7. The use of the intransitive verb as a means of expressing
ideas which in European tongues, e.g., would be carried by
adjectives. In the Carrier language almost all adjectives are “genuine
verbs” (Morice).
8. The expression of abstract nouns in a verbalized form. Thus Cree (Algonkian) generally says, in preference to using the abstract noun pimatisewin, “life,” the periphrastic verb āpimatisenanewuk, literally “that they (indefinite as to person) live.” So far is this carried sometimes that Horden (Cree Grammar, London, 1881, p. 5) says: “I have known an Indian speak a long sentence, on the duties of married persons to each other, without using a single noun.”
As an interesting example of a long word in American-Indian languages may be mentioned the Iroquois taontasakonatiatawitserakninonseronniontonhatieseke. This “word,” which, as Forbes (Congr. intern. d. Amer., Quebec, 1906, p. 103) suggests, would serve well on the signboard of a dealer in novelties, is translated by him, “Que plusieurs personnes viennent acheter des habits pour d’autres personnes avec de quoi payer.” Not so formidable is deyeknonhsedehrihadasterasterahetakwa, a term for “stove polish,” in use on the Mohawk Reservation near Brantford, Ontario.
The literature in the native languages of North America due to missionary efforts has now reached large proportions. Naturally Bible translations have been most important. According to Wilberforce Eames (Handbook of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. pp. 143–145), “the Bible has been printed in part or in whole in 32 Indian languages north of Mexico. In 18 one or more portions have been printed; in 9 others the New Testament or more has appeared; and in 5 languages, namely, the Massachuset, Cree, Labrador Eskimo, Santee Dakota and Tukkuthkutchin, the whole Bible is in print.” Of the 32 languages possessing Bible translations of some sort 3 are Eskimoan dialects, 4 Athabaskan, 13 Algonkian, 3 Iroquoian, 2 Muskogian, 2 Siouan, 1 Caddoan, 1 Sahaptian, 1 Wakashan, 1 Tsimshian, 1 Haidan. Translations of the Lord’s Prayer, hymns, articles of faith and brief devotional compositions exist now in many more languages and dialects. A goodly number of other books have also been made accessible in Indian versions, e.g. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (Dakota, 1857), Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted (Massachuset, 1655), Goodrich’s Child’s Book of the Creation (Choctaw, 1839), Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ (Greenland Eskimo, 1787), Newton’s The King’s Highway (Dakota, 1879), &c. The “Five Civilized Tribes,” who are now full-fledged citizens of the state of Oklahoma, possess a mass of literature (legal, religious, political, educational, &c.) published in the alphabet adapted from the “Cherokee Alphabet” invented by Sequoyah about 1821, “which at once raised them to the rank of a literary people.”
Of periodicals in Indian languages there have been many published from time to time among the “Five Civilized Tribes.” Of the Cherokee Advocate, Mooney said in 1897–1898, “It is still continued under the auspices of the Nation, printed in both languages (i.e. Cherokee and English), and distributed free at the expense of the Nation to those unable to read English—an example without parallel in any other government.” More or less ephemeral periodicals (weekly, monthly, &c.) are on record in various Algonkian, Iroquoian, Siouan and other languages, and the Greenland Eskimo have one, published irregularly since 1861. Wilberforce Eames (Handbook of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p. 389) chronicles 122 dictionaries (of which more than half are still in MSS.) of 63 North American-Indian languages, belonging to 19 different stocks.
The following linguistic stocks are represented by printed dictionaries (in one or more dialects): Algonkian, Athabaskan, Chinookan, Eskimoan, Iroquoian, Lutuamian, Muskogian, Salishan, Shoshonian, Siouan. There exists a considerable number of texts (myths, legends, historical data, songs, grammatical material, &c.) in quite a number of Indian languages that have been published by scientific investigators. The Algonkian (e.g. Jones’s Fox Texts, 1908), Athabaskan (e.g. Goddard’s Hupa Texts, 1904, Matthews’s Navaho Legends, 1897, &c.), Caddoan (e.g. Miss A. C. Fletcher’s Hako Ceremony, 1900), Chinookan (Boas’s Chinook Texts, 1904, and Kathlamet Texts, 1901), Eskimoan (texts in Boas’s Eskimo of Baffin Land, &c., 1901, 1908: and Thalbitzer’s Eskimo Language, 1904, Barnum’s Innuit Grammar, 1901), Haidan (Swanton’s Haida Texts, 1905, &c.), Iroquoian (texts in Hale’s Iroquois Book of Rites, 1883, and Hewitt’s Iroquoian Cosmology, 1899), Lutuamian (texts in Gatschet’s Klamath Indians, 1890), Muskogian (texts in Gatschet’s Migration Legend of the Creeks, 1884–1888), Salishan (texts in various publications of Boas and Hill-Tout), Siouan (Riggs and Dorsey in various publications), Tsimshian (Boas’s Tsimshian Texts, 1902), Wakashan (Boas’s Kwakiutl Texts, 1902–1905), &c.
