LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS
There were many tribes and many tribe-groups, or, as the latter are
usually designated, “stocks,” among the Amerinds. These various stocks
differed considerably from each other in manners, customs, possibly in
origin, and in languages, the last often being widely different.[14]
Yet there was a homogeneity binding them all together as one distinct
race while at the same time separating them completely from other races
of the world as now constituted. The subdivisions of the Amerind stocks
were not always contiguously distributed on the continent, but, as
in the case of the Navajo-Apache branch of the Athapascan, sometimes
separated from their kindred by wide stretches of territory peopled
by other stocks, and also, as in the case of the Navajos, somewhat
altered by absorption of people of another stock. Various methods of
arranging the distribution and classification of these stocks have
been attempted, but the basis of language appears to offer the most
advantages and the greatest accuracy. There are some who dispute the
correctness of the present analysis of the Amerind languages, and
deprecate the classifications obtained by this means,[15] but foremost
students, like Brinton, Gatschet, Powell, Steinthal, and others, have
pronounced unequivocally in favour of its value when applied with
judgment.
“Nothing is so indelible as speech,” wrote George Bancroft; “sounds
that in ages of unknown antiquity were spoken among the nations of
Hindostan still live in their significancy in the language which we
daily utter.” And this fact has been the corner-stone of the modern
science of linguistics, which maintains accordingly that the possession
of similar _language roots_ and grammatical construction by two
otherwise distinct tribes proves a relationship or a common descent.
In this way, as is well understood, the Indo-Germanic—that is, our
European stock—has been traced back toward its origin. The accuracy
of this has been questioned, but it doubtless affords the best method
attainable.[16] The same principle is applicable to the American
languages, which afford an immense field for linguistic study in their
great diversity. This diversity is not popularly understood, the
majority of our people believing that if a person can speak “Indian” he
could converse with every tribe on the continent. Yet within a limited
area in Arizona he would find useless in four different tribes the
language he had learned, say, in California; and in California itself
some twenty or thirty tribes would listen to his words, as well as to
those of each other, without a gleam of understanding. And not one of
the languages of any of these tribes would serve him in the Mississippi
or in the Atlantic region any better than English, for the Iroquois
and the Algonquin and other Eastern tongues are as widely different
from those of California as they are from each other, while every
one contains numerous dialects, or what may be called sub-languages,
also exhibiting great variations. The early missionaries were slow to
discover these facts, and it was a source of discouragement for them to
learn that, after long study to acquire a language, it was spoken by
only a single group of the natives, while adjacent to them dwelt others
who spoke a totally different one.[17]
[Illustration: “SINGING-GIRL” SCULPTURED IN TRACHYTE
From débris of Temple 22, Copan. Slightly larger than life
]
Even where a group of Amerinds speak related languages, or dialects,
there are, and were, such wide variations that the one is not
understood by those speaking the other. Therefore we have in North
America not only a large number of distinct languages, but within these
separate languages an immense number of dialects or sub-languages,
sometimes as many as twenty in one stock varying from each other as
much as, say, English and German. At least sixty-five of the separate
stock languages are distinguished in North America which appear so
radically separated from each other that it is believed impossible
that they ever should have sprung from the same parent, unless it may
have been at a time so remote as to be beyond the scope of present
investigation. In the classification according to these languages it
has been necessary to have a general designation for each stock, and in
selecting the names to be thus used, Powell and others have observed
the law of priority of mention, as far as possible, and have derived
the stock name from the author first mentioning it in print since 1836,
the date of Gallatin’s great work, which is taken as the foundation.
The termination “an,” or “ian,” is added to distinguish the family or
stock name from a tribal name, for often a tribe bears the name given
to the whole stock. As examples, Algonquian may be mentioned as a stock
name taken from the tribal name of Algonquin, and Mayan from the tribal
name, Maya. This is not always strictly adhered to outside of the
Bureau of Ethnology because of its frequent inconvenience, and in the
case of Mayan the term Maya is preferably used by some investigators
and writers as being simpler, and Brinton gives it as the stock
name.[18] Following the distribution of tribes as closely as possible
at the time of the first contact with white men, Powell and his able
associates of the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology in Washington have produced
a map, based on Gallatin’s.[19] The separate stocks north of Mexico
are each represented by a different colour, every colour standing for
a variation in language as great as that between Hebrew and English,
not related as English and Spanish. Fifty-eight are thus shown, but
south of the Mexican border are perhaps a dozen more. Continuous study
may succeed in bringing some of the stocks into relationship or in
dividing them still further. In their beginning, languages probably
changed rapidly; memory was deficient, intercourse slight, and
comparatively short separations of tribes speaking originally the same
tongue were sufficient to establish entire new sets of words. These
separations were apt to occur frequently when methods of subsistence
were crude and difficult, migrations frequent, and population sparse.
