Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/198

 16J A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. in their councils is the only standard of language of our Indians. None can become fixed and stable, until that char- acter has been imparted to it by the art of writing and the influence of powerful writers. We have proofs of the multi- tude, at least, of dialects, which will spring out of an oral lan- guage, in those of Germany and of Italy, and in the Patois of France. These are indeed but varieties of the French, with a greater or less residue of Latin or of the other more ancient language of Gaul ;* but they still differ (much more in words than in grammatical forms), and are perpetuated, notwithstand- ing the long-continued influence of a common government and of a common written language. To those obvious causes of a tendency to produce changes, we may add, that inflected languages seem to be more liable to alterations, than those which, like that spoken in China, consist principally of mono- syllables. Although, for a proper study of the character of a language, a dictionary could afford but little aid, if it did not include derivatives and compound words, even our meagre vocabula- ries, if thoroughly investigated, might offer interesting results. Thus for instance, a single glance at the table of numerals shows, that all the Indian nations have resorted to a decimal numeration. But an examination of several of the languages will afford proof, that they must at first have counted by Jives, instead of tens. Thus, in the Choctaw, the numerals seven and eight, untuklo and untuchina, are evidently derived from tulclo two and tuchina three, meaning respectively, five and two, five and three. The same will be found in various other languages, and particularly in those belonging to the Algonkin- Lenape. A further investigation will also show, that, although the Knistinaux, Chippeways, Algonkins, and Abenakis use for the unity the word peyac, or paizhik, instead of nequit or ngut, as the other nations of the same stock, they must origin- ally have had also the last word ; since their numeral six is, in all of them, derived from it. It is probable, that those two lately published, no greater grammatical variations are to be found than the union of the pronoun with the verb, such as Soui for Je suis. In one, in the Ardennes, the pronoun coalesces with the noun, as in our Indian languages; JWper, and S'per, for Mon p&re and Son pbre. Mr. Heckewelder's apostrophe has, probably for the same purpose, been used by the French writer.
 * In seventy-five French Patois, of Avhich specimens have been