THE INDIANS AND THE WHITES COMPARED.
If lions had painters! This proverbial saying applies with equal force
to the American Indians. They have no historians among them, no books,
no newspapers, no convenient means of making their grievances known to
a sympathising world. Why, then, should not a white man, a Christian,
who has spent among them the greatest part of his life, and was treated
by them at all times with hospitality and kindness, plead their honest
cause, and defend them as they would defend themselves, if they had
but the means of bringing their facts and their arguments before an
impartial public?
Those who have never taken the pains to enquire into the real character
and disposition of the American Indians, naturally suppose, that a
people who have no code of laws for their government, but where every
man is at liberty to do what he pleases, where men never forget or
forgive injuries, and take revenge in their own way, often in the most
cruel manner, and are never satisfied until they have been revenged,
must of course be _barbarians_ and _savages_; by which undefined
words is understood whatever is bad, wicked, and disgraceful to human
nature. Imagination is immediately at work to paint them as a species
of monsters, to whom cruelty is an appetite; a sort of human-shaped
tigers and panthers, strangers to the finer feelings, and who commit
acts of barbarity without any excitement but that of their depraved
inclination, and without even suspecting that there are such things in
nature as virtue on the one hand and crime on the other.
But nothing is so false as this picture of the Indians. The worst
that can be said of them is, that the passion of revenge is so strong
in their minds, that it carries them beyond all bounds. But set this
aside, and their character is noble and great. They have no written
laws, but they have usages founded on the most strict principles of
equity and justice. Murder with them is punished with death. It is
true, that as was the case not many centuries ago among the most
civilised nations of Europe, the death of a man may be compounded for
with his surviving relations; if, however, they do not choose to accept
of the terms offered, any one of them may become the executioner of the
murderer.
Thieves are compelled to restore what they have stolen, or to make
satisfactory amends to the injured party; in their default, their
nearest relations are obliged to make up the loss. If the thief, after
sufficient warning, continues his bad practices, he is disowned by
his nation, and any one may put him to death the next time that he is
caught in the act of stealing, or that it can be clearly proved to have
been committed by him. I have given two instances of the kind in a
former chapter,[248] and I recollect another which will put what I have
said in the strongest light. I once knew an Indian chief, who had a son
of a vicious disposition, addicted to stealing, and who would take no
advice. His father, tired and unable to satisfy all the demands which
were made upon him for the restitution of articles stolen by his son,
at last issued his orders for shooting him the next time he should be
guilty of a similar act.
As to crimes and offences of an inferior nature to murder and theft,
they are left to the injured party to punish in such manner as he
thinks proper. Such are personal insults and threats, which among
those people are not considered as slight matters. If the will and
intention of the aggressor appear to be _bad_; if the insult offered
is considered as the forerunner of something worse; or, as the Indians
express themselves, if the “_murdering spirit_” is “_alive_” within
him who offers or threatens violence to another, they think themselves
justified in preventing the act meditated against them; in such a case,
they consider the killing the aggressor as an act of necessity and
self defence. Yet it is very rarely, indeed, that such punishments are
inflicted.[249] The Indians, in general, avoid giving offence as much
as possible. They firmly believe that bad thoughts and actions proceed
from the evil spirit, and carefully avoid every thing that is _bad_.
Every person who is well acquainted with the true character of the
Indians will admit that they are peaceable, sociable, obliging,
charitable, and hospitable among themselves, and that those virtues
are, as it were, a part of their nature. In their ordinary intercourse,
they are studious to oblige each other. They neither wrangle nor fight;
they live, I believe, as peaceably together as any people on earth, and
treat one another with the greatest respect. That they are not devoid
of tender feelings has been sufficiently shewn in the course of this
work. I do not mean to speak of those whose manners have been corrupted
by a long intercourse with the worst class of white men; they are a
degenerate race, very different from the true genuine Indians whom I
have attempted to describe.
If any one should be disposed to think that I have exaggerated in the
picture which I have drawn of these _original people_, as they call
themselves, I appeal to the numerous impartial writers who have given
the same testimony respecting them. What says Christopher Columbus
himself of the American Indians in his letters to his sovereign?
“There are not,” says he, “a better people in the world than these;
more affectionate, affable, or mild. _They love their neighbours as
themselves._”
Similar encomiums were passed on them by some of the first Englishmen
who came to settle in this country. The Reverend Mr. Cushman, in a
sermon preached at Plymouth in 1620, says: “The Indians are said to be
the most cruel and treacherous people in all those parts, even like
lions; but to us they have been like lambs, so kind, so submissive and
trusty, as a man may truly say, many Christians are not so kind and
sincere.”
The learned Dr. Elias Boudinot, of Burlington, in New Jersey (a man
well remembered as one of the most eminent leaders of the American
Revolution),[250] in a work[251] which, whatever opinion may be
entertained of the hypothesis that he contends for, well deserves
to be read, for the spirit which it breathes and the facts that it
contains, has brought together in one view, the above and many other
authorities of eminent men in favour of the American Indians, and in
proof that their character is such as I have described. I shall not
repeat after him what Las Casas, William Penn, Bryan Edwards, the Abbé
Clavigero, Father Charlevoix and others, have said on the same subject;
those numerous and weighty testimonies may be found in the work to
which I have referred.[252] But I cannot refrain from transcribing the
opinion of the venerable author himself, to which his high character,
his learning, and independence, affix a more than common degree of
authority.
“It is a matter of fact,” says Dr. Boudinot, “proved by most historical
accounts, that the Indians, at our first acquaintance with them,
generally manifested themselves kind, hospitable and generous to the
Europeans, so long as they were treated with justice and humanity. But
when they were, from a thirst of gain, over-reached on many occasions,
their friends and relations treacherously entrapped and carried away
to be sold for slaves, themselves injuriously oppressed, deceived
and driven from their lawful and native possessions; what ought to
have been expected, but inveterate enmity, hereditary animosity,
and a spirit of perpetual revenge? To whom should be attributed the
evil passions, cruel practices and vicious habits to which they are
now changed, but to those who first set them the example, laid the
foundation and then furnished the continual means for propagating and
supporting the evil?”[253]
Such was the original character of the Indians, stamped, as it were,
upon them by nature; but fifty or sixty years back, whole communities
of them bore the stamp of this character, difficult now to be found
within the precincts of any part of their territory bordering on the
settlements of the white people!
What! will it be asked, can this be a true picture of the character of
the Indians; of those brutes, barbarians, savages, men without religion
or laws, who commit indiscriminate murders, without distinction of age
or sex? Have they not in numberless instances desolated our frontiers,
and butchered our people? Have they not violated treaties and deceived
the confidence that we placed in them? No, no; they are beasts of prey
in the human form; they are men with whom no faith is to be kept, and
who ought to be cut off from the face of the earth!
Stop, my friends! hard names and broad assertions are neither reasons
nor positive facts. I am not prepared to enter into a discussion with
you on the comparative merits or demerits of the Indians and whites;
for I am unskilled in argument, and profess only to be a plain _matter
of fact_ man. To facts therefore I will appeal. I admit that the
Indians have sometimes revenged, cruelly revenged, the accumulated
wrongs which they have suffered from unprincipled white men; the
love of revenge is a strong passion which their imperfect religious
notions have not taught them to subdue. But how often have they been
the aggressors in the unequal contests which they have had to sustain
with the invaders of their country? In how many various shapes have
they not been excited and their passions roused to the utmost fury by
acts of cruelty and injustice on the part of the whites, who have made
afterwards the country ring with their complaints against the lawless
savages, who had not the means of being heard in their defence? I shall
not pursue these questions any farther, but let the facts that I am
going to relate speak for themselves.
In the summer of the year 1763, some friendly Indians from a distant
place, came to Bethlehem to dispose of their peltry for manufactured
goods and necessary implements of husbandry. Returning home well
satisfied, they put up the first night at a tavern, eight miles
distant from this place.[254] The landlord not being at home, his wife
took the liberty of encouraging the people who frequented her house for
the sake of drinking to abuse those Indians, adding, “That she would
freely give a gallon of rum to any one of them that should kill one of
these black d----ls.” Other white people from the neighbourhood came in
during the night, who also drank freely, made a great deal of noise,
and increased the fears of those poor Indians, who, for the greatest
part, understanding English, could not but suspect that something bad
was intended against their persons. They were not, however, otherwise
disturbed: but in the morning, when, after a restless night, they were
preparing to set off, they found themselves robbed of some of the
most valuable articles they had purchased, and on mentioning this to
a man who appeared to be the bar-keeper, they were ordered to leave
the house. Not being willing to lose so much property, they retired
to some distance into the woods, where, some of them remaining with
what was left them, the others returned to Bethlehem and lodged their
complaint with a justice of the peace. The magistrate gave them a
letter to the landlord, pressing him without delay to restore to the
Indians the goods that had been taken from them. But behold! when they
delivered that letter to the people at the inn, they were told in
answer: “that if they set any value on their lives, they must make off
with themselves immediately.” They well understood that they had no
other alternative, and prudently departed without having received back
any of their goods.[255] Arrived at Nescopeck[256] on the Susquehannah,
they fell in with some other Delawares, who had been treated much in
the same manner, one of them having had his rifle stolen from him. Here
the two parties agreed to take revenge in their own way, for those
insults and robberies for which they could obtain no redress; and that
they determined to do as soon as war should be again declared by their
nation against the English.