As races developed memory grew to better proportions, and after the
introduction among the Amerinds of mnemonic records and other memory
devices their languages became more crystallised, till within the later
centuries changes have come about slowly. That many more languages
once existed on the American continents than we have any trace of is,
therefore, probable. By intercourse, by intermingling, by the crossing
and absorbing of stocks was finally produced what we find to-day, or
did find yesterday, a reduced number of different stocks, but still
so many that the archæologist views the field with amazement, and the
layman looks upon it with incredulity.
[Illustration: TERRA COTTA STOOL, CHIRIQUI]
[Illustration: ALTAR Q, COPAN, HONDURAS
From photograph by M. H. Saville, Museum of Natural History
]
And these Amerind languages are as remarkable for their separation in
a body from the Old World languages as they are in their separation
from each other. This in itself seems to bestow upon the Amerind people
a vast antiquity in their isolation from other peoples, and adding
to it the testimony of their art works, their implements, and their
pictographs and hieroglyphs, there seems to be no escape from granting
them to be a division of mankind by themselves.
Not only does the differentiation of the stock languages indicate
antiquity, but that of the dialects adds strong testimony. Brinton
cites Dr. Stohl’s opinion that “the difference which is presented
between the Cakchiquel and the Maya dialects could not have arisen in
less than 2000 years.”[20]
It may be urged that the Amerind languages are loose and shifting
and that a few centuries would be sufficient to bring about on this
continent a complete and total difference in a language from its mother
tongue in, we will say, Siberia; but the more closely the matter is
studied the more apparent is the tenacity with which each stock retains
its special form. Of this tenacity a modern example exists in the
village of Tewa (or Hano) now forming one of the seven villages of the
Moki, and situated on what is known as the “First or East Mesa.” The
people of this village are not Hopi (Moki) stock, Hopi being the Moki
name for themselves,[21] but belong to a Rio Grande stock, the Tañoan
of Powell, and the Tehua of Brinton, having come from the Rio Grande
country to their present location somewhere about 1680. The Moki, who
are believed to belong to the Shoshonean stock (though they are
probably composite), permitted them to repair and occupy old houses
which stood on the site of the present village and there they have
lived amicably ever since, to all appearances completely amalgamated
with the Moki. The ordinary observer sees little to distinguish them
from the other Amerinds of the locality, and they speak the Moki
language like Mokis, but within their own village and by their own
firesides they largely use the speech of their forefathers, and to all
appearances will go on speaking it till the end. Here, then, is this
little community separated for a long period and by many miles from
their immediate kindred, mingling daily with people of another stock
and another language, yet preserving their own language intact.[22]
And if this has happened once within historical times it may have
happened before any number of times, and goes to prove that these
various languages have in them elements of stability greater than
has heretofore been admitted. Powell says that in his long study of
savage tongues he has everywhere been “impressed with the fact that
they are singularly persistent, and that a language which is dependent
for its existence upon oral tradition is not easily modified.” On the
other hand John Fiske expresses the opinion that “barbaric languages
are neither widespread nor durable. In the course of two or three
generations a dialect gets so strangely altered as virtually to lose
its identity.” The Algonquian languages were spread over an immense
area, and the Shoshonean had an even greater range.
[Illustration: SOUTH-WEST CORNER OF THE TEMPLE OF XOCHICALCO, STATE OF
MORELOS, MEXICO
Photographed by M. H. Saville for the American Museum of Natural
History
]
Brinton contradicts the assertion of Waldeck “that the language (of
the Mayas) has undergone such extensive changes that what was written
a century ago is unintelligible to a native of to-day. So far is this
from the truth that, except for a few obsolete words, the narrative of
the Conquest, written more than three hundred years ago by the chief,
Pech, could be read without difficulty by any educated native.” Thus
it seems probable that the Amerind languages extant have been spoken
nearly as we know them to-day for a great many centuries, and that
modifications crept in slowly; so slowly that the language roots and
grammatical construction of the various stocks are so distinct that
they form the safest guide now available in the classification of the
various branches of the Amerind race; and furthermore that, judged by
these tests, these languages have no relationship to any other group.
