Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/730

Rh 688 AMERICA [AMERICAN INDIANS. native tribes. The natives sell their land for a sum of money, without having any conception of the amount ; and it is only when the proceeds come to be divided that each man becomes acquainted with his own interest in the transaction. Then disappointment and murmurs invarial &amp;gt;ly ensue. Languages Every unwritten tongue is subject to continual fluctuations, of Ameri- which will be numerous and rapid in proportion as the tribe cin In- using it is exposed to frequent vicissitudes of fortune, and the individuals composing it have little intercourse with one another. When the population of one of these societies in creases, it splits into several branches ; and if these have little intercourse, the original language divides by degrees into as many dialects. These smaller societies subdivide in their turn with the same effects ; and, in such continual sub divisions, the dialects of the extreme branches deviate farther and farther from one another, and from the parent tongue, till time, aided by migrations and wars, producing mixtures of different hordes, obliterates all distinct traces of a com mon origin. The cause of these changes becomes more ob vious when we reflect on the principles which give stability to a language. These are 1. The abundant use of writing ; 2. The teaching of a language as a branch of education ; 3. Frequency of intercourse among all the people speaking it ; 4. The existence of an order of men, such as priests or lawyers, who employ it for professional purposes ; 5. Stability of condition in the people, or exemption from vicissitudes and revolutions ; 6. A large stock of popular poetry, which, if universally diffused, may almost become a substitute for writing. All these conditions were wanting (with some trifling exceptions) in the whole of the wan dering tribes of America. The great multiplication of languages, therefore, proves two things first, that the people are in a low state of savage life ; and, secondly, that they have been for many ages in this condition ; for time is a necessary element in the process of splitting human speech into so many varieties. Among the seven or eight millions of American abori gines, it is estimated that there are as many languages spoken as among the seven or eight hundred million inhabitants of the Old World. Just as there is a marked physiological resemblance attaching to all the New World tribes, so judged by the evidence of language, the native American is sui generis, having no connection, except the most remote, with the rest of the human family. The few corresponding words in Old and New World lan guages, which are not of an imitative character, bear the stamp of fortuitous coincidence rather than that of common origin. Vater, in his Linguarum Totius Orbis Index, estimated the number of American aboriginal languages at about 500, and Balbi at 423, of which 211 belonged to North, 44 to Central, and 158 to South America. In the absence of certain data, it may be safe to set down the number of native American languages at about 450. Throughout the whole of these runs a thread of con nection. They are all characterised by poll/synthesis, as Duponceau calls it, or holophrasm, to adopt the phraseology of Dr Lieber. Holophrasm is a process more or less com mon to every language at a particular stage of its develop ment. We have glimpses of it in most of the Turanian group of languages, and it appears, in a faint degree, in the Basque; but it belongs to a very large proportion of the languages of America, so extremely numerous, and many of which have nothing else in common. This diffusion of a peculiar and common character over materials so dissirmlar has been plausibly accounted for by the supposition of a community of origin in the tribes, whether few or many, which peopled the continent. As no person has the full command of all the vocables in his native lan guage, individual terms must be continually dropping out of dialects preserved by oral communication; and new ones will be introduced as new wants and new objects solicit attention. But during the gradual change which thus takes place, the new words will be combined and modified according to the rules which belong to UK- genius of the spoken dialect with which they are incor porated; and thus it may happen that the grammatical f orm;; of an ancient language may live, while its material:; perish. The changes of structure which present them selves in the history of European languages, it must be remembered, took place in progressive communities. Among nations like the American Indians, whose bar barism, we may suppose, remained almost stationary, the forms of speech might be more permanent, though its sub stance was in a state of slow but constant mutation. But even were this community of origin admitted, it cannot be looked on as entire and absolute among the American nations. Analysis and generalisation are processes that distinguish the languages of reflective and civilised races. &quot; Nothing,&quot; says Schoolcraft, &quot;could apparently be further removed from the analytical class of languages than the various dialects spoken by the Indians of America, who invariably express their ideas of objects and actions precisely as they are pre sented to their eyes and ears, i.e., in all their compound associations.&quot; To &quot; encapsulate &quot; words, as Dr Lieber expresses it, &quot; is the striking feature of all these languager;, and hence a word will consist sometimes of seven or eight syllables, each one conveying one individual idea, like a set of boxes each one contained in the other.&quot; This common feature of American languages is both psychologically and philologically of the greatest interest. Of all the groups of American languages, the varkms dialects of the Algonquin stock furnish the most inviting field for the philologist. It is from the Algonquin, therefore, that we draw the follow ing examples of the process of syllabical agglutination : Thus, waub is the root of the verb to see, and of the word light. Waubun is the east or sunlight, and inferentially place of light. Aub is the eye-ball ; hence, aiaub = to see, to eye. Waub itself appears to be a compound of aub and the letter w, which is the sign of the third person. Waubuno is a member of a society of men iclio continue their orgies till daylight. The simplest concrete forms of the verb to see are as follow : J^e ivaub = I see. Ke ivaub = Thou seest. waub .= He or she sees. But all this is vague to the Indian mind until the verb is made transitive, and the class of objects acted on is thereby shown. The Indian order of thought, moreover, requires that the object should generally precede the verb, e.g Inine ne wau bum au = man, I see him. Wah kic-yun ne ne wan, bun daun house, I see it. Such examples show the tendency of these languages to accretion. The verb is made to include within itself, as it were, the noun, pronoun, and adjective. &quot; Declen sion, cases, articles, are deficient,&quot; says Bancroft, &quot; but everything is conjugated. The adjective assumes a verbal termination, and is conjugated as a verb ; the idea expressed by a noun is clothed in verbal forms, and at once does the office of a verb Then, since the Indian verb includes within itself the agent and the object, it may pass through as many transitions as the persons and numbers of the pronouns will admit of dif ferent combinations ; and each of these combinations may be used positively or negatively, with a reflex or a causa tive signification. In this manner changes are so multi plied, that the number of possible forms of a Chippewa