LANGUAGES.--S. How desirable it would be if so simple a system could be applied to language.
G. Ah! it was not designed by the Creator. He evidently designed diversity. I have recently received some of the native vocabularies from Mackenzie--the Blackfeet and Fall Indians, &c. Parker had furnished in his travels vocabularies of the Nez Perces, Chinooks, &c.
LEADING FAMILIES.--S. The term Algonquin, as commonly understood, is not sufficiently comprehensive for the people indicated.
G. I intended to extend it by adding the term "Lenape." The Choctaw and the Muscogee is radically the same. The Chickasaw and Choctaw has been previously deemed one. Du Pratz wrote about the Mobilian language without even suspecting that it was the Choctaw.
G. The National Institute at Paris has printed Mr. Duponceau's Prize Essay on the Algonquin. Dr. James wrote unsuccessfully for the prize. Duponceau first mentioned you to me. He has freely translated from your lectures on the substantive, which gives you a European reputation.
PUBLISHERS ON PHILOLOGY.--G. There is no patronage for such works here. Germany and France are the only countries where treatises on philology can be published. It is Berlin or Paris, and of these Berlin holds the first place. In Great Britain, as in this country, there is not sufficient interest on the subject for booksellers to take hold of mere works of fact of this sort. They are given to reading tales and light literature, as here.
ORAL TALES OF THE INDIANS--G. Your "Indian Tales" and your "Hieroglyphics" would sell here; but grammatical materials on the languages will not do, unless they can be arranged as appendices.
S. I urged Governor Cass to write on this subject, and he declined.
G. Does he understand the languages?
S. Pronouns, in our Indian languages, are of a more permanent character than philologists have admitted. They endure in some form, in kindred dialects, the most diverse.