition of the Trinity and the difference between consubstantiation and transubstantiation, have been translated into many of them without introducing foreign words, and in entire conformity with their grammatical structure. Indeed, Dr. Augustin de la Rosa, of the University of Guadalajara, says the Mexican is peculiarly adapted to render these metaphysical subtleties.
I have been astonished that some writers should bring up the primary meaning of a word in an American language in order to infer the coarseness of its secondary meaning. This is a strangely unfair proceeding, and could be directed with equal effect against our own tongues. Thus, I read lately a traveler who spoke hardly of an Indian tribe because their word for “to love” was a derivative from that meaning “to buy,” and thence “to prize.” But what did the Latin amare, and the English to love, first mean? Carnally living together is what they first meant, and this is not a nobler derivation than that of the Indian. Even yet, when the most polished of European nations, that one which most exalts la grande passion, does not distinguish in language between loving their wives and liking their dinners, but uses the same word for both emotions, it is scarcely wise for us to indulge in much latitude of inference from such etymologies.
Such is the general character of American languages, and such are the reasons why they should be preserved and studied. The field is vast and demands many laborers to reap all the fruit that it promises. It is believed at present that there are about two hundred wholly independent stocks of languages among the aborigines of this continent. They vary most widely in vocabulary, and seemingly scarcely less so in grammar.
Besides this, each of these stocks is subdivided into dialects, each distinguished by its own series of phonetic changes, and its own new words. What an opportunity is thus offered for the study of the natural evolution of language, unfettered by the petrifying art of writing!
This is the case which I present to you, and for which I earnestly solicit your consideration. And that I may add weight to my appeal, I close by quoting the words of one of America’s most distinguished scientists, Professor William Dwight Whitney, of Yale College, who writes to this effect:
“The study of American languages is the most fruitful and the most important branch of American Archæology.”
WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT’S RESEARCHES IN AMERICAN LANGUAGES.[[266]]
Contents.—What led Humboldt toward the American tongues—Progress of his studies—Fundamental doctrine of his philosophy of language—His theory of the evolution of languages—Opinion on American languages—His criterion of the relative perfection of languages—Not abundance of forms—Nor verbal richness—American tongues not degenerations—Humboldt’s classification of languages—Psychological origin of Incorporation in language—Its shortcomings—In simple sentences—In compound sentences—Absence of true formal elements—The nature of the American verb.