The task involved in the foregoing classification has been accomplished
by intermittent labors extending through more than twenty years of time.
Many thousand printed vocabularies, embracing numerous larger lexic and
grammatic works, have been studied and compared. In addition to the
printed material, a very large body of manuscript matter has been used,
which is now in the archives of the Bureau of Ethnology, and which, it
is hoped, will ultimately be published. The author does not desire that
his work shall be considered final, but rather as initiatory and
tentative. The task of studying many hundreds of languages and deriving
therefrom ultimate conclusions as contributions to the science of
philology is one of great magnitude, and in its accomplishment an army
of scholars must be employed. The wealth of this promised harvest
appeals strongly to the scholars of America for systematic and patient
labor. The languages are many and greatly diverse in their
characteristics, in grammatic as well as in lexic elements. The author
believes it is safe to affirm that the philosophy of language is some
time to be greatly enriched from this source. From the materials which
have been and may be gathered in this field the evolution of language
can be studied from an early form, wherein words are usually not parts
of speech, to a form where the parts of speech are somewhat
differentiated; and where the growth of gender, number, and case
systems, together with the development of tense and mode systems can be
observed. The evolution of mind in the endeavor to express thought, by
coining, combining, and contracting words and by organizing logical
sentences through the development of parts of speech and their syntactic
arrangement, is abundantly illustrated. The languages are very unequally
developed in their several parts. Low gender systems appear with high
tense systems, highly evolved case systems with slightly developed mode
systems; and there is scarcely any one of these languages, so far as
they have been studied, which does not exhibit archaic devices in its
grammar.
The author has delayed the present publication somewhat, expecting to
supplement it with another paper on the characteristics of those
languages which have been most fully recorded, but such supplementary
paper has already grown too large for this place and is yet unfinished,
while the necessity for speedy publication of the present results seems
to be imperative. The needs of the Bureau of Ethnology, in directing the
work of the linguists employed in it, and especially in securing and
organizing the labor of a large body of collaborators throughout the
country, call for this publication at the present time.
In arranging the scheme of linguistic families the author has proceeded
very conservatively. Again and again languages have been thrown together
as constituting one family and afterwards have been separated, while
other languages at first deemed unrelated have ultimately been combined
in one stock. Notwithstanding all this care, there remain a number of
doubtful cases. For example, Buschmann has thrown the Shoshonean and
Nahuatlan families into one. Now the Shoshonean languages are those best
known to the author, and with some of them he has a tolerable speaking
acquaintance. The evidence brought forward by Buschmann and others seems
to be doubtful. A part is derived from jargon words, another part from
adventitious similarities, while some facts seem to give warrant to the
conclusion that they should be considered as one stock, but the author
prefers, under the present state of knowledge, to hold them apart and
await further evidence, being inclined to the opinion that the peoples
speaking these languages have borrowed some part of their vocabularies
from one another.
After considering the subject with such materials as are on hand, this
general conclusion has been reached: That borrowed materials exist in
all the languages; and that some of these borrowed materials can be
traced to original sources, while the larger part of such acquisitions
can not be thus relegated to known families. In fact, it is believed
that the existing languages, great in number though they are, give
evidence of a more primitive condition, when a far greater number were
spoken. When there are two or more languages of the same stock, it
appears that this differentiation into diverse tongues is due mainly to
the absorption of other material, and that thus the multiplication of
dialects and languages of the same group furnishes evidence that at some
prior time there existed other languages which are now lost except as
they are partially preserved in the divergent elements of the group. The
conclusion which has been reached, therefore, does not accord with the
hypothesis upon which the investigation began, namely, that common
elements would be discovered in all these languages, for the longer the
study has proceeded the more clear it has been made to appear that the
grand process of linguistic development among the tribes of North
America has been toward unification rather than toward multiplication,
that is, that the multiplied languages of the same stock owe their
origin very largely to absorbed languages that are lost. The data upon
which this conclusion has been reached can not here be set forth, but
the hope is entertained that the facts already collected may ultimately
be marshaled in such a manner that philologists will be able to weigh
the evidence and estimate it for what it may be worth.
The opinion that the differentiation of languages within a single stock
is mainly due to the absorption of materials from other stocks, often to
the extinguishment of the latter, has grown from year to year as the
investigation has proceeded. Wherever the material has been sufficient
to warrant a conclusion on this subject, no language has been found to
be simple in its origin, but every language has been found to be
composed of diverse elements. The processes of borrowing known in
historic times are those which have been at work in prehistoric times,
and it is not probable that any simple language derived from some single
pristine group of roots can be discovered.
