Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/200

180 tribes. The variety of languages and dialects was so great, that, in the lack of a common tongue, the Indians could hold but little communication by speech. Certainly the original tribes have been more mixed and confused together since they have been scattered, reduced, and driven from their original homes by the whites. But this fact does not appear to have availed towards aiding them to understand each other's speech. The penalty visited upon our whole race, in the confusion of tongues at Babel, has inflicted its full share on our Indians.

General Custer, rehearsing his experience among Southern and Western tribes in our own days, says: —

De Soto, in his invasion of Florida, Georgia, and Alabama, — as we have noted, — had valuable service from Juan Ortiz, as an interpreter, in 1539 and onwards. Ortiz had, eleven years before, been captured by the Indians, in