idioms. He refers to the Caribbean dictionary compiled by Father Breton, and to the grammar of the Araucan or Chilian language appended by Molina to his history of Chili, as furnishing proof that these two languages are polysynthetic in the highest degree, and bear in their forms the greatest analogy to the languages of North America. A specimen of this analogy is one word in the Araucano, iduancloclavin, expressing a whole sentence, I do not like to eat with him.' The Lenni Lenape likewise express the same sense in one word, which is n'schingiwipoma.

I may observe that all the latest researches into the structure of the American languages, of which the results have been made known, have tended to confirm the opinion of Heckewelder and Du Ponceau, that the grammatical construction of all the American languages is founded on similar principles. There is certainly a general resemblance in the syntactical type of many, and perhaps in the languages most widely spread, but there is no proof of the universal prevalence of these phenomena. For elucidation of this subject we must await the great work on the American languages of the Baron von Humboldt and Professor Buschmann. I am assured by M. Buschmann that a certain number of languages are excepted from the general observation of resemblance in type. To reconcile the great variation of external appearances with the general character will be the last aim of Professor Buschmann's researches, and "this promises," as he says, "to enrich philological science and ethnology with a theorem as yet unknown."

We may, however, rest satisfied for the present with the fact, established by undoubted proofs, that all the great families of nations in the New World belong to the number whose languages are analogous.

SECTION V.-General Observations on the Relations of the American Languages.

It is very difficult to explain in a satisfactory manner the phenomena presented by the American languages; I mean

the great analogy of grammatical structure and the immense diversity of words.

The former seems to argue unity of origin or of culture. It cannot be imagined that the American races have any organic peculiarity which could lead them to construct languages of similar formation in all parts of the continent, on the supposition that these languages have been formed separately among as many different tribes or nations as there are distinct idioms. We cannot escape from the conviction that they must have been developed under some common and generally pervading influence. But if they thus originated, it is obvious to suppose that they must have had a corresponding resemblance in roots and words in general.

It is possible that the diversity of roots may be found hereafter less than it is supposed to be. A number of vocabularies belonging chiefly to North American races have lately been carefully collated by Dr. Latham. The result of this comparison has been the discovery of many words in most of the vocabularies which so nearly resemble as to indicate, as far as these words are concerned, a common origin. It does not appear that these words, which, belonging to different groupes of languages, are yet constituent parts of their respective vocabularies, extend in any case to a considerable proportion of the primitive terms. But still they are on the whole very numerous, and, when taken in connection with the grammatical analogy, they tend to increase the evidence arising from this consideration.

There are peculiarities in the very nature of the American languages which are likely to produce great varieties in words, and to obliterate in a comparatively short period the traces of resemblance.

1. The great length of words in the American languages is unfavourable to the preservation of resemblance between vocabularies of separated tribes. It has been observed by the commander of the late Exploring Expedition of the United States, that in a country of no great extent near Walla-walla in the Oregon territory, in petty tribes who had been within a limited space of time mostly at peace with each other, and had had much intercourse, very few could understand their

immediate neighbours. The apparent cause of this discrepancy is said to be the length of the American words, which are always abbreviated in conversation. It is remarked that one tribe of Indians are known very soon to acquire the language of another.* It is impossible, in fact, that the memory can be so tenacious of long polysyllabic words as of shorter ones; and if the habit prevails of truncating words at the beginnings and endings without rule or limit, it is very obvious that any resemblance that existed between them originally may soon be lost. In the languages of Asia and Europe roots are either monosyllables or at most dissyllables, and these are not so much lengthened out by additional syllables as the American languages. Hence they are better retained in memory. It is in fact principally in words of not more than two syllables that those resemblances exist which are so striking when the different members of the same family, as of the Indo-European or the Syro-Arabian groupe of languages, are compared.

2. It is easy to perceive that the agglutinative system of formation, which is the principle of structure belonging to the American languages, must tend effectually to destroy resemblance. We have seen that it is the custom in conversing in the Delaware language to aggregate some parts merely of as many words as may occur to the mind of the speaker in order to construct for temporary use a compound word that shall comprehend all the circumstances of any action. Thus, the expression, fetch us in a canoe,' is made up of certain truncated parts of the several words included in what we should call a sentence, but of which the Americans must need make one word. In this hol stands for amochol. It must soon happen among people who have the habit of thus expressing themselves, that only those persons who live near to each other and have some acquaintance and frequent intercourse can readily make themselves mutually intelligible. They must apparently know something of each other's thoughts and habits of mind before they can understand such casual and arbitrary enunciations of meaning, in which words

* American Exploring Expedition, vol. iv. p. 468.

It

newly coined for the occasion are of perpetual occurrence. does not appear certain that the compound words are formed on any regular etymological principle, such as that of preserving entire the roots of words thus aggregated or agglutinated together. And even if this rule originally existed, it must, from the nature of things and the necessity of expressing new ideas, be violated so often as to be in a practical point of view entirely lost.

We have seen that this peculiarity of structure in language, which has been elucidated as existing in the Delaware idiom by Heckewelder and Du Ponceau, is not confined to one family of languages in America, but is common to all the known idioms of that continent. An example has been cited from the idiom of Chili.

3. Another cause which has been observed to render obscure and difficult of detection the original connections between American languages, and which must always have a tendency to increase or create differences in the vocabulary of idioms really cognate in their origin, is the imaginative and rhetorical disposition of the native people of the New World. In a barbarous state of society, and principally in one of early and imperfect but growing refinement of mind, the imagination has more influence in the formation of language than in a more advanced stage. When scientific accuracy and precision of thought and expression are required, and it becomes the habit of men to aim at such acquirements, the exercise of the imagination is restrained within very narrow limits, Observation and discrimination are employed. But figures and metaphors abound in the discourse of simple people, and hence the eloquence for which the American nations are celebrated. As a matter of fact it is the habit of the American tribes to substitute for words epithets which become conventionally established as ordinary terms. Dr. Scouler has observed that in the languages of the north-west coast in particular, the names even of simple and familiar objects, such as the sun, moon, day, and night, &c., are not simple nouns or names, but not unfrequently compound words or epithets. In this case he suggests, unless we possess an intimate knowledge of the influences of the verbs, and the nature of the indeclinable

particles, we might mistake two idioms nearly allied for primarily separate languages.*

An instance of the greater activity of the imagination in the formation of language is the practice, which, as Dr. Scouler assures us, prevails among the coast tribes of the north-west, of giving names to articles of European manufacture that are introduced among them by traders. These names are not, as among most rude nations, derived from the foreign terms for the same objects, but they are descriptive epithets formed in their own languages, and consequently different in the idiom of each particular tribe. For example, the name for a gimlet among the Chemesyans is a compound formed from the noun, which means 'a hole' or 'aperture,' and a verb signifying to make.' The compound name means 'a holemaker.' In many languages spoken by other natives in different parts of the world, we find the names of objects introduced by foreigners, derived from the idioms of the people who first made these objects known, and thus we trace the terms for metals and grains and fruits from the idiom of some trading nation. The American nations, by exercising their inventive faculty, have thus deprived us of one opportunity of tracing analogies which are elsewhere discernible. It is evident that this habit must have had much influence in diversifying their languages.

The combined influence of these causes may be supposed to have occasioned the diversity of vocabulary so striking among the American languages when taken in connexion with their known grammatical analogy.

* Dr. Scouler on the Languages of the North-west Coast of America. Geogr. Journ. 1842.