Scarcely had these Indians retired, when in another place, about
fourteen miles distant from the former, one man, two women and a child,
all quiet Indians, were murdered in a most wicked and barbarous manner,
by drunken militia officers and their men, for the purpose of getting
their horse and the goods they had just purchased.[257] One of the
women, falling on her knees, begged in vain for the life of herself
and her child, while the other woman, seeing what was doing, made her
escape to the barn, where she endeavoured to hide herself on the top of
the grain. She however was discovered, and inhumanly thrown down on the
threshing floor with such force that her brains flew out.[258]
Here, then, were insults, robberies and murders, all committed within
the short space of three months, unatoned for and unrevenged. There was
no prospect of obtaining redress; the survivors were therefore obliged
to seek some other means to obtain revenge. They did so; the Indians,
already exasperated against the English in consequence of repeated
outrages, and considering the nation as responsible for the injuries
which it did neither prevent nor punish, and for which it did not even
offer to make any kind of reparation, at last declared war, and then
the injured parties were at liberty to redress themselves for the
wrongs they had suffered. They immediately started against the objects
of their hatred, and finding their way, unseen and undiscovered, to
the inn which had been the scene of the first outrage, they attacked
it at daybreak, fired into it on the people within, who were lying in
their beds. Strange to relate! the murderers of the man, two women,
and child, were among them. They were mortally wounded, and died of
their wounds shortly afterwards. The Indians, after leaving this
house, murdered by accident an innocent family, having mistaken the
house that they meant to attack, after which they returned to their
homes.[259]
Now a violent hue and cry was raised against the Indians--no language
was too bad, no crimes too black to brand them with. No faith was to
be placed in those savages; treaties with them were of no effect; they
ought to be cut off from the face of the earth! Such was the language
at that time in everybody’s mouth; the newspapers were filled with
accounts of the cruelties of the Indians, a variety of false reports
were circulated in order to rouse the people against them, while they,
the really injured party, having no printing presses among them, could
not make known the story of their grievances.
“No faith can be placed in what the Indians promise at treaties; for
scarcely is a treaty concluded than they are again murdering us.” Such
is our complaint against these unfortunate people; but they will tell
you that it is the white men in whom no faith is to placed. They will
tell you, that there is not a single instance in which the whites have
not violated the engagements that they had made at treaties. They say
that when they had ceded lands to the white people, and boundary lines
had been established--“firmly established!” beyond which no whites
were to settle; scarcely was the treaty signed, when white intruders
again were settling and hunting on their lands! It is true that when
they preferred their complaints to the government, the government gave
them many fair promises, and assured them that men would be sent to
remove the intruders by force from the usurped lands. The men, indeed,
came, but with chain and compass in their hands, taking surveys of the
tracts of good land, which the intruders, from their knowledge of the
country, had pointed out to them!
What was then to be done, when those intruders would not go off from
the land, but, on the contrary, increased in numbers? “Oh!” said
those people, (and I have myself frequently heard this language in
the Western country,) “a new treaty will soon give us all this land;
nothing is now wanting but a pretence to pick a quarrel with them!”
Well, but in what manner is this quarrel to be brought about? A _David
Owen_, a _Walker_, and many others might, if they were alive, easily
answer this question. A precedent, however, may be found, on perusing
Mr. Jefferson’s Appendix to his Notes on Virginia. On all occasions,
when the object is to murder Indians, strong liquor is the main article
required; for when you have them dead drunk, you may do to them as you
please, without running the risk of losing your life. And should you
find that the laws of your country may reach you where you are, you
have only to escape or conceal yourself for a while, until the storm
has blown over! I well recollect the time when thieves and murderers of
Indians fled from impending punishment across the Susquehannah, where
they considered themselves safe; on which account this river had the
name given to it of “_the rogue’s river_.” I have heard other rivers
called by similar names.
In the year 1742, the Reverend Mr. Whitefield offered the Nazareth
Manor (as it was then called) for sale to the United Brethren.[260] He
had already begun to build upon it a spacious stone house, intended as
a school house for the education of negro children. The Indians, in the
meanwhile, loudly exclaimed against the white people for settling in
this part of the country, which had not yet been legally purchased of
them, but, as they said, had been obtained by fraud.[261] The Brethren
declined purchasing any lands on which the Indian title had not been
properly extinguished, wishing to live in peace with all the Indians
around them. Count Zinzendorff happened at that time to arrive in the
country; he found that the agents of the proprietors would not pay to
the Indians the price which they asked for that tract of land; he paid
them out of his private purse the whole of the demand which they made
in the height of their ill temper, and moreover gave them permission to
abide on the land, at their village, (where, by the by, they had a fine
large peach orchard,) as long as they should think proper. But among
those white men, who afterwards came and settled in the neighbourhood
of their tract, there were some who were enemies to the Indians, and
a young Irishman, without cause or provocation, murdered their good
and highly respected chief _Tademi_,[262] a man of such an easy and
friendly address, that he could not but be loved by all who knew him.
This, together with the threats of other persons, ill disposed towards
them, was the cause of their leaving their settlement on this manor,
and removing to places of greater safety.
It is true, that when flagrant cases of this description occurred,
the government, before the Revolution, issued proclamations offering
rewards for apprehending the offenders, and in later times, since the
country has become more thickly settled, those who had been guilty of
such offences were brought before the tribunals to take their trials.
But these formalities have proved of little avail. In the first case,
the criminals were seldom, if ever, apprehended; in the second, no jury
could be found to convict them; for it was no uncommon saying among
many of the men of whom juries in the frontier countries were commonly
composed, that no man should be put to death for killing an Indian; for
it was the same thing as killing a wild beast!
But what shall I say of the conduct of the British agents, or deputy
agents, or by whatsoever other name they may be called, who, at the
commencement of the American Revolution, openly excited the Indians
to kill and destroy all the rebels without distinction? “Kill all the
rebels,” they would say, “put them all to death, and spare none.”
A veteran chief of the Wyandot nation, who resided near Detroit,
observed to one of them that surely it was meant that they should kill
men only, and not women and children. “No, no,” was the answer, “kill
all, destroy all; _nits breed lice_!” The brave veteran[263] was so
disgusted with this reply, that he refused to go out at all; wishing
however to see and converse with his old brother soldiers of the
Delaware nation, with whom he had fought against the English in the
French war, he took the command of a body of ninety chosen men, and
being arrived at the seat of the government of the Delawares, on the
Muskingum, he freely communicated to his old comrades (among whom was
Glikhican, whom I shall presently have occasion further to mention)
what had taken place, and what he had resolved on; saying that he never
would be guilty of killing women and children; that this was the first
and would be the last of his going out this war; that in ten days they
should see him come back with one prisoner only, no scalp to a pole,
and no life lost. He kept his word. The sixteen chiefs under him, from
respect and principle, agreed to all his proposals and wishes.
How different the conduct of the Indians from that of their inhuman
employers! I have already related the noble speech of Captain Pipe
to the British Commandant at Detroit, and I have done justice to the
character of that brave officer, who surely ought not to be confounded
with those Indian agents that I have spoken of. But what said Pipe
to him? “Innocence had no part in your quarrels; and therefore I
distinguished--I spared. Father! I hope you will not destroy what
I have saved!”[264] I have also told the conduct of the two young
spirited Delawares[265] who saved the life of the venerable Missionary
Zeisberger, at the risk of their own. But it is not only against their
own people that Indians have afforded their protection to white men,
but against the whites themselves.
In the course of the Revolutionary war, in which (as in all civil
commotions) brother was seen fighting against brother, and friend
against friend, a party of Indian warriors, with whom one of those
white men, who, under colour of attachment to their king, indulged
in every sort of crimes, was going out against the settlers on the
Ohio, to kill and destroy as they had been ordered. The chief of the
expedition had given strict orders not to molest any of the white men
who lived with their friends the Christian Indians; yet as they passed
near a settlement of these converts, the white man, unmindful of the
orders he had received, attempted to shoot two of the Missionaries who
were planting potatoes in their field, and though the captain warned
him to desist, he still obstinately persisted in his attempt. The
chief, in anger, immediately took his gun from him, and kept him under
guard until they had reached a considerable distance from the place. I
have received this account from the chief himself, who on his return
sent word to the Missionaries that they would do well not to go far
from home, as they were in too great danger from the _white people_.
