Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/142

130 every language in familiar conversation, and is easily resolvable into its proper divisions. Among all uneducated people especially there is nothing more common in every language than such contractions of words, running them into each other so as apparently to form one, which, to those unacquainted with the language, would seem to be made to become one word followed up with a variety of combinations, through moods and tenses in the same manner. Thus to take a common phrase heard frequently among our lower orders, to whom such a want is as common as among the Delawares to be fetched across a river, let us suppose a man going to a shop and saying "Haporthobacca." Some strange philosopher on hearing this word — some Delaware Du Ponceau on ascertaining its meaning might astonish his hearers by telling them that the English expressed by one word and that not a very long one the phrase 'give me a half-penny worth of tobacco'. 'Give me' is to be understood as in the American instances of 'give me thy paw and fetch me across the river'. Ha is a contraction for half — p is a fragment of the word penny and orth is for worth; o is a contraction for of and bacca for tobacco, all agglutinated together to form a compound, which might be afterwards used with a variety of inflections. Similar to this are the arguments put forward to show a peculiar characteristic for the American languages, which however the good sense and better knowledge of the later philological writers of the United States have repudiated. In truth there is nothing whatever peculiar in the American languages individually or collectively, so far as they are known, different from those of the other parts of the world, as to lead us to conclude them derived from any particular or single origin: consequently however anxious the partizans of the theory of a peculiar origin may be to discover any distinctive characteristics among them, it follows clearly and indubitably, that, as they cannot assume any stronger diversity than this fanciful idea of polysyntheticism, their theory of a peculiar origin must be considered equally assailable. As there is therefore no indication whatever in the languages of America to show a common origin for the different nations found peopling that Continent, so neither was there any ground whatever for coming to the same conclusion deducible from their customs or other characteristics, whether moral, or physical. On the contrary, all these rather gave evidences of different origins. No supposition in this respect can be more erroneous than the common assertion of the various tribes of American Indians having a general likeness in their personal appearance. One of the