[125] Carver says that there are in North America, four different languages, the Iroquois to the east, the Chippeway or Algonkin to the northwest, the Naudowessie to the west, and the Cherokee, &c. to the south. Travels, ch. 17, Capt. Carver, though he appears to have been in general an accurate observer, resided too short a time among the Indians to have a correct knowledge of their languages. [Mr. Heckewelder quotes here and elsewhere from “Three Years’ Travels through the Interior Parts of North America for more than Five Thousand Miles, &c.,” by Capt. Jonathan Carver of the Provincial Troops in America, Phila., 1796. Those tribes of the Naudowessies among whom Carver resided for five months, dwelt about the River St. Pierre, 200 miles above its junction with the Mississippi. This was the extreme westerly point reached by the adventurous traveller. The entire nation of the Naudowessies, according to Carver, mustered upwards of 2000 fighting men.]
[126] Le grand Voyage du pays des Hurons, par Samuel Sagard, Paris, 1632. To which is added, a Dictionary of the Huron language, with a preface.
[127] Philos. Trans. Abr., vol. lxiii., p. 142.
[128] Hist. of the Five Nations, p. 14.
[129] Barton’s New Views, Ed. 1798. Prelim. Disc., p. 32.
[130] The late Dr. Barton, in the work above quoted, append., p. 3,[132] seems to doubt this fact, and relies on a series of numerals which I once communicated to him, and was found among the papers of the late Rev. Mr. Pyrlæus. But it is by no means certain that those numerals were taken from the language of the Nanticokes, and the vocabularies above mentioned leave no doubt as to the origin of that dialect.
[131] Letter v.
[132] For “page 3” read “page 5.”
[133] Letter xxv.
[134] He says that it is not copious, and is only adapted to the necessities and conveniences of life. These are the ideas which strangers and philosophers, reasoning à priori, entertain of Indian languages; but those who are well acquainted with them think very differently. And yet the Baron says that the Algonquin is “the finest and the most universal language on the Continent.”