A translation of the Christian Catechism of the diocese of Quebec, into the language of the Abanakis, who are seated at the village of St. Francis, in the district of Three Rivers. The Abanaki nation inhabit a wide district of country situated on the south of the river St. Lawrence, between the St. John’s of New Brunswick, and the River Richlieu, Canada.
CHAPTER III.—APPALACHIAN.
This groupe is established, provisionally, on a geographical principle, which considers in one family, all the tribes who formerly lived in the southern latitudes of the Appalachian range. It has not escaped notice, that there may be reasons for such a classification, on philological grounds. No one can have given attention to the subject without perceiving marked resemblances and affiliations, in the southern groupe of languages, such as exist between the Choctaw and the Chickesaw, and with more remoteness between the latter and the great Muscogee, or Creek family. Points of harmony in the principles of utterance, exist between all these tribes, even where coincidences in their vocabularies are reduced to but a few instances.
But it is clear that no classification, on philological principles, can be successfully attempted until we possess comparatively full and reliable vocabularies and grammars of all the tribes, cognate and diverse. When such a classification is established, it is apprehended it must rest, as a basis, on the Muscogee. The ancient confederacy of this type, had, in addition to the Muscogees, or Muscogulges proper, the Hitchitees and Coosadies. Events in their history, threw in the elements of the Utchees and the Natchez, both diverse tribes, and who cannot now comprehend the national language, without an interpreter.[A] The Apalaches, found by De Soto, were, if judged by the names which the narrator of his expedition employs, Muscogees. The Alabamas, who speak the Muscogee with some peculiarities, appear to have been of the Coosada branch. The Seminoles of modern days, are pure Creeks.[A] The Appalachicolas are of the same stock, without peculiarities. The Mobilians were pure Choctaw. The only really anomalous elements in this wide-spread groupe, are the Natchez and the Utchees, among the Creeks proper, and the Catawbas, with their congeners, the Yamasees, of South Carolina. If the latter be not found to have their analogies with the leading Muscogee stock, they occupied country at an early day at least, in the southern seaboard portions of the State, where some of the geographical names of the Muscogee language are still found. Philological researches are probably destined to discover in the Natchez and Utchees, membra disjecta of the Toltecan groupe, and thus to establish a historical link between the ancient Mexican and American, or United States Indians.
[A] Vide Marshall, 2d chief of the Creeks, March, 1848, War Office.
Of the Cherokees, their fixed geographical position in the hills and alpine valleys of the mountains; their compactness and permanency, their peaceful policy with respect to the southern Indians generally, and their language itself, appear to afford elements of a classification, of which the original members, like those of the Iroquois, whom they resemble in their original Totemic organization, the descent of the chieftaincy in the female line, and some small coincidences of language, must be sought far west, or south-west from the Mississippi.
The whole number of works received in the languages and dialects of this mixed groupe, is forty-five; of which, twenty are in the Cherokee, and printed in the Cherokee character; nineteen in the Choctaw; and four in the Creek. Translations, vocabularies, and historical or illustrative information respecting the Natchez, Utchees, and Catawbas, are of vital importance to the establishment of this groupe.
SECTION I.—CHEROKEE.
BOOKS AND TRANSLATIONS IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE CHEROKEES.
72.—The Gospel of St. John, in the Cherokee. 1 vol. 18mo. 101 p. Park Hill, Arkansas Mission Press, John Candy, printer. 2d edition, A. D. 1841.