doubt upon the subject, on account of the dissimilarity of the language of the natives of Massachusetts, to the Hebrew. Any language, in a savage state, must, in the course of 2,500 years, have rolled and varied exceedingly. This is shown to be the case in the different dialects, and many new words introduced among those tribes, which are acknowledged to have their language radically the same.
The following facts are enough to answer every objection on this ground. The Indians had no written language. Hence the English scholar could not see the spelling or the root of any Indian word. And the guttural pronunciation of the natives was such as to make even the Hebrew word, that might still be retained, appear a different word; especially to those who were looking for no Hebrew language among them. And the following noted idiom of the Indian language was calculated to hide the fact in perfect obscurity, even had it been originally Hebrew, viz.: the Indian language consists of a multitude of monosyllables added together. Every property or circumstance of a
thing to be mentioned by an Indian, must be noted by a new monosyllable added to its name. Hence it was that the simple words our loves, must be expressed by the following long Indian word, Noowomantammoonkanunonnash. Mr. Colden, in his history of the five nations, observes, "They have few radical words. But they compound their words without end. The words expressive of things lately come to their knowledge, (he says,) are all compounds. And sometimes one word among them includes an entire definition of the thing."[1] These things, considered of a language among natives, 2,500 years after their expulsion from Canaan, must answer every objection arising from the
fact, that the Indian language appears in some things very different from the Hebrew. And they must render it little less than miraculous, (as Mr. Adair says it is,) that after a lapse of so long a period among savages, without a book or letters, a word or phrase properly Hebrew should still be found among them. Yet such words and phrases are found. And many more may yet be found in the compounds of Indian words. I have just now observed, in dropping my eye on a Connecticut Magazine for 1803, a
- ↑ See the Connecticut Magazine, Vol. III. p. 367.
