Dear Sir.—In your letter of the 27th of May you have said that you believed the Delaware nation were those whom the Baron La Hontan meant to designate by the name of Algonkins. In a subsequent letter, (June 20th,) you seem to consider them as distinct nations, but nearly allied to each other; you say you are not well acquainted with their language, which is not the same with that of the Lenape, though there is a considerable affinity between them. Upon the whole I suppose that you have meant to apply the denomination Algonkins, not only to the Delawares proper, but to all the nations and tribes of the same family.
This has led me to consider who those Algonkins might be that La Hontan speaks of, and upon the best investigation that I have been able to make of the subject, I am inclined to believe that La Hontan’s Algonkins are properly those whom we call Chippeways, a family or branch of the Delawares, but not the Delawares themselves. I first turned to Dr. Barton’s “New Views of the Origin of the Nations and Tribes of America,” in which I found that he considered the Delawares and Chippeways as two distinct people; but when I came to the specimens which he gives of their languages in his Vocabularies, I found no difference whatever in the idioms of the two nations. Pursuing the enquiry further, I compared the Vocabulary of the Chippeway language given by Carver in his travels, and that of the Algonkin by La Hontan, and was much astonished to find the words in each language exactly alike, without any difference but what arises from the French and English orthography. The words explained by the two authors, happen also to be precisely the same, and are arranged in the same alphabetical order. So that either Carver is a gross plagiarist, who has pretended to give a list of Chippeway words and has only copied the Algonkin words given by La Hontan, or the Chippeways and Algonkins are one and the same people. I shall be very glad to have your opinion on this subject.
I find in Zeisberger’s Grammar something that I cannot well comprehend. It is the verb “n’dellauchsi” which he translates “I live, move about,” or “I so live that I move about.” Pray, is this the only verb in the Delaware language, which signifies “to live,” and have the Indians no idea of “life,” but when connected with “locomotion”?
Is the W in the Delaware, as your Missionaries write it, to be pronounced like the same letter in German, or like the English W and the French ou? If this letter has the German sound, then it is exactly the same as that of our V; in that case I am astonished that the Delawares cannot pronounce the F, the two sounds being so nearly alike.
I am, &c.
LETTER XIV.
FROM MR. HECKEWELDER.
Bethlehem, 22d July, 1816.
Dear Sir.—I received at the same time your two letters of the 13th and 18th inst., the last by our friend Dr. Wistar. I think you are wrong to complain of the little importance attached by the learned of Europe to the study of Indian languages and of the false ideas which some of them have conceived respecting them. The truth is that sufficient pains have not been taken in this country to make them known. Our Missionaries have, indeed, compiled grammars and dictionaries of those idioms, but more with a view to practical use and to aid their fellow-labourers in the great work of the conversion of the Indians to Christianity, than in order to promote the study of the philosophy of language. They have neither sought fame nor profit, and therefore their compositions have remained unknown except in the very limited circle of our religious society. It belongs to the literary associations of America to pursue or encourage those studies in a more extended point of view, and I shall be happy to aid to the utmost of my power the learned researches of the American Philosophical Society.
Your remarks on Lord Monboddo’s opinion respecting the Indian languages, and on Father Sagard’s work, on which that opinion is founded, I believe to be correct. I am not acquainted with the language of the Hurons, which I have always understood to be a dialect of that of the Iroquois, or at least to be derived from the same stock, and I cannot conceive why it should be so poor and so imperfect as the good Father describes it, while its kindred idiom, the Iroquois, is directly the reverse. At least, it was so considered by Mr. Zeisberger, who was very well acquainted with it. Sir William Johnson thought the same, and I believe you will find his opinion on the subject in one of the Volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Society of London.[279] Colden, in his History of the Five Nations, says “that the verbs of that language are varied, but in a manner so different from the Greek and Latin, that his informant could not discover by what rule it was done.”[280] I suspect his informant had not yet acquired a very profound knowledge of the Iroquois; but from his imperfect description of their verbs, I am very nearly convinced that they are formed on the same model with those of the Lenni Lenape, which Mr. Zeisberger has well described in his Grammar of that language. Colden praises this idiom in other respects; he says that “the Six Nations compound their words without end, whereby their language becomes sufficiently copious.” This is true also of the Delawares.
The Hurons are the same people whom we call Wyandots; the Delawares call them Delamattenos. I am inclined to believe that the tribe whom we call Naudowessies, and the French Sioux, who are said to live to the west or north-west of Lake Superior, are a branch of the Hurons; for the rivers which we call Huron, (of which there are three)[281] are called by the Chippeways, Naduwewi, or Naudowessie Sipi. But of this I cannot be sure; though I would rather conclude that Naudowessie is the Chippeway name for all the Wyandots or Hurons. It is a fact which, I think, deserves to be ascertained. It is a very common error to make several Indian nations out of one, by means of the different names by which it is known.