Powell places more reliance, as a test, in the lexical elements,—that
is, in the _language roots_,—than in the grammatical structure, as the
latter is constantly changing. “The roots of a language,” he maintains,
“are its most permanent characteristics, and while the words which
are formed from them may change so as to obscure their elements or
in some cases even to lose them, it seems that they are never lost
from all, but can be recovered in large part.” If there should be
advanced the criticism that these Amerind languages had little or no
literature, and therefore are not equal to languages so recorded, as a
test of affinity, it may be noted that the largest number of languages
throughout the world have produced no literature. Max Müller says:
“It is a mere accident that languages should ever have been reduced
to writing.” However this may be, such an accident appears to be in
the line of regular human development, and when a people arrive at the
right point in their mental evolution they invent a means of recording
their thought. It seems, therefore, to be rather a state of mind than
an accident. The Mayas of this continent had reached the point for
speech recording and, following the natural order, they invented a
system and made books of record.
Because of certain similarities of physique, of words, or of myths,
or of customs, however slight, the Amerinds have been identified with
almost every people under the sun.[23] These similarities are only such
as might occur where similar organisms are continuously subjected to
similar conditions, and the really remarkable fact is that there are
not more and even closer resemblances. Some of the arguments advanced
to uphold the so-called identifications are extraordinary. In language
the Amerinds have been found to speak—or at least have been claimed
to speak—Irish, Welsh, Norse, Chinese, and many other independent
or interrelated tongues, yet with the exception of the Basque, the
structure of all the Old World languages has little in common with the
Amerind. Brinton has shown[24] that a number of Maya words resemble
our English words of the same meanings, as, bateel and battle, hol and
hole, hun and one, lum and loam, pol and poll (head), potum and pot,
pul and pull, and so on, but nobody has yet ventured to deduce from
this that the Mayas are first cousins of the English.[25] The Maya
language certainly does differ from almost all others on the continent
in its construction. Before Gallatin’s time, the wildest statements
flourished because the few linguists who had paid attention to Amerind
languages had worked in rather a desultory manner and had made no
determined effort to systematise them and group them under their stock
names. Gallatin was the first to bring order out of what appeared
to be an almost hopeless tangle, and Powell, Brinton, and others,
supplementing and developing these labours of Gallatin, have been able
to present the subject in definite shape with a promise of greater
accuracy in the near future. Many languages which are known to have
existed at the beginning of European acquaintance with America have
disappeared with the tribes which used them. Some of these were spoken
by mere handfuls of people, while others were wider spread.
With so many distinct languages on the continent, and with many
tribes totally ignorant of the speech of their neighbours, there
became necessary a means for the interchange of ideas which should
not entirely rely on spoken words, and this means was found in a
“sign-language” assisted by a few words of each spoken language which
were simple and commonly known, or by words which belonged to no spoken
language but which through accident were attributed by each side to the
other. This sign-language was of extensive development and existed not
only among the Amerinds but all over the world, and bore a resemblance
to the sign-language now used in some of our deaf-mute schools. This
peculiar sign-language possessed varieties like spoken language
corresponding to dialects. For a time its existence was disputed, but
the work of Mallery and others has established it beyond question.
Besides the gesture language, tribes not understanding each other’s
speech had recourse to a medley of corrupted words from each language,
from other languages, and from no language at all but springing into
being through misunderstandings and necessities. When white men came
upon the scene they often thought they were talking “Indian,” while
the Amerinds thought it was the white man’s tongue, and neither
was talking the language of the other at all or of any other people
in existence. It was a jargon. If the whites had previously learned
something of another Amerind tongue, for example Algonquin, and they
were trying to talk to Dakotas, they would use Algonquin terms,
supposing them to be intelligible to the Dakotas, and the latter would
suppose them to be English words. These would gradually accumulate
through usage, together with nondescript terms, until a working jargon
was formed. In this may perhaps be discovered one of the causes
that led to the former belief that Amerind languages were loose and
changeable.
[Illustration: POLISHED BLACK WARE, SANTA CLARA, NEW MEXICO]
One of the most important and most interesting of the jargon languages
is that known as the Chinook,[26] in the north-western United States,
along the Columbia River, which grew into such proportions that it
formed at length the principal language in a wide district. It is made
up of words from Chinook, Chehali, Selish, Nootka, English, French, and
other languages, with a large number of words that belong nowhere else.
