Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/330

 39 I A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. from -which the rules have been deduced, such is the variety of forms, of which the verb, even in its connection only with the pronouns, is susceptible, that those rules must be considered as a mere attempt, or first essay, to deduce rules from the spoken language. There can be no doubt, that the difficulty of ascertaining all those pronominal varieties and of reducing them to rules is, amongst other causes, one of the principal obstacles to a complete acquirement of the Cherokee. Mr. B. informed me that many Americans, after a residence of eight or ten years, could neither understand or speak tolerably the language, whilst the Muskho- gee is generally learnt in three years. Cherokee children rind, however, no greater difficulty, and it requires no longer time for them to speak their language, than is the case with our own children with respect to theirs. There is reason to believe, that there is a similarity of character be- tween the languages of the Iroquois family and the Cherokee, which may account for the acknowledged difficulty of acquiring a competent knowledge of them, and for our scanty information in that respect. Chilian. The transitions which terminate in the first and second persons are very defective, the same words being repeatedly used to express differ- ent' forms. But the system is astonishingly regular. A different series of abbreviated pronouns is used for the subjunctive, and another for the imperative : the tenses and voices are formed by the insertion of cer- tain particles, invariably the same respectively in every verb : and the transitions, or combinations of pronouns, are, without exception, the same for every tense and mood. Thus the particles which, in the Indi- cative, designate the simple tenses, viz. the imperfect, future, and mixed, are, respectively, vu, a, avu. Inserting either of these after elu,the root of the verb, in every transition of the table D, you will have the transi- tions of the tense designated by the particle. The same rule applies to the transitions of the negative form, of the passive voice, and of vari- ous other forms expressive of various modifications of the action, all which are also designated by the insertion of some particle. And in order to convert any transition whatever of the Indicative into a cor- respondent transition of the subjunctive, it is only necessary to substi- tute, for the pronouns of the Indicative, those of the Subjunctive. (See Grammatical Notices. ) Such perfect regularity is not natural to any, much less to an oral language spoken by various independent tribes along a coast of twelve hundred miles in extent. They have had missionaries for three hundred years, who were the first writers of that language, and who may, for a very useful and laudable purpose, without altering its character, and by a skilful analogy, have given it the great regularity exhibited in Father Febres's grammar. Delaware. It will be recollected that, independent of the plural terminations and of the constant portion of the verb proper, there are, in the Delaware