That the appreciation of differentiæ of this kind is wholly incapable of being arrived at à priori, but that it must be the result of a special induction by which we historically determine how one (or more) of certain undoubtedly allied divisions of the human species may want characteristics which occur in the others (and vice versâ) is a truth which requires a fuller recognition than it has found; since it is far easier for a writer to show in what customs two great sections of a population differ from one another, than to ascertain what that discrepancy imports. Whilst one, therefore, makes it a difference in kind, another considers it as one in degree only. The present writer, who has bestowed some pains on the special question of valuation or appreciation, generally speaking puts them low.
As the criticism respecting the general characteristics, has its bearing upon the relations of the American aborigines to those of the world at large, so that of the sectional ones determines our views as to their unity or non-unity among themselves. It is the same in both cases. It is an easy matter to say that the Athabaskans (for instance) burn their dead to ashes, whilst the Peruvians desiccate them into mummies; that the Nehannis treat their women with respect, whilst servitude, on the part of the female, is the rule elsewhere; or that (enterprise and industry being exceptional phænomena in the western hemisphere), the Waraws are navigators, and the Haidah islanders tradesmen; and easier still is it to discover that in populations which live on fishing, we miss certain elements of the social state of the hunter or agriculturist. The real difficulty is to take the exact measure of their value. Failing the data for doing this, the parallel statement of the points of agreement becomes a duty on the part of the ethnologist.
Now, in this respect, the phenomenon which has been noticed in Australia, reappears in America, viz.: a habit or custom, which shall not be found in more than one or two tribes in the neighbourhood of each other, shall appear, as if wholly independent of mutual imitation, at some other (perhaps some distant) part of the island. Such, in Australia, was the case of similar family names; and such in America is the remarkable distribution of the habits of flattening the head, and burying on elevated platforms; to say nothing of the two parallel forms of semicivilization in Mexico and Peru, so concordant on the whole, yet differing in so many details, and, evidently, separate and independent developments rather than the results of an extension of either one or the other as the original.
The same reasons which prevent us, in the present state of our knowledge, from drawing any inferences into the higher problems of ethnology from those manners and customs of the American Indians, which in the mere way of simple description give so much interest to the writings of the adventurous traveller, save us the necessity of exhibiting them in detail. No such economy, however, of time and paper is allowed in respect to a question which has already been more than once alluded to, viz.: the peculiarities of the American languages; peculiarities which are as remarkable in respect to the points wherein they agree, as they are in respect to the points wherein they differ—peculiarities, however, which, remarkable as they are, may easily be over-rated.
No preliminary is more necessary for this question than the distinction between a, the American languages as considered in respect to their roots or words, and b, the American languages as considered in respect to their grammatical structure. The clear perception of this is required on the part of the reader. On the other hand, the writer must remember that he is composing a work not on philology in general, but only upon such points of that science as illustrate ethnography. Hence the peculiarities of the American languages will not be considered in full; but all that will be done with them will consist in the selection of those phænomena which explain what has already been called the philological paradox of the American grammars being alike, whilst the American vocabularies differ.
1. And first in respect to the facts which account for the difference between the vocabularies. Here arise two questions—the determination of the extent to which such a difference really takes place, and the reasons for its reaching that extent whatever it is ascertained to be.
What follows, is a table representing the degree in which languages lying within so small a geographical area as the Uché, Natchez, and Adahi, may differ in their vocabularies.
Furthermore, had the two other conterminous languages of the Attacapas and the Chetimachas been added, the difference between the five would have been just the same as that between the three, i. e., they would have all differed from each other, as much as the Natchez and Uché, the Uché and Adahi, the Adahi and Natchez differ.