This same process in earlier times going on between several different
tribes doubtless gave birth to permanent languages, which in their turn
were again modified. Even in our own every-day English we use hundreds
of borrowed words and also some that, like “skedaddle,” “mugwump,”
etc., were coined for special occasions. We hardly give a thought to
the origin of these words which are seen side by side with others that
have come to us through a thousand years and still others that were
only yesterday the gift of the Amerind. How few realise when they
say chocolate, squash, mush, hominy, pone, succotash, or other terms
equally familiar from Amerind sources, that they are talking “Indian”!
Tobacco, of course, all understand came from the native language, but
it is generally supposed to have been the name of the plant, when in
reality it was the name of the roll of leaves from the plant, which was
called “a tobacco,” as we now call it a cigar.
Sometimes words appear similar when they have no shadow of
relationship, the resemblance being purely accidental. Powell cites
the word “tia,” meaning deer in some of the Shoshonean languages. This
was at first supposed to be an attempt on the part of the Shoshones to
pronounce our own word “deer,” but further investigation has shown it
to be the original Shoshone name for deer, and that in some dialects it
was called “tiats” and in others “tiav.” Brinton, as already mentioned,
calls attention to similar resemblances between Maya and English words.
A tribe would often possess two languages, one known only to the
priesthood and the other the language of the people, the priest
language being the older, just as to-day we find the priests of the
Roman Catholic Church using a dead language in their sacred functions
while the parishioners use the ordinary one. Bourke believed that
the Zuñis and the Mokis each have a language of this kind,[27] and it
is thought that the Central-American tribes also had. Such hieratic
languages would necessarily be far older than the languages in common
use, therefore if the latter tend to indicate a great antiquity for the
Amerind race, we should be carried still farther back by the hieratic
languages. Occasionally tribes have spoken two languages, both familiar
to the common people, as in the case of the Tewas speaking Moki as well
as their own language, already referred to. The Tubares of Mexico,
nearly extinct, are said to have spoken two different languages among
themselves, one a dialect of the Nahuatl.[28]
Gatschet, the eminent student of Amerind languages, declares that “the
majority suppose that an Indian language is simply a gibberish not
worth bothering about, but languages that can preserve identity for
centuries are certainly something more than gibberish.” He further
points out that while “the Indian neglects to express with accuracy
some relations which seem of permanent importance to us, as tense and
sex, his language is largely superior to ours in the variety of its
personal pronouns, in many forms expressing the mode of action, or
the idea of property and possession, and the relations of the persons
addressed to the subject of the sentence.”
Again it is said by some persons, “Why study languages which have no
literature, and dialects that are known only to savages?” but Max
Müller insists that “dialects which never produced any literature at
all, the jargons of savage tribes, the clicks of Hottentots, and the
vocal modulations of the Indo-Chinese, are as important, nay, for the
solution of some of our problems, more important, than the poetry of
Homer or the prose of Cicero. We do not want to know languages; we want
to know language, what language is, how it can form a vehicle or organ
of thought; we want to know its origin, its nature, its laws.”
Here in North America exists a splendid field for this study, but until
recently it has been sadly neglected. This neglect has been largely
due to the attitude of the people at large, an attitude of apathy and
contempt for anything “Indian.” Opportunities that can never come
again have been allowed to pass heedlessly away. We have not half
realised the importance of collecting the linguistic treasures that
are scattered across the length and breadth of the country, partly
because of the foolish and narrow estimate of the Amerind which for so
long a time dominated the public mind. We have despised his languages
because we thought he did not bathe with sufficient frequency! “To
draw conclusions from the exterior appearance of a people on their
language,” exclaims Gatschet, “and to suppose that a man not worth
looking at cannot speak a language worth studying, would be the acme of
superficiality.” Remnants of tribes have died out and their language
unrecorded has died with them even within a comparatively few years.[29]
As an example of the necessity for prompt investigation, an incident
mentioned by Putnam may be cited. In a conversation with a gentleman
whom he had recently met, he learned of Mrs. Oliver’s acquaintance with
the Karankawas of Texas, and her knowledge of their language. Now it
happened that Gatschet had made a fruitless search in Texas for some
trustworthy information regarding the language of this extinct tribe,
and when Putnam sent him Mrs. Oliver’s vocabulary he was delighted and
immediately paid a visit to the old lady, obtaining much additional
information about these Amerinds, among whom Mrs. Oliver had spent her
early life. Within three months afterward she died.