Another white man of the same description, whom I well knew, related
with a kind of barbarous exultation, on his return to Detroit from
a war excursion with the Indians in which he had been engaged, that
the party with which he was, having taken a woman prisoner who had a
sucking babe at her breast, he tried to persuade the Indians to kill
the child, lest its cries should discover the place where they were;
the Indians were unwilling to commit the deed, on which the white man
at once jumped up, tore the child from its mother’s arms and taking it
by the legs dashed its head against a tree, so that the brains flew out
all around. The monster in relating this story said, “The little dog
all the time was making _wee!_” He added, that if he were sure that his
old father, who some time before had died in Old Virginia, would, if
he had lived longer, have turned rebel, he would go all the way into
Virginia, raise the body, and take off his scalp!
Let us now contrast with this the conduct of the Indians. Carver tells
us in his travels with what moderation, humanity and delicacy they
treat female prisoners, and particularly pregnant women.[266] I refer
the reader to the following fact, as an instance of their conduct
in such cases. If his admiration is excited by the behaviour of the
Indians, I doubt not that his indignation will be raised in an equal
degree by that of a white man who unfortunately acts a part in the
story.
A party of Delawares, in one of their excursions during the
Revolutionary war, took a white female prisoner. The Indian chief,
after a march of several days, observed that she was ailing, and was
soon convinced (for she was far advanced in her pregnancy) that the
time of her delivery was near. He immediately made a halt on the bank
of a stream, where at a proper distance from the encampment, he built
for her a close hut of peeled barks, gathered dry grass and fern to
make her a bed, and placed a blanket at the opening of the dwelling
as a substitute for a door. He then kindled a fire, placed a pile of
wood near it to feed it occasionally, and placed a kettle of water at
hand where she might easily use it. He then took her into her little
infirmary, gave her Indian medicines, with directions how to use them,
and told her to rest easy and she might be sure that nothing should
disturb her. Having done this, he returned to his men, forbade them
from making any noise, or disturbing the sick woman in any manner, and
told them that he himself should guard her during the night. He did
so, and the whole night kept watch before her door, walking backward
and forward, to be ready at her call at any moment, in case of extreme
necessity. The night passed quietly, but in the morning, as he was
walking by on the bank of the stream, seeing him through the crevices,
she called to him and presented her babe. The good chief, with tears
in his eyes, rejoiced at her safe delivery; he told her not to be
uneasy, that he should lay by for a few days and would soon bring her
some nourishing food, and some medicines to take. Then going to his
encampment, he ordered all his men to go out a hunting, and remained
himself to guard the camp.
Now for the reverse of the picture. Among the men whom this chief
had under his command, was one of those white vagabonds whom I have
before described. The captain was much afraid of him, knowing him to
be a bad man; and as he had expressed a great desire to go a hunting
with the rest, he believed him gone, and entertained no fears for the
woman’s safety. But it was not long before he was undeceived. While
he was gone to a small distance to dig roots for his poor patient, he
heard her cries, and running with speed to her hut, he was informed by
her that the white man had threatened to take her life if she did not
immediately throw her child into the river. The Captain, enraged at the
cruelty of this man, and the liberty he had taken with his prisoner,
hailed him as he was running off, and told him, “That the moment he
should miss the child, the tomahawk should be in his head.” After a few
days this humane chief placed the woman carefully on a horse, and they
went together to the place of their destination, the mother and child
doing well. I have heard him relate this story, to which he added, that
whenever he should go out on an excursion, he never would suffer a
white man to be of his party.
Yet I must acknowledge that I have known an Indian chief who had been
guilty of the crime of killing the child of a female prisoner. It was
Glikhican,[267] of whom I have before spoken, as one of the friends of
the brave Wyandot who expressed so much horror at the order given to
him by the Indian agents to murder women and children.[268] In the year
1770, he joined the congregation of the Christian Indians; the details
of his conversion are related at large by Loskiel in his History of the
Missions.[269] Before that time he had been conspicuous as a warrior
and a counsellor, and in oratory it is said he never was surpassed.
This man, having joined the French, in the year 1754, or 1755, in their
war against the English, and being at that time out with a party of
Frenchmen, took, among other prisoners, a young woman named _Rachel
Abbott_, from the Conegocheague settlement,[270] who had at her breast
a sucking babe. The incessant cries of the child, the hurry to get off,
but above all, the persuasions of his _white_ companions, induced him,
much against his inclination, to kill the innocent creature; while the
mother, in an agony of grief, and her face suffused with tears, begged
that its life might be spared. The woman, however, was brought safe
to the Ohio, where she was kindly treated and adopted, and some years
afterwards was married to a Delaware chief of respectability, by whom
she had several children, who are now living with the Christian Indians
in Upper Canada.
Glikhican never forgave himself for having committed this crime,
although many times, and long before his becoming a Christian, he had
begged the woman’s pardon with tears in his eyes, and received her
free and full forgiveness. In vain she pointed out to him all the
circumstances that he could have alleged to excuse the deed; in vain
she reminded him of his unwillingness at the time, and his having been
in a manner compelled to it by his French associates; nothing that
she did say could assuage his sorrow or quiet the perturbation of his
mind; he called himself a wretch, a monster, a _coward_ (the proud
feelings of an Indian must be well understood to judge of the force of
this self-accusation), and to the moment of his death the remembrance
of this fatal act preyed like a canker worm upon his spirits. I ought
to add, that from the time of his conversion, he lived the life of a
Christian, and died as such.
The Indians are cruel to their enemies! In some cases they are, but
perhaps not more so than white men have sometimes shewn themselves.
There have been instances of white men flaying or taking off the skin
of Indians who had fallen into their hands, then tanning those skins,
or cutting them in pieces, making them up into razor-straps, and
exposing those for sale, as was done at or near Pittsburg sometime
during the Revolutionary war. Those things are abominations in the eyes
of the Indians, who, indeed, when strongly excited, inflict torments
on their prisoners and put them to death by cruel tortures, but never
are guilty of acts of barbarity in cold blood. Neither do the Delawares
and some other Indian nations, ever on any account disturb the ashes of
the dead.
The custom of torturing prisoners is of ancient date, and was first
introduced as a trial of courage. I have been told, however, that among
some tribes it has never been in use; but it must be added that those
tribes gave no quarter. The Delawares accuse the Iroquois of having
been the inventors of this piece of cruelty, and charge them further
with eating the flesh of their prisoners after the torture was over. Be
this as it may, there are now but few instances of prisoners being put
to death in this manner.
Rare as these barbarous executions now are, I have reason to believe
that they would be still less frequent, if proper pains were taken to
turn the Indians away from this heathenish custom. Instead of this, it
is but too true that they have been excited to cruelty by unprincipled
white men, who have joined in their war-feasts, and even added to the
barbarity of the scene. Can there be a more brutal act than, after
furnishing those savages, as they are called, with implements of war
and destruction, to give them an ox to kill and to roast whole, to
dance the war dance with them round the slaughtered animal, strike at
him, stab him, telling the Indians at the same time: “Strike, stab!
Thus you must do to your enemy!” Then taking a piece of the meat, and
tearing it with their teeth: “So you must eat his flesh!” and sucking
up the juices: “Thus you must drink his blood!” and at last devour the
whole as wolves do a carcass. This is what is known to have been done
by some of those Indian agents that I have mentioned.
“Is this possible?” the reader will naturally exclaim. Yes, it is
possible, and every Indian warrior will tell you that it is true. It
has come to me from so many credible sources, that I am forced to
believe it. How can the Indians now be reproached with acts of cruelty
to which they have been excited by those who pretended to be Christians
and civilised men, but who were worse savages than those whom, no
doubt, they were ready to brand with that name?
When hostile governments give directions to employ the Indians against
their enemies, they surely do not know that such is the manner in
which their orders are to be executed; but let me tell them and every
government who will descend to employing these auxiliaries, that this
is the only way in which their subaltern agents will and can proceed
to make their aid effectual. The Indians are not fond of interfering
in quarrels not their own, and will not fight with spirit for the mere
sake of a livelihood which they can obtain in a more agreeable manner
by hunting and their other ordinary occupations. Their passions must
be excited, and that is not easily done when they themselves have not
received any injury from those against whom they are desired to fight.
Behold, then, the abominable course which must unavoidably be resorted
to--to induce them to do what?--to lay waste the dwelling of the
peaceable cultivator of the land, and to murder his innocent wife and
his helpless children! I cannot pursue this subject farther, although
I am far from having exhausted it. I have said enough to enable the
impartial reader to decide which of the two classes of men, the Indians
and the whites, are most justly entitled to the epithets of brutes,
barbarians, and savages. It is not for me to anticipate his decision.
