Prominent among the topics of the initial discussion, was the work of John Dunn Hunter, a singular adventurer in the Indian country, or, perhaps, an early captive, who, after wandering to the Atlantic cities, where his harmless inefficiency of character gained no favorable attention, found his way to London, where the booksellers concocted a book of travels from him, in which the United States is unscrupulously traduced for its treatment of the Indians. The scathing which this person and his book received arises from its having fallen in the way of the business journeys of the critic to visit some of the principal scenes referred to; and among others, the residence of John Dunn, of Missouri, after whom he professed to be named, who utterly denied all knowledge of the man or of his purported adventures.
The question of the authenticity of the Indian traditions of Mr. Heckewelder, derived from a single tribe, and that tribe telling stories to salve up its own disastrous history, and the mere literary capacities of the man to put his materials in order, is propounded and examined in connection with the contemporary traditions and languages of other tribes. These traditions had been communicated to the Pennsylvania Historical Society, in 1816, and were published under the special auspices of Mr. Duponceau, in 1819. From the internal evidence of the letters themselves, the critic pronounces them to be reproductions of Mr. Duponceau himself; and it is an evidence of the aptness of this deduction to be told that Mr. Gallatin admitted (vide my Personal Memoirs, p. 623), that the letters of Mr. Heckewelder had all been rewritten previous to publication. It could no longer be a subject of admiration to philologists, that from such imperfect sources of information, that distinguished scholar should have pronounced the opinion that the Delaware language rather exceeds than falls short of the Greek and Latin in the affluence of syntactical forms and capacities of expression. Trans. Hist. and Lit. Com., Am. Philo. Soc., vol. i. p. 415.
XXII.
A Letter on the Origin of the Indian Race of America, and the Principles of their Mode of uttering Ideas; addressed to John Johnston, Esq., late of St. Mary's Falls, Michigan. By Dr. J. McDonnell, of Belfast, Ireland.
Belfast, April 16, 1817.
My Dear J.: I feel always as if I am guilty of some great crime, in not writing to you.
An account came to Sir Joseph Banks, of very curious rocks, with odd stripes and colors, having been seen, this last war, by sailors on the lakes, I think on Lake Superior.[ [268] Pray keep up your thoughts to the geography of rocks. I got some lately from Bombay, exactly ditto with our Causeway.[ [269]
I shall ever regret the not having seen your daughter. I think it likely that mingling the European blood and character with the Indian might bring out some superior traits of character. Lest my letter should altogether fail of presenting any useful point, I must put some questions to you that would be worth something if answered.
A man has published, in 1816, an octavo volume in Trenton (United States), the author's name Boudinot, to explain some things about the Indian nations, and, among other things, he fancies some resemblance between their languages and Hebrew. Baron Von Humboldt, a Prussian, was in Spanish America lately, and he found the natives had Hebrew opinions and usages, evidently things borrowed from Jewish doctrines. I don't want you to inquire much about their being of this extraction, but observe, for me, whether their languages have no pronouns, as one author, Colden, stated fifty years ago; and whether they are defective in the prepositions, as this Boudinot states; and whether those near you have any words, idioms, or traditions that are expressive of their early origin, or their connection with European nations.
In fact, I think you are better circumstanced, in most respects, than any other man that I ever heard of, to do something worth notice in that way; for, although you have not books, nor knowledge of many tongues, yet you could collect lists of great and radical words, expressed with proper letters, so that others could compare those words with Asiatic, and African, and European tongues, so as to enable mankind to judge of similitudes or dissimilitudes.