That the Amerind has no literature is true if by literature we mean
only written books, for outside of Yucatan and Mexico there were no
native books, and the Spaniards burned all they could find of these,
but if we accept the enormous number of legends, myths, songs, and
ceremonial lore mnemonically recorded, as literature, and they surely
become literature when we write them down, then the Amerind is not so
poor in this respect as has been generally considered.
[Illustration: EASTERN FAÇADE OF THE TEMPLE OF XOCHICALCO, STATE OF
MORELOS, MEXICO
Photographed by M. H. Saville for the American Museum of Natural
History
]
In North America, as in other parts of the world, the various language
stocks occupy areas differing enormously in proportions. Some are
confined to small tracts, while others, as mentioned above, are spread
over wide territory. The Algonquian stock, for instance, occupied
an immense area while the Zuñian is a mere spot in the expanse of New
Mexico. More than thirty of the stocks lie within the Pacific region,
six on the banks of the Klamath River alone.
The Amerind languages, with the exception of the Maya and possibly
one or two others, are polysynthetic, and no other languages of the
world have exactly this construction, though, as has previously been
stated, that of the Basques has a construction somewhat similar. By
polysynthetic is meant a language that permits the incorporation
of a great many words in one sentence, till all are fused into one
“bunch-word” of from ten to fifteen or more syllables. Examples are
often quoted from Eskimo[30] which in our eyes appear ridiculous in
their cumbersome length, but they are as intelligible and valuable
to the Eskimo as our words are to us. While the Basque more nearly
resembles the Amerind languages than does any other Old World tongue,
it stops short of the incorporating power of that of the Amerinds. In
Basque this is restricted to the verb and some pronominal elements,
but in the Amerind it embraces all parts of speech. It is specially
interesting to note also that Basque in the Old World is an isolated
language, the only one there of its kind. The Amerinds who look
alike are not always the ones who speak the same language. Quite
different-looking Amerinds will sometimes speak the same tongue, while
others who look the same will speak different ones. The Pueblos of
New Mexico and Arizona, while apparently of one race, speak several
different stock languages, while some of the natives of Labrador, who
are of apparently different stocks, speak dialects of one language.
Nor, as has been mentioned, is the area occupied by one stock always
continuous.[31] The Athapascan, next to the Eskimo, is the most
northerly stock, yet three small branches are found south, on the
Pacific coast of the United States, while two large branches, the
Navajos and the Apaches, extend through Arizona and New Mexico, the
latter far into the country of Mexico proper. In the same way the
Siouan[32] lies in the middle region of the United States, but a
small band still lingered, at the beginning of the Columbian era,
on the Gulf coast in Mexico, and another smaller band in eastern
North Carolina, having for a near neighbour still another, which
spread itself over three States. These detached bands indicate great
movements on the part of the various stocks. One Amerind language,
the Eskimo, has been traced across Bering Strait into Asia, but
thus far no language has been traced from Asia into America. When
the Asiatic and North-west Coast investigations instituted by the
American Museum of Natural History, under the auspices of Mr. Jesup,
are completed, something more definite will be known on the subject
of possible affinities. In addition to the great difference in their
formation, some of the Amerind languages do not possess sounds common
to European languages, and on the other hand they sometimes have
sounds rarely heard elsewhere. The Pai Utes have no “f,” and when they
try to pronounce “fire” they can only say “piah.” The Moki cannot
say “s” before “k” or hard “c.” In trying to pronounce “school” they
say “cool.” There is no “r” in Huron, Mexican, Otomi, and some other
languages, and several have no “i.” The Iroquois have no labials, and
do not articulate with their lips. Cherokee has the same peculiarity,
as it is an Iroquoian language. The Karankawa contains sounds rarely
heard in European languages, while other sounds common to the latter
are absent altogether from the Karankawa, so that in this language is
found not only a complete difference from European tongues in grammatic
structure and lexical elements, but a complete difference in phonetics
as well, and in the last respect it differs also from other Amerind
languages. Altogether the Karankawa shows many peculiarities, and it is
unfortunate that the authentic material relating to it is so limited.
