Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/217

 SECT. VI.] INDIAN LANGUAGES. 181 of the subject and of the object of love, a pure abstraction ; the expressions my father, thy father, Hove thee, &c, must have preceded the invention of the verbs, nouns, and pronouns, in their respective insulated forms. This might be true of pure relative nouns, such as, father ; and we find some reasons for thinking that it was so, in Father Brebeuf's letter and in the manner in which Mr. Heckewelder answered Mr. Du Pon- ceau's inquiry on that point. The question might be doubtful with respect to some verbs. But it seems that distinct words, designating the first and second persons of the pronoun must have been amongst the first which were wanted and therefore invented by man. At first, proper names alone would be used. Adam and Eve did not stand in need of pronouns. Children, who begin to speak, generally designate themselves at first by the names given to them, and only after a while substitute the pronoun I". But, as it became impossible to designate every individual by a distinct proper name, the great convenience, if not the absolute necessity, of words designating the person speaking and that spoken to, must have soon become apparent, and have produced the invention of such words, which, when used in the singular number, have also the great advantage of precision. And we may here take notice of one of the dis- tinguishing general features of the Indian languages, and such a one as we might have expected to find in them. It must have been the primary object of every language to designate with precision every object and every action, and every modification of which every object or action was suscepti- ble. Specific names would naturally precede generic terms ; and, if the Indian languages are often deficient in these, they abound in distinct names for every particular species of tree, for every variety of age, sex, or peculiarity, in certain species of animals, and in degrees of consanguinity, and generally for those subdivisions of the same genus, which in our languages are distinguished by attributes which qualify the generic term. Thus, instead of designating the several species of oak by the names of white oak, black oak, swamp oak, &tc, the Indians have a distinct name for every species, and, in many langua- ges, no generic term, embracing all the species of oak.* And progress of language. Uppe, in Choctaw, means trunk or stalk, and is often used, in compound words, for tree. An acorn is nusse ; all oaks bear acorns ; Nussuppe (the acorn tree) is the Choctaw word for the oak.
 * There are some exceptions; and even these show the gradual