| English. | Hoopah. | Navaho. | Jecorilla. |
|---|---|---|---|
| head | okheh | hut-se | it-se. |
| forehead | hotsintah | hut-tah | pin-nay. |
| face | haunith | hun-ne | —— |
| eye | huanah | hunnah | pindah. |
| nose | huntchu | hutchin | witchess. |
| teeth | howwa | howgo | egho. |
| tongue | sastha | hotso | ezahte. |
| ear | hotcheweh | hutchah | wickyah. |
| hair | tsewok | hotse | itse. |
| neck | hosewatl | huckquoss | wickcost. |
| arm | hoithlani | hutcon | witse. |
| hand | hollah | hullah | wislah. |
Here the initial combination of h and some other letter is (after the manner of so many American tongues) the possessive pronoun—alike in both the Navaho and Hoopah; many of the roots being also alike. Now the Navaho and Jecorilla are Athabaskan, and the Hoopah is probably Athabaskan also.
The Tahlewah and Ehnek are but little like each other, and little like any other language.
Although not connected with the languages of California, there is a specimen in the volume before us of a form of speech which has been already noticed in these Transactions, and which is by no means clearly defined. In the 28th Number, a vocabulary of the Ahnenin language is shown to be the same as that of the Fall-Indians of Umfreville. In Gallatin this Ahnenin vocabulary is quoted as Arapaho, or Atsina. Now it is specially stated that these Arapaho or Atsina Indians are those who are also (though inconveniently or erroneously) called the Gros Ventres, the Big Bellies and the Minitares of the Prairie—all names for the Indians about the Falls of the Saskachewan, and consequently of Indians far north.
But this was only one of the populations named Arapaho. Other Arapahos are found on the head-waters of the Platte and Arkansas. Who were these? Gallatin connected them at once with those of the Saskachewan—but it is doubtful whether he went on better grounds than the name. A vocabulary was wanted.
The volume in question supplies one—collected by Mr. J. S. Smith. It shows that the two Arapahos are really members of one and the same class—in language as well as in name.
Upon the name itself more light requires to be thrown. In an alphabetical list of Indian populations in the same volume with the vocabulary, from which we learn that the new specimen is one of the southern (and not the northern) Arapaho, it is stated that the word means "pricked" or "tattooed." In what language? Perhaps in that of the Arapaho themselves; perhaps in that of the Sioux—since it is a population of the Sioux class which is in contact with both the Arapahos.
Again—if the name be native, which of the two divisions uses it? the northern or the southern? or both? If both use it, how comes the synonym Ahnenin? How, too, comes the form Atsina? Is it a typographical error? The present writer used the same MS. with Gallatin and found the name to be Ahnenin.
To throw the two Arapahos into one and the same class is only one step in our classification. Can they be referred to any wider and more general division? A Shyenne vocabulary is to be found in the same table; and Schoolcraft remarks that the two languages are allied. So they are. Now reasons have been given for placing the Shyenne in the great Algonkin class (Philolog. Trans., and Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, vol. ii. p. cxi.).
There are similar affinities with the Blackfoot. Now, in the paper of these Transactions already referred to, it is stated that the affinities of the Blackfoot "are miscellaneous; more, however, with the Algonkin tongues than with those of any recognized group[38]." Gallatin takes the same view (Transactions of American Ethnol. Soc. vol. ii. p. cxiii.).