words were used, as a and one are, in the English language; and Mr. Schoolcraft corroborates that which with me could only be a conjecture.
It will also be found, that, in the Knistinaux and the Chippeway, the initial m is often prefixed to the noun, instead of the pronominal characteristics n, k, w, when such nouns are taken in an absolute or abstract sense, as, miskcewon, nose, miskotick, forehead, meeton, mouth, meepit, teeth, &c.; which seems to corroborate the existence of a definite article mo, discovered by Mr. Du Ponceau in Eliot's translation of the Bible.
Another feature, which may be discovered by the vocabularies, consists in the different names, by which all the Indian nations distinguish the various degrees and modifications of relationship, such as the elder brother, and the elder sister, as distinguished from the younger ones; paternal, or maternal uncle, &c. But what is remarkable, as a feature common to all, is, that women use different words from men for those purposes; and that the difference of language, between men and women, seems, in all the Indian languages, to be confined to that species of words, or others of an analogous nature, and to the use of interjections.
It is perhaps less, however, in dictionaries, than by an investigation of grammatical forms and structure, that we must study the philosophy of language and the various ways, in which man has applied his faculties to that object. We may discover in their Relations, that the Jesuits had analyzed the two principal languages spoken in Canada. The venerable Eliot had in his Grammar, published in 1666, exhibited the most prominent features of the Massachusetts dialect. And we have long been in possession of good grammars of several of the languages of Mexico and South America by the Catholic missionaries. But it was not, till after the publication of the more popular works of Egede[1] and of Crantz, that public attention was attracted by the peculiar character of the Karalit or Eskimau language. And the first inference was, that the Eskimaux must have been a colony from Europe, or from some other civilized country, and a distinct race from the other American Indians. In the year 1819, Mr. Du Ponceau, after having elicited with much labor, from Mr. Heckewelder, the principal features of the Delaware, and compared it with the
- ↑ Alluding to his account of Groenland, rather than to his Grammar.
