Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/81

 Gfifervations on their language. g

&vage ftate, when they firft feparated, and variegated their dialers, with fo much religious care, and exact art. Blind chance could not direct fo great a number of remote and warring favage nations to fix on, and unite in fo nice a religious ftandard of fpeech. Vowels are inexpreflive of things, they only typify them-, as Oo-E-J, " to afcend, or remove:" O E A^ a moft facred affirmation of the truth. Similar to thefe are many words, contain- ing only one confonant : as To-e-u " it is very true ;" 0-fe-u, " very goodj" T-O-U, " evil, or very bad ;" T-d-a> " he moves by the divine bounty ;" Nan-ne T-a, " the divine hill, or the mount of God," &c. If language was not originally a divine gift, which fome of our very curious modern philo- fophers deny, and have taken great pains to fet afide, yet human beings are pofTefled of the faculties of thinking and fpeaking, and,, in propor tion to their ideas, they eafily invented, and learned words mixed with confonants and vowels, to exprefs them. Natural laws are common and general. The fituation of the Indian Americans, has probably beerv the means of finking them into that ftate of barbarifm we now behold Yet, though in great meafure they may have loft their primitive language, not one of them exprefies himfelf by the natural cries of brute-animals, any far ther than to defcribe fome of the animals by the cries they make ; which we ourfelves fometimes imitate, as Cboo-qua-le-qua-loo, the name they give that merry night-finging bird, which we call *' Whip her will my poor wife," (much like our cuckoo) fo termed from its mufical monotony. No lan guage is exempt from the like fimple copyings. The nervous, polite, and copious Greek tongue had the loud-founding Boo Boao, which the Romans imitated, by their bellowing Roves Bourn -, and the Indians fay Pa*a, figni- fying the loud noife of every kind of animals, and their own loud-founding war Whoo Whoop. Where they do not ufe divine emblems, their words have much articulation of confonants. Their radicals have not the infepa-* rable property, of three confonants, though frequently they, have; and their words are not fo long, as ftrangers conjeclurally draw them out. In- ftead of a fimple word, we too often infert the wild picture of a double, or triple-compounded one j. and the conjugation of their verbs, utterly de ceives us. A fpecimen of this, will fhew it with fufficient clearnefs, and* may exhibit fome ufeful hints to the curious fearchers of antiquity.

A-no-wa fignifies " a rambler, renegadoe, or a perfon of no fettled place of abode." A-no-wak*. the firft perfon, and $&-*, the fecond perfon

fingular,

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