But if the Indians, after all, are really those horrid monsters which
they are alleged to be, two solemn, serious questions have often
occurred to my mind, to which I wish the partisans of that doctrine
would give equally serious answers.
1. Can civilised nations, can nations which profess Christianity,
be justified in employing people of that description to aid them
in fighting their battles against their enemies, Christians like
themselves?
2. When such nations offer up their prayers to the throne of the most
High, supplicating the Divine Majesty to grant success to their arms,
can they, ought they to expect that those prayers will be heard?
I have done. Let me only be permitted, in conclusion, to express
my firm belief, the result of much attentive observation and long
experience while living among the Indians, that if we would only
observe towards them the first and most important precept of our holy
religion, “to do to others as we would be done to;” if, instead of
employing them to fight our battles, we encouraged them to remain at
peace with us and with each other, they might easily be brought to a
state of civilisation, and become CHRISTIANS.
I still indulge the hope that this work will be accomplished by a wise
and benevolent government. Thus we shall demonstrate the falsity of the
prediction of the Indian prophets, who say: “That when the whites shall
have ceased killing the red men, and got all their lands from them, the
great tortoise which bears this island upon his back, shall dive down
into the deep and drown them all, as he once did before, a great many
years ago; and that when he again rises, the Indians shall once more be
put in possession of the whole country.”
CONCLUSION.
I have thus finished the work which was required of me by the
Historical Committee of the American Philosophical Society. On reading
over the printed sheets which have been kindly sent to me from
Philadelphia, as they issued from the press, I have noticed several
errors, some of which may be ascribed to me, others to the transcriber
of the manuscript, and very few to the printer. I regret that there are
among them some mistakes in dates and names of places; they are all
rectified in the errata.
I am very sensible of the many defects of this little work in point
of method, arrangement, composition and style. I am not an author
by profession; the greatest part of my life was spent among savage
nations, and I have now reached the age of seventy-five, at which
period of life little improvement can be expected. It is not,
therefore, as an author that I wish to be judged, but as a sincere
relator of facts that have fallen within my observation and knowledge.
I declare that I have said nothing but what I certainly know or verily
believe. In matters of mere opinion, I may be contradicted; but in
points of fact I have been even scrupulous, and purposely omitted
several anecdotes for which I could not sufficiently vouch. In my
descriptions of character, I may have been an unskilful painter, and
ill chosen expressions may imperfectly have sketched out the images
that are imprinted on my mind; but the fault is in the writer, not in
the man.
It is with pleasure that I inform the reader that the parts of Mr.
Zeisberger’s Iroquois Dictionary which I have mentioned above, (pages
97, 118,) as being irretrievably lost, have most fortunately been
found since this work is in the press. The book has been neatly bound
in seven quarto volumes, and will remain a monument of the richness
and comprehensiveness of the languages of the Indian nations. Several
valuable grammatical works on the same language, by the same author and
Mr. Pyrlæus, have been recovered at the same time, by means of which,
the idiom of the Six Nations may now be scientifically studied.
When I spoke (p. 136) of the impression made by Captain Pipe’s speech
“on all present,” I meant only on those who understood the language;
for there were many who did not, and M. Baby, the Canadian interpreter,
did not explain to the bystanders the most striking passages, but went
now and then to the Commandant and whispered in his ear. Captain Pipe,
while he spoke, was exceedingly animated, and twice advanced so near
to the Commandant, that M. Baby ordered him to fall back to his place.
All who were present must have at least suspected that his speech was
not one of the ordinary kind, and that everything was not as they might
suppose it ought to be.
I promised in my introduction (p. xxvi.) to subjoin an explanatory list
of the Indian nations which I have mentioned in the course of this
work, but I find that I have been so full on the subject that such a
list is unnecessary.
I have classed the Florida Indians together in respect of language, on
the supposition that they all speak dialects of the same mother tongue;
the fact, however, may be otherwise, though it will be extraordinary
that there should be several languages entirely different from each
other in the narrow strip of land between the Carolinas and the
Mississippi, when there are but two principal ones in the rest of
the United States. It is to be expected that the researches of the
Historical Committee will throw light upon this subject.
ERRATA IN PART I.
PAGE 26, LINE 5--Between the words “_if_” and “_what_” insert “_we
can credit_.”
30, 15--For “_declaring at the same time_” read “_and
declared afterwards_.”
31, 8--For “_Mohicans_” read “_Lenape_.”
67, 14--For “_1742_” read “_and November 1756_.”
72, 12--Dele “_in which_.”
77, 11--For “_Delawares_” read “_Mohicans_.”
80, 18--For “_1787_” read “_1781_.”
81, 5--For “_us_” read “_them_.”
84, 12--For “_Mouseys_” read “_Monseys_.”
23--Beginning a paragraph, for “_1768, about six_” read
“_1772, a few_.”
85, 29--Of third note, for “_Shawanachau_” read
“_Shawanachan_.”
90, 13--For “_Shawanos_” read “_Nanticokes_.”
91, 13--For “_schschequon_” read “_shechschequon_.”
92, 29 and 30--For “_Tawachguáno_” read “_Tayachguáno_.”
110, 12--For “_once_” read “_sometimes_.”
111, 8--For “_should_” read “_deserved to_.”
10--For “_to_” read “_out at_.”
12--Dele “_outside of the door and_.”
118, 15--For “_Thornhallesen_” read “_Thorhallesen_.”
122, 10--Of the first note, for “_p. 3_” read “_p. 5_.”
130, 8--For “_or_” read “_nor_.”
131, 22--For “_met_” read “_saw_.”
25--For “_days_” read “_hours_.”
133, 5--For “_December_” read “_November_.”
140, 10--Of No. 43, for “_with_” read “_of_.”
143, 34--For “_they_” read “_the Chippeways and some other
nations_.”
146, 17--For “_your_” read “_yon_.”
150, 4--After the word “_nation_” insert “_which they do not
approve of_.”
153, 31--For “_they sure_” read “_they are sure_.”
160, 32--For “_reply_” read “_answer_.”
164, 26--For “_decide_” read “_say_.”
28--For “_man_” read “_men_.”
166, 2--Between “_is_” and “_even_” insert “_sometimes_.”
22--For “_an old Indian_” read “_several old men_.”
167, 11 and 13--For “_road_” read “_course_.”
174, 18--For “_where_” read “_whence_.”
178, 33--For “_Duke Holland_” read “_Luke Holland_;” the same
where the name again occurs.
201, 5--Dele “_again_.”
216, 29--For “_very often_” read “_sometimes_.”
217, 2--For “_inches_” read “_feet_.”
218, 14--For “_of_” read “_on_.”
243, 3--For “_Americans_” read “_white men_.”
250, 9--For “_killed_” read “_eaten_.”
253, 37--For “_Pauk-sit_” read “_P’duk-sit_.”
263, 14--Dele “_lands or_.”
278, 35--For “_Albany_” read “_Pittsburgh_.”
283, 31--For “_Sandusky_” read “_Muskingum_.”
293, 26--For “_bought_” read “_brought_.”
313, 23--For “_them_” read “_us_.”
PART II.
A
CORRESPONDENCE
BETWEEN
_THE REV. JOHN HECKEWELDER_.
OF BETHLEHEM,
AND
_PETER S. DUPONCEAU, ESQ._,
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE HISTORICAL AND LITERARY COMMITTEE OF THE
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY,
RESPECTING THE
Languages of the American Indians.
The following Correspondence between Mr. Heckewelder and Peter
S. Du Ponceau, Esq., Corresponding Secretary of the Historical
and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society,
and subsequently, till his death in 1844, President of that
Society, is appended as a fitting sequel to the preceding
Account.
[Illustration: INTRODUCTION]
The Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical
Society, desirous of taking the most effectual means to promote the
objects of their institution, directed their corresponding secretary
to address letters in their name to such persons in the United States
as had turned their attention to similar objects, and solicit their
assistance.
Among other well-informed individuals, the Reverend Mr. Heckewelder
of Bethlehem was pointed out by the late Dr. Caspar Wistar, President
of the Society, and one of the most active and useful members of the
Committee, as a gentleman whose intimate knowledge of the American
Indians, their usages, manners and languages, enabled him to afford
much important aid to their labours. In consequence of this suggestion,
the secretary wrote to Mr. Heckewelder the letter No. 1, and Dr.
Wistar seconded his application by the letter No. 2. The languages
of the Indians were not at that time particularly in the view of the
Committee; the manners and customs of those nations were the principal
subjects on which they wished and expected to receive information. But
Mr. Heckewelder having with his letter No. 4, sent them the MS. of Mr.