In the Navajo there is a common combination of “tl” with a peculiar
explosive click.[33] The tongue is placed with the tip against the roof
of the mouth and pressure as for “t” made against it, the “l” sound
immediately following by an explosion at the side. It is a peculiar
sound, and the Navajo language is filled with it.[34]
[Illustration: AMERIND LINGUISTIC MAP OF NORTH AMERICA, AFTER THE ONE
PREPARED BY THE U. S. BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY]
In recording these Amerind languages and their peculiar sounds, no
definite system was employed till recently. Travellers wrote the
Amerind words down with ordinary letters as they understood them, thus
producing great diversity in method and results. Differences are due
sometimes to a lack of perception on the part of the recorder, and
also sometimes to a difference in pronunciation on the part of the
Amerinds themselves, and again to differences of methods of recording.
To catch the exact sounds of a new language requires a musical ear.
I do not mean a knowledge of music, but an ear that follows a tune
easily. Without such an ear a person is not fit to record language
sounds that are novel no matter how good a linguist he may be.
Investigators ought to have their ears tested for sound-perception as
the eyes of locomotive engineers are tested for colour.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF A CHEROKEE MANUSCRIPT
Written in Sequoyah’s Syllabary. See cut on page 52.]
Recognising the importance of a system in the recording of the Amerind
languages—the importance of systematising the orthography of these
languages—the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology published an _Introduction to
the Study of Indian Languages_, in which an alphabet was advocated that
was adapted to recording harmoniously the Amerind languages. In this
over sixty separate sounds are given by signs following as closely as
possible our own alphabet. This is complicated and many investigators
use their own systems and translate afterwards into the more general
one. The great difference in the Amerind sounds necessitates many
different characters and inverted letters standing for peculiar sounds.
Of all the Amerind languages of North America, that of the Eskimo is
probably the most homogeneous. Its dialects are alike from one side of
the continent to the other, following similarity in other respects.
Dall states there is a saying “that a man understanding thoroughly
the dialect of either extreme, could pass from village to village,
from Greenland to Labrador, from Labrador to Bering Strait, and thence
southward to the Copper River, staying five days in each halting place,
and that in all that journey he would encounter no greater differences
of speech and customs than he could master in the few days devoted
to each settlement. Probably there is no other race in the world
distributed over an equal territory, which exhibits such solidarity.”
They do not take to new languages. Though the Eskimo of Alaska have
had long intercourse with English-speaking men, their English is very
limited. Like most of the Amerinds, they prefer to invent their own
terms for articles that are new to them. The Aleutian Islanders are of
Eskimo stock, but their language is different from the main body of the
family, and would not be understood by them.
The writings of the Cherokees in the syllabary of Sequoyah are
of sacred formulas. These were written out by the shamans and are
thoroughly Amerind. “They are not disjointed fragments,” says Mooney,
who made a careful study of the subject, “of a system long since
extinct, but are the revelation of a living faith which still has its
priests and devoted adherents.” The language used is full of archaic
forms and figurative expressions, some of which even the shamans
cannot now understand. Some of these are highly poetical, especially
the prayers “used to win the love of a woman or to destroy the life of
an enemy, in which we find such expressions as: ‘Now your soul fades
away—your spirit shall grow less and dwindle away never to reappear.’
‘Let her be completely veiled in loneliness,—O Black Spider, may
you hold her soul in your web, so that it may never get through the
meshes!’ ‘Your soul has come into the very centre of my soul, never to
turn away.’”[35]
[Illustration: PETROGLYPHS NEAR WRANGELL, ALASKA, PROBABLY TLINKIT]
In nearly all the Amerind languages there was a poetical touch. But
what seems to be poetry to us arose partly from the inability of
the Amerind to express himself in a spiritual way. As his religion
was chiefly zoötheistic, and the heavenly bodies and natural forces
were personified as animals, his comparisons and references were not
intended for metaphor, but were merely the ordinary workings of his
mind on the material at his command.
NOTE
As it is sometimes useful to have at hand an orderly geographical
and cultural classification of tribes, this one used by Livingston
Farrand is here given: I, Eskimo; II, North Pacific; III, Mackenzie
Basin and High Plateaus; IV, Columbia River and California; V,
Plains; VI, Eastern Woodlands; VII, The South-west and Mexico.
[Illustration: HUMAN FORMS, MOKI]
[Illustration: OMAHA WAR CLUB]