The most eminent American student[1875] of this field in the early half of this century was Albert Gallatin. He began his observations in 1823, at the instance of Humboldt, and two years later he took advantage of a representative convocation of Indian tribes, then held in Washington, to continue his studies of their speech. In 81 tribes brought under his notice he found what he thought to be 27 or 28 linguistic families. This was a wider survey than had before been made, and he regretted that he was not privileged to profit by the vocabularies collected by Lewis and Clark, which had unfortunately been lost. At the request of the Amer. Antiquarian Society, he wrote out and enlarged this study in the second volume of their Collections in 1836, and advanced views that he never materially changed, believing in a very remote Asiatic origin of the tongues, and without excepting the Eskimos from his conclusions. In 1845, in his Notes on the semi-civilized nations of Mexico, his conclusions were much the same, but he made an exception in favor of the Otomis. At this time he counted more than a hundred languages, similar in structure but different in vocabularies, and he argued that a very long period was necessary thus to differentiate the tongues. At the age of eighty-seven Gallatin gave his final results in vol. ii. of the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society (1848). Gallatin published a review[1876] of the volume on Ethnography and Philology, which had been prepared by Horatio Hale as the seventh volume of the Publications of the Wilkes United States Exploring Expedition (1838-42), and Hale himself, then in the beginning of his reputation as a linguistic scholar,[1877] published some papers of his own in the same volume of the Transactions.[1878]
The two Americans who have done more than others, without the aid of the government, to organize aboriginal linguistic studies are Dr. John Gilmary Shea of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Dr. Daniel Garrison Brinton of Philadelphia. Of Shea’s Library of American Linguistics he has given an account in the Smithsonian Rept., 1861.[1879]
Dr. Brinton has set forth the purposes of his linguistic studies in an address before the Pennsylvania Historical Society, American Aboriginal Languages and why we should study them (Philad., 1885,—from the Pennsylvania Magazine of History, 1885, p. 15). In starting his Library of Aboriginal American Literature, he announced his purpose to put within the reach of scholars authentic materials for the study of the languages and culture of the native races, each work to be the production of the native mind, and to be printed in the original tongue, with a translation and notes, and to have some intrinsic historical or ethnological importance.[1880]
The other considerable collections are both French. Alphonse L. Pinart published a Bibliothèque de linguistique et d’ethnographie Américaines (Paris and San Francisco, 1875-82).[1881]
The publishing house of Maisonneuve et Compagnie of Paris, which has done more than any other business firm to advance these studies, has conducted a Collection linguistique Américaine, of much value to American philologists.[1882]
Other French studies have attracted attention. Pierre Etienne Duponceau published a Mémoire sur le système grammatical des langues de quelques nations indiennes de l’Amérique du Nord (Paris, 1838).[1883] He conducted a correspondence with the Rev. John Heckewelder respecting the American tongues, which is published in the Transactions of the Amer. Philosophical Society (Phil., 1819), and he translated Zeisberger’s Delaware Grammar.
The studies of the Abbé Jean André Cuoq have been upon the Algonquin dialects,[1884] and published mainly in the Actes de la Société philologique (Paris, 1869 and later). His monographic Etudes philologiques sur quelques langues sauvages de l’Amérique was printed at Montreal, 1866. It was the result of twenty years’ missionary work among the Iroquois and Algonquins, and besides a grammar contains a critical examination of the works of Duponceau and Schoolcraft. Lucien Adam has been very comprehensive in his researches, his studies being collected under the titles of Etudes sur six langues Américaines (Paris, 1878) and Examen grammatical comparé de seize langues Américaines (Paris, 1878).[1885]
The papers of the Count Hyacinthe de Charencey have been in the first instance for the most part printed in the Revue de Linguistique, the Annales de Philosophie Chrétienne, and the Mémoires de l’Académie de Caen, and have wholly pertained to the tongues south of New Mexico; but his principal studies are collected in his Mélanges de philologie et de paléographie Américaines (Paris, 1883).[1886]
The most distinguished German worker in this field, if we except the incidental labors of Alexander and William von Humboldt,[1887] is J. C. E. Buschmann, whose various linguistic labors cover the wide field of the west coast of North America from Alaska to the Isthmus, with some of the regions adjacent on the east. He published his papers in Berlin between 1853 and 1864, and many of them in the Mémoires de l’Académie de Berlin.[1888]