Zeisberger’s Grammar of the Delaware Language, that communication had
the effect of directing their attention to this interesting subject.
This MS. being written in German, was not intelligible to the greatest
number of the members. Two of them, the Reverend Dr. Nicholas Collin,
and the corresponding secretary, were particularly anxious to be
honoured with the task of translating it; but the secretary having
claimed this labour as part of his official duty, it was adjudged
to him. While he was translating that work, he was struck with the
beauty of the grammatical forms of the Lenape idiom, which led him to
ask through Dr. Wistar some questions of Mr. Heckewelder,[271] which
occurred to him as he was pursuing his labours, and produced the
correspondence now published, which was carried on by the direction and
under the sanction of the Committee.
The letters which passed at the beginning between Dr. Wistar and Mr.
Zeisberger,[272] and are here published in their regular order, do
not, it is true, form a necessary part of this collection; but it will
be perceived, that to the two letters of Dr. Wistar, Nos. 2 and 6, we
are indebted for the valuable Historical Account of the Indians, which
forms the first number of this volume. It is just that he should have
the credit due to his active and zealous exertions.
It was intended that Mr. Zeisberger’s Grammar should have immediately
followed this Correspondence, which was considered as introductory to
it. But it being now evident that it would increase too much the size
of the volume, its publication is for the present postponed.
CORRESPONDENCE
RESPECTING THE INDIAN LANGUAGES.
LETTER I.
MR. DUPONCEAU TO MR. HECKEWELDER.
PHILADELPHIA, 9th January, 1816.
SIR.--As corresponding secretary to the Historical Committee of the
American Philosophical Society, it is my duty to solicit the aid of
men of learning and information, by the help of whose knowledge light
may be thrown on the yet obscure history of the early times of the
colonization of this country, and particularly of this State. Our
much-respected President and common friend, Dr. Wistar, has often
spoken to me of the great knowledge which you possess respecting
the Indians who once inhabited these parts, and of your intimate
acquaintance with their languages, habits and history. He had promised
me, when you was last here, to do me the favour of introducing me to
you, but the bad state of his health and other circumstances prevented
it, which has been and still is to me the cause of much regret. Permit
me, sir, on the strength of his recommendation, and the assurance he
has given me that I might rely on your zeal and patriotic feelings,
to request, in the name of the Historical Committee, that you will be
so good as to aid their labours by occasional communications on the
various subjects that are familiar to you and which relate to the early
history of this country. Accounts of the various nations of Indians
which have at different times inhabited Pennsylvania, their numbers,
origin, migrations, connexions with each other, the parts which they
took in the English and French wars and in the Revolutionary war, their
manners, customs, languages, and religion, will be very acceptable, as
well as every thing which you may conceive interesting, on a subject
which at no distant period will be involved in obscurity and doubt,
for want of the proper information having been given in time by those
cotemporaries who now possess the requisite knowledge and are still
able to communicate it. I hope, sir, that you will be able to find some
moments of leisure to comply, at least in part, with this request,
which you may do in any form that you may think proper. If that of
occasional letters to Dr. Wistar or myself should be the most agreeable
or convenient to you, you may adopt it, or any other mode that you may
prefer. I beg you will favour me with an answer as soon as possible,
that I may be able to inform the Committee of what they may expect
from you. You may be assured that all your communications will be
respectfully and thankfully received.
I am, very respectfully, Sir,
Your most obedient humble servant,
PETER S. DUPONCEAU,
Corresponding Secretary.
LETTER II.
DR. C. WISTAR TO MR. HECKEWELDER.
PHILADELPHIA, 9th January, 1816.
MY DEAR SIR.--Inclosed is a letter from the corresponding secretary
of the Historical Committee of our Society, which will inform you
of our wishes to preserve from oblivion, and to make public, all
the interesting information we can procure respecting the history
of our country and its original inhabitants. I believe there is no
other person now living who knows so much respecting the Indians who
inhabited this part of America, as you do, and there is no one whose
relations will be received with more confidence.
I hope you will approve of this method of favouring the public with
your information, and we will endeavour to give you no trouble in
publishing after you have favoured us with the communications. It will
be particularly agreeable to the society to receive from you an account
of the Lenni Lenape, as they were at the time when the settlement of
Pennsylvania commenced, and of their history and misfortunes since that
time; as these subjects are so intimately connected with the history
of our State. The history of the Shawanese, and of the Six Nations
will be very interesting to us for the same reason. But every thing
which throws light upon the nature of the Indians, their manners and
customs; their opinions upon all interesting subjects, especially
religion and government; their agriculture and modes of procuring
subsistence; their treatment of their wives and children; their social
intercourse with each other; and in short, every thing relating to them
which is interesting to you, will be very instructing to the Society.
A fair view of the mind and natural disposition of the savage, and
its difference from that of the civilised man, would be an acceptable
present to the world.
You have long been a member of the Society; may we ask of you to
communicate to us what you know and think ought to be published,
respecting the wild animals, or the native plants of our country. The
original object of our association was to bring together gentlemen like
yourself, who have a great deal of information in which the public
take an interest, that they might publish it together; and while an
intercourse with you will give us all great pleasure, it will perhaps
be a very easy way for you to oblige the world with your knowledge,
as we will take the whole care of the publication. The information
respecting our country which has been obtained by the very respectable
Brethren of Bethlehem, and is contained in their archives, will, I
believe, be more perfectly offered to the world by you at present,
than probably it ever will afterwards by others; I therefore feel very
desirous that you should engage in it.
The facts which Mr. Pyrlæus recorded there, relative to the
confederation of the Six Nations, are so interesting that they ought to
be made public.
In a few days after my return to Philadelphia, last autumn, I presented
in your name to the Society the several books with which you favoured
me. They were much gratified, for they considered them as truly
valuable, and the secretary was requested to acknowledge the receipt of
them, and to thank you in the name of the Society. I have constantly
regretted the attack of influenza which deprived me of the pleasure of
seeing more of you while you were last in Philadelphia. But I hope we
shall meet again before a great while, and I shall be sincerely pleased
if I can execute any of your commissions here, or serve you in any way;
my brother joins me in assuring you of our best wishes, and of the
pleasure we derived from your society.
With these I remain, your sincere friend,
C. WISTAR.
LETTER III.
MR. HECKEWELDER TO DR. WISTAR.
BETHLEHEM, 24th March, 1816.
MY DEAR SIR.--Last evening I was favoured with a letter from you,
covering one from the corresponding secretary of the Historical
Committee of the American Philosophical Society, dated 9th January,
and a book, for which I return my best thanks. If an apology for not
having written to you since I left Philadelphia can be admitted, it
must be that of my having been engaged in all my leisure hours, in
completing my narrative of the Mission, a work of which, even if it
is never published, I wished for good reasons, to leave a manuscript
copy. I have now got through with the principal part, but have to copy
the whole text, and in part to write the notes, remarks, and anecdotes
which are intended for the appendix. While writing, it has sometimes
struck me, that there might probably be some interesting passages in
the work, as the speeches of Indians on various occasions; their artful
and cunning ways of doing at times business; I had almost said their
diplomatic manœuvres as politicians; their addresses on different
occasions to the Great Spirit, &c., which are here noticed in their
proper places. I think much of the true character of the Indian may be
met with in perusing this work, and I will endeavour to forward the
narrative to you and your brother for perusal, after a little while.
Were I still in the possession of all the manuscripts which I gave to
my friend the late Dr. Barton, it would be an easy matter for me to
gratify you and the Philosophical Society in their wishes, but having
retained scarcely any, or but very few copies of what I sent him, I
am not so able to do what I otherwise would with pleasure; I shall,
however, make it my study to do what I can yet, though I am aware that
I shall in some points, differ from what others have said and written.
I never was one of those hasty believers and writers, who take the
shadow for the substance: what I wished to know, I always wished to
know correctly.
I approve of the mode proposed by the secretary of the Historical
Committee, to make communications in the form of letters, which is for
me the easiest and quickest mode. In the same way Dr. Barton received
much interesting matter from me within the last 20 or 30 years. He
often told me that he would publish a book, and make proper use of my
communications. Had he not told me this so repeatedly, I should long
since have tried to correct many gross errors, written and published,
respecting the character and customs of the Indians. The Lenni Lenape,
improperly called the Delawares, I shall, according to their tradition,
trace across the Mississippi into this country, set forth what people
they were, what parts of the country they inhabited, and how they were
brought down to such a low state: perhaps, never did man take the pains
that I did for years, to learn the true causes of the decline of that
great and powerful nation.
