410 AMERICAN INDIANS (LANGUAGES) and vocabulary of the Mutsun (New York, 1861-'2) affords material for studying that language, spoken at San Juan Bautista, Monte- rey county, at La Soledad on Salinas river, and by the Rumsens or Achastlians at San Carlos. A vocabulary with some grammatical notes on the language spoken at the mission of San Antonio shows the absence of pronouns in the third person and great simplicity of forms. The languages of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico form a class by themselves. South of the Algonquins were the family of the Cataw- bas and Waccoa in the Carolinas ; and the very extensive family of the Cherokees, embracing the Ottare and Ayrate. Their language, which has analogies with the Iroquois dialects, is re- markable as the only one in which the natives have adopted an alphabet. It was invented by Sequoyah or George Guess, a half-breed, in 1826. His scheme consists of 85 characters, including six vowels, a, e, i, 0, u, and the French nasal un ; and nine simple and three combined initial consonants, g, A, J, TO, , kv, , d, dl, ts, w, y, to which the vowels are attached. The sounds k and g, t and d occur almost promis- cuously, and dl or tl are sometimes written Id. As in most languages, there are two forms of we, viz., the prefix in for I and thou, and ast for I and he ; as inaluniha, I and thou bind it ; ata- luniha, I and he bind it. Plurality is denoted by the prefix t or te, as tetsigawati, I see things. Continuative action is indicated by the suffixes sa and i, as tsikeyusa, I love him unceasingly. T,he perfect tense is of two sorts, one used when the narrator was present at the action, the other when he was absent; thus: uhlun, he killed him (in my presence), and uhlei (in my absence). The transitions of the verb are either, 1, as animate, or 2, as inanimate; thus: 1, galuniha, I bind it (an animal or tree) ; haluniha, second person ; kahluniha, third per- son; dual: inaluniha, I and thou bind it; astaluniha, I and he bind it; istaluniha, ye two bind it; plural, italuniha, we bind it; 2, galunihawi, I bind habitually, or am in the habit of binding, &c. Objects are frequently expressed merely by changes of the verb, as kutuwo, I am washing myself; kulestula, I am washing my head ; tsestula, I am washing an- other person's head, &c., through 13 different forms. All words of relations between parts of speech are postpositions. Parts of the Bi- ble and books of elementary instruction and newspapers constitute the Cherokee literature. Below the Cherokees were the Muskokees or Creeks, the Choctaws and Chickasaws, the last two speaking the same language, the first a language bearing strong analogies to it. The Spaniards cultivated the Timuquan, a Choc- taw dialect, and a grammar, catechism, &c., were printed in it as early as 1613-'27. The Choctaw proper has been thoroughly investi- gated in our time by the late Rev. Cyrus By- ington, whose "Definer" (1852) and "Choc- taw Grammar" (Philadelphia, 1870) give very satisfactory means of study. The language is remarkable for its multitudinous particles with nice shades of meaning. It has the usual sepa- rable and inseparable pronouns, and the double we. Like the Dakota, Mexican, San Antonio, and some others, the third person singular of the present of the verb has no pronoun, and gives the simplest form of the verb. The in- separable pronoun for the first person is a suffix; for the second, an affix: Takchih, he, she, or it ties, or they tie him, her, it, or them ; ishtakchih, thou tiest him, &c. ; takchilih, I tie, &c. Among the peculiarities is a pronoun used among those related by marriage. The Muskokee language is divided into the Musko- kee proper or main Creek and the Hitchitee. The only grammar is that by Buckner (New York, 1860). The verb in its modifications differs from the Choctaw. Issetv (v repre- senting an obscure sound), to take; esais, I take it ; esichkis, thou takest it ; w, he takes it, &c. Neither Creek nor Choctaw has the sound of a in fate or the letters d, g, j, r, u, or z. The Natchez, on the Mississippi, had a peculiar language which has some anal- ogy with the Maya. Of the other Louisiana tribes our data are limited ; the Chetimachas and Attakapas had languages that enter into no known group. Those of Texas were studied by the Spanish missionaries, and works were printed in them, but their affiliations are not known. The languages of Mexico have been classified by recent scholars, Orozco and Pi- mentel. The first family is the Mexican, in- cluding the Nahoa, the Pipil in Central Ameri- ca, the Zacateco, the Chimarra and Concho in Chihuahua, the Ahualulco in Tabasco, the Jalisco, the Acaxeo, the Sabaibo in Durango, the Xixime and Tebaca in Sinai oa. It extended from the Gila and Rio del Norte to Guatemala. As the language of one of the most civilized races in the new world, it was studied by the Spaniards and cultivated, a professorship being founded in the university of Mexico. A number of grammars have appeared, by Olmoz (1555), Molina (1571), Rincon (1595), Guzman (1643), Vetancurt (1673), Avila (1717), Zenteno (1753), Aldama (1754), and Sandoval (1810) ; and the dictionary of Molina (1571) is very full. A general view of the language by Albert Gal- latin will be found in the u Transactions of the American Ethnological Society," vol. i. The Mexican language lacks the sounds J, d, g, r,j (Spanish), II (Span.), and gn (Italian), but it abounds in t, 2, ch (Span.), te, and in the sylla- bles tla, tli, atl, itl; x is pronounced with a pe- culiar guttural sound. The tone generally strikes the penultimate of the polysyllabic expressions, in which the particles ca and ti predominate. Gender is distinguished in animals by the prefix okich, male, cihua, female. There is only one variation for case, e being added for a vocative by men, but only an accent on the last sylla- ble by women. As a general thing, inanimate things have no different form for singular or plural; some have, as milli, sowed ground, plural miltin. Of plurals of animate nouns