There is an opinion current that the lower languages change with great
rapidity, and that, by reason of this, dialects and languages of the
same stock are speedily differentiated. This widely spread opinion does
not find warrant in the facts discovered in the course of this research.
The author has everywhere been impressed with the fact that savage
tongues are singularly persistent, and that a language which is
dependent for its existence upon oral tradition is not easily modified.
The same words in the same form are repeated from generation to
generation, so that lexic and grammatic elements have a life that
changes very slowly. This is especially true where the habitat of the
tribe is unchanged. Migration introduces a potent agency of mutation,
but a new environment impresses its characteristics upon a language more
by a change in the semantic content or meaning of words than by change
in their forms. There is another agency of change of profound influence,
namely, association with other tongues. When peoples are absorbed by
peaceful or militant agencies new materials are brought into their
language, and the affiliation of such matter seems to be the chief
factor in the differentiation of languages within the same stock. In
the presence of opinions that have slowly grown in this direction, the
author is inclined to think that some of the groups herein recognized as
families will ultimately be divided, as the common materials of such
languages, when they are more thoroughly studied, will be seen to have
been borrowed.
In the studies which have been made as preliminary to this paper, I have
had great assistance from Mr. James C. Pilling and Mr. Henry W. Henshaw.
Mr. Pilling began by preparing a list of papers used by me, but his work
has developed until it assumes the proportions of a great bibliographic
research, and already he has published five bibliographies, amounting in
all to about 1,200 pages. He is publishing this bibliographic material
by linguistic families, as classified by myself in this paper. Scholars
in this field of research will find their labors greatly abridged by the
work of Mr. Pilling. Mr. Henshaw began the preparation of the list of
tribes, but his work also has developed into an elaborate system of
research into the synonymy of the North American tribes, and when his
work is published it will constitute a great and valuable contribution
to the subject. The present paper is but a preface to the works of Mr.
Pilling and Mr. Henshaw, and would have been published in form as such
had not their publications assumed such proportions as to preclude it.
And finally, it is needful to say that I could not have found the time
to make this classification, imperfect as it is, except with the aid of
the great labors of the gentlemen mentioned, for they have gathered the
literature and brought it ready to my hand. For the classification
itself, however, I am wholly responsible.
I am also indebted to Mr. Albert S. Gatschet and Mr. J. Owen Dorsey for
the preparation of many comparative lists necessary to my work.
The task of preparing the map accompanying this paper was greatly
facilitated by the previously published map of Gallatin. I am especially
indebted to Col. Garrick Mallery for work done in the early part of its
preparation in this form. I have also received assistance from Messrs.
Gatschet, Dorsey, Mooney and Curtin. The final form which it has taken
is largely due to the labors of Mr. Henshaw, who has gathered many
important facts relating to the habitat of North American tribes while
preparing a synonymy of tribal names.
* * * * *
* * * *
Errata for Linguistic Families:
“Lewis and Clarke”
“Zuñi” (with tilde)
[_these spellings are standard throughout the text_]
(“obvious typographical error”) (“evident misprint”)
[_this and similar notations are from original text_]
Table of Contents:
Chimmesyan family / Principal tribes or villages
[_main text has “Principal Tribes” only_]
Tonkawan family / Geographic distribution 126 [125]
Waiilatpuan family [unchanged]
[_main text has “Waiilatpuan” only_]
Weitspekan family / Tribes
[_main text has “Principal Tribes”_]
slight differences have been [heen]
... kinship system, with mother-right as its chief factor
[mother-rite]
that passes by Bayau Pierre [_spelling unchanged_]
“more in the interior, towards the sources of the Willamat River.”
[_“w” invisible_]
(includes Kootenais (Flatbows or Skalzi)). [_one ) missing_]
There were 769 Klamath and Modoc on the Klamath Reservation
[Klamaht Reservation]
Hawhaw’s band of Aplaches [_spelling unchanged: may be right_]
Vallee de los Tulares [_spelling unchanged_]
Tshokoyem vocabulary [vobabulary]
especially in that of the Ruslen.” [_close quote invisible_]
= A-cho-mâ´-wi, Powell in Cont. N.A. Eth., III, 601, 1877 (vocabs.
[_open parenthesis missing_]
A corruption of the Algonkin word “nadowe-ssi-wag,”
[_close quote missing_]
Waukash, waukash, is the Nootka word “good” “good.”
[_both repetitions in original_]
Humboldt Bay as far south as Arcata
[_text unchanged: Arcata is at the extreme north end of
Humboldt Bay_]
a change in the semantic content or meaning of words [sematic]
* * * * *
* * * *
* * * * *