The Grammar of the language of the Lenni Lenape, written by David
Zeisberger, is still in my hands. By his will it is to be deposited in
the Brethren’s Archives in Bethlehem, but he has not prohibited taking
a copy of it. Will it be of any service to the Society that it should
be sent down for a few months for perusal, or if thought necessary, to
take a copy? If so, please to let me know, and I shall send it with
pleasure. It is, however, German and Indian, and without a translation
will be understood but by few. I may perhaps find other documents
interesting to the Society, as for example, copies of letters on Indian
business and treaties, of which many are in the possession of Joseph
Horsfield, Esq., son of the late Timothy Horsfield, through whom they
have come into his hands, and who is willing to communicate them.[273]
I am, dear friend,
Yours sincerely,
J. HECKEWELDER.
_P. S._--Will you be so good as with my respects to mention to the
secretary that I have received his letter, and shall shortly answer
it--my best wishes also to your brother Richard, whom I highly esteem.
J. H.
LETTER IV.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
BETHLEHEM, 3d April, 1816.
MY DEAR FRIEND.--With Captain Mann, of your city, I send David
Zeisberger’s Grammar of the Language of the Lenni Lenape, (otherwise
called the Delaware Indians.) As the book is not mine, but left by
will, to be placed in the Library at Bethlehem, I can do no more than
send it for perusal; or, if wished for, to have a copy taken from it,
which, indeed, I myself would cheerfully have done for you, were it not
that I must spare my weak eyes as much as possible.
I believe I have closed my last letter to you, without answering to the
question you put to me, respecting, “wild animals and the native plants
of our country.” On this head I do not know that I could be of any
service, since the animals that were in this country on the arrival of
the Europeans must be pretty generally known; and respecting the native
plants, I do not consider myself qualified to give any information,
as all I have attended to, has been to collect plants for botanists,
leaving it to them to examine and class them. But my friend Dr. Kampman
of this place, who is, I believe, one of the most attentive gentlemen
to botany, has promised me for you a copy of the botanical names of
those plants which he, and a few others of his friends, have collected,
within a great number of years, in the Forks of Delaware, with some few
from New Jersey, to the number (he thinks) of about five hundred; all
of which plants are in nature carefully laid up by him. Probably in two
or three weeks, I shall have the pleasure of transmitting to you this
promised catalogue.
I am, &c.
LETTER V.
FROM MR. DUPONCEAU TO DR. WISTAR.
PHILADELPHIA, 14th May, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--When you write to your friend Mr. Heckewelder, I beg you
will request him to answer the following questions:
1. What name did the French give to the Delaware nation?
2. I find in Zeisberger’s Vocabulary, page 11, that _Gischuch_ means
the _sun_. In the Grammar, I see that the Delawares divide their year
by moons, and call them _anixi gischuch_, &c. So that _gischuch_
signifies _moon_ as well as _sun_, how is it?
3. I find in the Grammar that the pronoun _nekama_ or _neka_ means
_he_, but it does not appear to have any feminine. What is the proper
word for _she_ in the Delaware, and how is it declined?
I am, &c.
LETTER VI.
FROM DR. WISTAR TO MR. HECKEWELDER.
PHILADELPHIA, May 21st, 1816.
MY DEAR FRIEND.--I am much obliged by your kind letters, which are
very interesting, and will, I hope, obtain from[274] us some of the
valuable information which has been left unpublished by our ingenious
colleague the late Dr. Barton. The Grammar of your venerable friend,
Zeisberger, is regarded by Mr. Duponceau as a treasure. He thinks the
inflections of the Indian verbs so remarkable that they will attract
the general attention of the literati. Inclosed is a letter from him,
by which he expects to open a correspondence with you on the subject. I
will be much obliged by your writing to him as soon as your convenience
will permit.
We expect soon to have materials for publishing a volume of Historical
Documents, and I have proposed that we shall prefix to those which
relate to Pennsylvania, all the information we can collect respecting
the Indians who were here before our ancestors. The Committee agree
that this will be the proper method, and my dependence for authentic
information is on you; as I have never met with any person who had any
knowledge to compare with yours, respecting the poor Indians. I was
delighted to find that your enquiries have been directed to the history
of the Lenni Lenape before they settled in Pennsylvania. The removal
of the Indian tribes from our country to another is a very interesting
subject. If you can tell us where they came from and what forced them
away; who were here before them, and what induced their predecessors to
make war for them, we shall be much obliged to you. There is no book I
shall read with more pleasure than yours.
The causes of their downfall, I believe, are well known to you, and
will of course have a place. The manner in which they were treated by
the Six Nations, after their conquest, will be an interesting article,
as it will shew the Indian policy. An account of the political rights
which were still allowed them, and, in short, of everything which is
connected with their conquest, will add to the interest of the work. As
occupants of Pennsylvania before the whites, ought not the Shawanese
and the Six Nations also to be described?
I have been told that the Shawanese were more refined than any other
Indians in this part of America, and that the place where Chilicothe
now stands, was the seat of Indian civilisation.
I have the pleasure of forwarding to you an instructing work by Dr.
Drake, a physician at Cincinnati, which he sends you.
He also sends a small package and a letter to Mr. Steinhauer.
I send them by a wagon which goes from Mr. Bolling’s, but I am not
without some expectation of paying another visit to Bethlehem very
soon, where it will be a great gratification to meet with my friend.
Affectionately yours,
CASPAR WISTAR.
LETTER VII.
MR. HECKEWELDER TO MR. DUPONCEAU.
BETHLEHEM, 27th May, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--I was this morning favoured with a letter from my friend Dr.
Wistar, inclosing some questions which you wish me to answer. I lose no
time in complying with your desire.
Your first question is, “what name the French did give to the Delaware
nation?”
I believe the Baron de La Hontan meant them when he spoke of the
Algonkins, whom he describes as a people whose language was understood
by many nations or tribes. So is certainly that of the Delawares.
While I was residing on the Muskingum, between the years 1773 and 1781,
I cannot precisely remember the year, there came a French gentleman
who was travelling on some business among the different Indian tribes,
and could speak more or less of several Indian languages, among which
was that of the Delawares. I had much conversation with him respecting
the Indians, and observed that he called the Delawares _les Lenopes_,
(a word evidently derived from their real name _Lenni Lenape_.) He
told me that the language of that nation had a wide range, and that
by the help of it, he had travelled more than a thousand miles among
different Indian nations, by all of whom he was understood. He added,
that the Baron La Hontan, when speaking of the Algonkins, must either
have alluded to that nation, or to some one descended from them. In
other instances, in the course of the four years that I resided in
Upper Canada, I generally heard the French Canadians call them Lénôpé,
while the English called them Delawares. Nevertheless, I do not doubt
but that they have been called by different names by the French and
other travellers, and if my memory serves me, some of the French people
called them _les Loups_, a name probably derived from one of their
tribes called the _Wolf_, if it is not a corruption of Lenape or Lenope.
Your next question is, “whether the Delaware word _gischuch_, signifies
the sun or moon, or both together?” The Indian name “_gischuch_,” is
common to “the two great luminaries which send down light from above.”
The moon is called “_nipawi gischuch_,” as it were “the sun which
gives light in the night.” It is also called in one word “_nipahum_.”
“_Gischuch_,” singly, is often used for the moon; the Indian year
is divided into thirteen lunar months, and in this sense, the word
“_gischuch_,” is used; as for instance, “_schawanáki_[275] _gischuch_”
or, in the Minsi or Monsey dialect, “_chwani_[276] _gischuch_” the
_shad moon_, answering to the month which we call March, at which time
the fish called “shad” passes from the sea into the fresh water rivers.
The inferior “stars” have a different name; they are called in the
singular _alank_; plural, _alankewak_, and by contraction, _alanquak_.
Lastly, you ask whether the Delawares have a word answering to the
English personal pronoun “_she_,” and what it is? I beg leave to answer
you somewhat in detail.
In the Indian languages, those discriminating words or inflections
which we call _genders_, are not, as with us, in general, intended to
distinguish between male and female beings, but between animate and
inanimate things or substances. Trees and plants (annual plants and
grasses excepted) are included within the generic class of animated
beings. Hence the personal pronoun has only two modes, if I can so
express myself, one applicable to the animate, and the other to the
inanimate gender; “_nekama_” is the personal pronominal form which
answers to “he” and “she” in English. If you wish to distinguish
between the sexes, you must add to it the word “man” or “woman.” Thus
“_nekama lenno_,” means “_he_” or “_this man_;” “_nekama ochqueu_,”
“_she_” or “_this woman_.” This may appear strange to a person
exclusively accustomed to our forms of speech, but I assure you that
the Indians have no difficulty in understanding each other.
Nor must you imagine that their languages are poor. See how the
Delaware idiom discriminates between the different ages of man and
woman!
LENNO, _a man_.
Wuskilenno, _a young man_.