The question of the direction of migration of the principal aboriginal stocks north of Mexico has been reopened of late years. Not long ago there seemed to be practical agreement as to the following views. The Eskimo stock had reached its present habitats from a primitive Migrations of Indian stocks. home somewhere in the interior of north-western Canada or Alaska; the general trend of the Athabaskan migrations, and those of the Shoshonian tribes had been south and south-east, the first from somewhere in the interior of north-western Canada, the second from about the latitude of southern British Columbia; the Algonkian tribes had moved south, east and west from a point somewhere between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay; the Iroquoian stock had passed southward and westward from some spot to the north-east of the Great Lakes; the Siouan tribes, from their primitive home in the Carolinas, had migrated westward beyond the Mississippi; some stocks, like the Kitunahan, now found west of the Rocky Mountains, had dwelt formerly in the plains region to the east. Professor Cyrus Thomas, however, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, discussing primary Indian migrations in North America (Congr. intern. d. Amér., Quebec, 1906, i. 189-204), rejects the theory that the Siouan stock originated in the Carolinas, and adopts for them an origin in the region north of Lake Superior, whence he also derives the Iroquoian stock, whose primitive home Dr David Boyle (Ann. Archaeol. Rep. Ontario, 1905, p. 154), the Canadian ethnologist, would place in Kentucky and southern Ohio. Another interesting contribution to this subject is made by Mr P. E. Goddard (Congr. intern. des. Amér., Quebec, 1906, i. 337-358). Contemplating the distribution of the tribes belonging to the Athabaskan stock in three divisions, viz. a northern (continuous and very extensive), a Pacific coast division (scattered through Washington, Oregon, California), and a southern division which occupies a large area in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Texas and Mexico, Mr Goddard suggests that the intrusion of non-Athabaskan peoples into a region once completely in the possession of the Athabaskan stock is the best explanation for the facts as now existing not explicable from assimilation to environment, which has here played a great rôle. It is possible also that a like explanation may hold for the conditions apparent in some other linguistic stocks. Many Indian tribes have been forcibly removed from their own habitats to reservations, or induced to move by missionary efforts, &c. Thus, in the state of Oklahoma are to be found representatives of the following tribes: Apache, Arapaho, Caddo, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Comanche, Creek, Iowa, Kansa, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Miami, Missouri, Modoc, Osage, Oto, Ottawa, Pawnee, Peoria, Ponca, Potawatomi, Quapaw, Sac and Fox, Seminole, Seneca, Shawnee, Tonkawa, Wichita, Wyandot, &c.; these belong to 10 different linguistic stocks, whose original habitats were widely distant from one another in many cases.
Some of the American-Indian linguistic stocks (those of California especially) hardly know real tribal divisions, but local groups or settlements only; others have many large and important tribes.
The tabular alphabetical list given in the following pages contains the names of the more important and more interesting tribes of American aborigines north of Mexico, and of the stocks to which they belong, their situation and population in 1909, the degree of intermixture with whites or negroes, their social, moral and religious condition, state of progress, &c., and also references to the best or the most recent literature concerning them.
Up to the date of their publication references to the literature concerning the tribes of the stocks treated will be found in Pilling’s bibliographies: Algonquian (1891), Athabascan (1892), Chinookan (1893), Eskimoan (1887), Iroquoian (1888), Muskhogean (1889), Salishan (1893), Siouan (1887) and Wakashan (1894). See also the Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico (Washington, 1907–1910); and the sumptuous monograph of E. S. Curtis, The North American Indian (N. Y., vols. i.-xx., 1908), with its remarkable reproduction of Indian types.