Pilapeu, _a lad_.
Pilawesis, or pilawétzitsch, _a boy_.
Pilawétit, _a male infant babe_.
Kigeyilenno, _an aged man_.
Mihilusis, _an old man, worn out with age_.
OCHQUEU, _a woman_.
Wusdóchqueu, _a young woman, a virgin_.
Ochquetschitsch, _a girl_.
Quetit, _a female infant babe_.
Gichtochqueu, _an aged woman_.
Chauchschìsis, _a very old woman_.
Note “_len_” or “_lenno_” in the male, and “_que_” or “_queu_” in the
female, distinguish the sexes in compound words; sometimes the _L_
alone denotes the male sex, as in “pi_l_apeu,” “mihi_l_usis,” &c.
The males of quadrupeds are called “_lenno wéchum,_” and by contraction
“_lennochum_;” the females “_Ochqueu wéchum_,” and by contraction
“_ochquéchum_,” which is the same as saying _he_ or _she_ beasts. With
the winged tribe, their generic denomination “_wehelle_” is added to
the word which expresses the sex; thus, “_lenno wehelle_” for the male,
and “_ochquechelle_” (with a little contraction) for the female. There
are some animals the females of which have a particular distinguishing
name, as “_Nunschetto_” a _doe_, “_Nunscheach_” a _she bear_. This,
however, is not common.
Thus I have endeavoured to answer your questions, and I hope, have done
it to your satisfaction. I shall always be willing and ready to give
you any further information that you or the Philosophical Society may
require; I mean, always to the best of my knowledge and abilities.
I am, &c.
LETTER VIII.
MR. DUPONCEAU TO MR. HECKEWELDER.
PHILADELPHIA, 10th June, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--Your favour of the 27th ult. has done me the greatest
pleasure. I am very thankful for the goodness you have had to answer
the questions which I took the liberty of putting to you through our
common friend Dr. Wistar. I shall not fail to avail myself of your
kind offer to answer such further questions as I may ask, as in so
doing I shall fulfil a duty which the Historical Committee of the
Philosophical Society has imposed upon me, and at the same time I am
satisfied that I shall derive a great deal of pleasure to myself. But
I must acknowledge that I am entirely ignorant of the subject on which
I have been directed to obtain information from you, so much so that I
am even at a loss what questions to ask. As I have, however, undertaken
the task, I must endeavour to go through it as well as I can, and rely
on the instruction which I shall receive from your letters, to point
out to me further enquiries. I am fortunately employed in translating
the late Mr. Zeisberger’s Grammar of the Lenni Lenape, which will lead
me a little into the right path, and I read at the same time such books
as I can find in our scanty libraries respecting the languages of the
American Indians. This study pleases me much, as I think I perceive
many beauties in those idioms, but the true enjoyment of those beauties
is, I presume, only accessible to those to whom the languages are
familiar.
From what I have above stated, you will easily perceive that my
questions to you must necessarily be desultory, and without any regular
order or method. But you will diffuse light through this chaos, and
every thing at last will find its proper place.
I cannot express to you how delighted I am with the grammatical forms
of the Indian languages, particularly of the Delaware, as explained
by Mr. Zeisberger. I am inclined to believe that those forms are
peculiar to this part of the world, and that they do not exist in the
languages of the old hemisphere. At least, I am confident that their
development will contribute much to the improvement of the science
of universal grammar. About fifty years ago, two eminent French
philosophers published each a short treatise on the origin of language.
One of them was the celebrated mathematician Maupertuis, and the other
M. Turgot, who afterwards was made a minister of state, and acquired
considerable reputation by his endeavours to introduce reform into the
administration of the government of his own country. M. Maupertuis,
in his Essay, took great pains to shew the necessity of studying the
languages even of the most distant and barbarous nations, “because,”
said he, “we may chance to find some that are formed on _new plans
of ideas_.” M. Turgot, instead of acknowledging the justness of this
profound remark, affected to turn it into ridicule, and said he could
not understand what was meant by “_plans of ideas_.” If he had been
acquainted with the Delaware language, he would have been at no loss to
comprehend it.
I presume that by this expression M. Maupertuis meant the various
modes in which ideas are combined and associated together in the
form of words and sentences, and in this sense it is to me perfectly
intelligible. The associations expressed by words must be first formed
in the mind, and the words shew in what order of succession the ideas
were conceived, and in what various groups they arranged themselves
before utterance was given to them. The variety of those groups which
exist in the different languages forms what M. Maupertuis meant by
“plans of ideas,” and indeed, this variety exists even in one and the
same language. Thus when we say, “lover,” and “he who loves,” the same
group of ideas is differently combined, and of course, differently
expressed, and it may well be said that those ideas are arranged “on
different plans.”
This difference is strongly exemplified in the Delaware language; I
shall only speak at present of what we call the “declension of nouns.”
What in our European idioms we call the “objective cases” are one or
more words expressive of two prominent ideas, that of the object spoken
of, and that of the manner in which it is affected by some other object
or action operating upon it. This is done in two ways; by inflecting
the substantive, or by affixing to it one or more of those auxiliary
words which we call “prepositions.” Thus when we say in English “_of
Peter_” and in German “_Peters_,” the same two principal ideas are
expressed in the former language by two words and in the latter by one,
and the termination or inflexion _s_ in German conveys the same meaning
as the preposition “_of_” in English. It is clear that these two ideas,
before they were uttered in the form of words, were grouped in the
minds both of the German and the Englishman; in the one, as it were
at once, and in the other successively: for it is natural to suppose
that they were conceived as they are expressed. Again, when you say in
Latin _amo Petrum_, (I love Peter,) the termination _um_ is expressive
of the action of the verb _love_, upon the object, _Peter_. In the
English and German this accessory idea is not expressed by sound, but
still it exists in the mind. In every language there are more ideas,
perhaps, understood, than are actually expressed. This might be easily
demonstrated, if it were here the place.
Let us now consider how the same ideas are combined and expressed in
the Delaware language, according to Mr. Zeisberger. When the accessory
idea which we call “_case_” proceeds from the operation of a verb upon
a noun or word significant of an object, that idea is not affixed as
with us to the noun but to the verb, or in other words, it is not the
_noun_ but the _verb_ that is declined by inflexions or cases. Thus
when you say “_getannitowit n’quitayala_, I fear God;” the first word,
_getannitowit_, which is the substantive, is expressed, as we should
say, in the nominative case, while the termination of the verb _yala_,
expresses its application to the object. It is precisely the same as
if in Latin, instead of saying, _Petrum amo_, I love Peter, we carried
the termination _um_ to the verb, and said _Petrus amum_. Does not this
shew that many various combinations of ideas may take place in the
human mind, of which we, Europeans by birth or descent, have not yet
formed a conception? Does this not bid defiance to our rules or canons
of universal grammar, and may we not say with M. Maupertuis, that in
extending our study of the languages of man, we shall probably find
some formed upon “plans of ideas” different from our own?
But I perceive that instead of asking you questions, as it is my duty
to do, I am losing myself in metaphysical disquisitions; I return,
then, to my principal object. A very interesting German book has lately
fallen into my hands. It is entitled “_Untersuchungen ueber Amerikas
Bevœlkerung ans dem alten Kontinente_,”[277] and it is written by
Professor Vater, of Leipzig. The author, after justly observing that
the language of the Delawares is exceedingly rich in grammatical
forms, and making the same observation on that of the Naticks, from
the venerable Eliot’s translation of the Bible into that idiom, says
that, on the contrary, that of the Chippeways is very poor in that
respect. “_Die Chippewæer_,” he says, “_haben fast keine formen._”[278]
This appears to me very strange, because on examining the various
Indian languages from Nova Scotia to Chili, I have been surprised to
find that they appear all formed on the same model, and if Professor
Vater is correct, the Chippeway dialect will form an exception. I beg,
therefore, you will inform me whether there is such a great difference
as he states between that and the Delaware. I am much inclined to think
that the learned Professor is mistaken. I must take this opportunity,
however, to express my astonishment at the great knowledge which the
literati of Germany appear to possess of America, and of the customs,
manners and languages of its original inhabitants. Strange! that we
should have to go to the German universities to become acquainted with
our own country.
Another German Professor, of the name of Rudiger, has compiled an
interesting work, in which he gives specimens of all the languages in
the world, as far as they are known, and among them does not forget
those of the Indian nations of America. He gives the numerals of
the Delaware language, from a vocabulary of that idiom, printed at
Stockholm, in 1696, and made while the Swedes were in possession of
that part of this country which they principally inhabited. I find
a considerable difference between those numerals and these given by
Zeisberger. That you may see in what it consists, I insert them both.
DELAWARE NUMERALS.
According to the Swedish Vocabulary. According to Zeisberger.
1. Ciutte. 1. Ngutti.
2. Nissa. 2. Nischa.
3. Naha. 3. Nacha.
4. Nawo. 4. Newo.
5. Pareenach. 5. Palenach.
6. Ciuttas. 6. Guttasch.
7. Nissas. 7. Nischasch.
8. Haas. 8. Chasch.
9. Pæschun. 9. Peschkonk.
10. Thæræn. 10. Tellen.
20. Nissinacke. 20. Nishinachke.
100. Ciutabpach. 100. Nguttapachki.
Now, there can be no doubt that these two sets of numerals belong
to the same language, but I am astonished at seeing the same words
written so differently by a Swede and a German, when there is so little
difference in the powers of the alphabetical signs of their languages.
I am particularly struck with some words that are written with _R_
by the Swede and with _L_ by the German author. In all Zeisberger’s
Grammar I have not been able to find the letter _R_ in one single
Delaware word, neither is it to be found in any of the words of his
Delaware spelling book. No doubt you can inform me of the reason of
this difference.
A greater one is still to be found in the Algonkin numerals given by
the Baron La Hontan, and those of the Delaware proper. I place them
here again in opposition to each other.
Algonkin numerals from La Hontan. Delaware numerals from Zeisberger.
1. Pegik. 1. Ngutti.
2. Ninch. 2. Nischa.
3. Nissoue. 3. Nacha.
4. Neou. 4. Newo.
5. Narau. 5. Palenach.
6. Ningoutouassou. 6. Guttasch.
7. Ninchouassou. 7. Nischasch.
8. Nissouassou. 8. Chasch.
9. Changassou. 9. Peschkonk.
10. Mitassou. 10. Tellen.
There is certainly a family resemblance between some of these words,
while in others no kind of similarity can be traced. As you believe
that the Delawares and the Algonkins are the same people, I beg you
will be so good as to point out to me the cause of the difference which
I have observed.
I am, &c.
LETTER IX.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
PHILADELPHIA, 13th June, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--I take the liberty of submitting to you a few questions,
which have occurred to me in perusing Mr. Zeisberger’s Grammar. I beg
you will be so good as to answer them at your leisure.
I am, &c.
QUERIES.
1. In Mr. Zeisberger’s Grammar, double consonants are frequently used,
as in _Pommauchsin_, _Lenno_, _Lenni Lenape_.
QUÆRE: Are the two consonants fully and distinctly sounded, thus:
_pom-m-auchsin_--_Len-n-o_, as in the Italian language, or is only one
of the consonants heard, as if it were thus written: _pomauchsin_,
_leno_. In this latter case what is the reason for using two
consonants, if only one is sounded?
2. Mr. Zeisberger frequently puts a comma or apostrophe (’) before
or after the letter N in the present of the indicative verbs,
_’npommauchsi_, and sometimes _n’pommauchsi_. Sometimes he writes the
word without: _ndappiwi_, _ndappiwitsch_; what is the reason of this
variation? Is there any necessity for the comma before or after the _N_
in the first person, or after the _K_ and _W_, in the second and third?
Is it not best to simplify as much as possible the orthography of such
a difficult language?
3. What is the difference in pronunciation between _ke_ and _que_; say,
_pomauchsijenke_ and _pomauchsijeque_? Is the latter sounded like _cue_
or _kue_, or is it sounded as _ke_?
4. The conjunctive mood is expressed in German by “_wenn_;” does it
mean in English “_if_” or “_when_”? Does “_n’pomauchsijane_,” mean
“when I live” or “if I live,” or both? I find it sometimes expressed
“_wenn_,” oder “_da_,” oder “_als_,” which inclines me to think it
signifies both “_when_” and “_if_.”
5. I find some terminations in the tenses of the verbs, sometimes
written “_cup_,” sometimes “_kup_,” and sometimes “_gup_;” thus
_epiacup_, “where I was,” _elsijakup_, “when or if I was so situated;”
and _pommauchsijengup_, “if or when we have lived.” Are these different
sounds, or does this difference in writing arise from the Germans being
accustomed to confound the sounds of K and G hard?
6. I find some words written sometimes with one _I_ and sometimes
with two; thus _elsia_, and _elsija_. Are the two _i_’s separately
articulated, or do they sound only as one?
7. I find the second person of the singular in verbs sometimes written
with a _K_, sometimes with a _G_, thus _kneichgussi_, du wirst
gesehen (thou art seen); _kdaantschi_, du wirst gehen (thou wilt go);
_gemilgussi_, dir wird gegeben (it is given to thee). Why is it not
written _kemilgussi_? see query 5. I find sometimes a double _aa_--Is
it merely to express length of quantity, or are the two _a_’s sounded
distinctly?
8. What is the difference in sound between _ch_ and _hh_, do they both
represent the same guttural sound like _ch_ in German? If so, why
express this sound in two different ways; if otherwise, what is the
real difference between the two sounds?
EXAMPLES.
_Ach_pil, bleibe du (remain thou); a_ch_pi_ch_tique, wenn sie nicht da
sind (if they are not there); nda_hh_enap, wir waren gegangen (we had
gone); kda_hh_imo, ihr gehet (you go).
I am, &c.
LETTER X.
MR. HECKEWELDER TO MR. DUPONCEAU.
BETHLEHEM, 20th June, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--Your favors of the 10th and 13th inst. have been duly
received. I shall now endeavour to answer the first. The second shall
in a few days be attended to.
I am glad to find that you are so much pleased with the forms of our
Indian languages. You will be still more so as you become more familiar
with the beautiful idiom of the Lenni Lenape. It is certain that many
of those forms are not to be found either in the German or English; how
it is with the other languages of Europe, Asia, and Africa, I cannot
say, not being acquainted with them, and never having made philology
my particular study. I concur with you in the opinion that there must
be in the world many different ways of connecting ideas together in
the form of words, or what we call _parts of speech_, and that much
philosophical information is to be obtained by the study of those
varieties. What you observe with regard to the verbs being inflected
in lieu of affixing a case or termination to the noun is very correct,
but the ground or principle on which it is done, is not perhaps known
to you. The verbs in the Indian languages are susceptible of a variety
of forms, which are not to be found in any other language that I know.
I do not mean to speak here of the positive, negative, causative, and
a variety of other forms, but of those which Mr. Zeisberger calls
_personal_, in which the two pronouns, governing and governed, are by
means of affixes, suffixes, terminations, and inflections, included in
the same word. Of this I shall give you an instance from the Delaware
language. I take the verb _ahoalan_, to love, belonging to the fifth
of the eight conjugations, into which Mr. Zeisberger has very properly
divided this part of speech.
INDICATIVE, PRESENT, POSITIVE.
_Singular._ _Plural._
N’dahoala, _I love_, n’dahoalaneen, _we love_,
k’dahoala, _thou_-- k’dahoalohhimo, _you_--
w’dahoala,} _he_-- ahoalewak, _they_--
or ahoaleu}
Now for the personal forms in the same tense.
FIRST PERSONAL FORM.
I.
_Singular._ _Plural._
K’dahoatell, _I love thee_, K’dahoalohhumo, _I love you_,
n’dahoala, _I love him or her_. n’dahoalawak,--_them_.
SECOND PERSONAL FORM.
THOU.
_Singular_. _Plural._
K’dahoali, _thou lovest me_, k’dahoalineen, _thou lovest us_,
k’dahoala,--_him or her_. k’dahoalawak,--_them_.
THIRD PERSONAL FORM.
HE, (_or_ SHE.)
_Singular._ _Plural._
N’dahoaluk, _he loves me_, w’dahoalguna, _he loves us_,
k’dahoaluk,--_thee_, w’dahoalguwa,--_you_,
w’dahoalawall--_him_. w’dahoalawak,--_them_.
FOURTH PERSONAL FORM.
WE.
_Singular._ _Plural._
K’dahoalenneen, _we love thee_, k’dahoalohummena, _we love you_,
n’dahoalawuna,--_him_. n’dahoalowawuna,--_them_.
FIFTH PERSONAL FORM.
YOU.
_Singular._ _Plural._
K’dahoalihhimo, _you love me_, k’dahoalihhena, _you love us_.
k’dahoalanewo,--_him_. k’dahoalawawak,--_them_.
SIXTH PERSONAL FORM.
THEY.
_Singular._ _Plural._
N’dahoalgenewo, _they love me_, n’dahoalgehhena, _they love us_.
k’dahoalgenewo,--_thee_, k’dahoalgehhimo,--_you_.
w’dahoalanewo,--_him_. w’dahoalawawak,--_them_.
In this manner verbs are conjugated through all their moods and tenses,
and through all their negative, causative, and various other forms,
with fewer irregularities than any other language that I know of.
These conjugations, no doubt, you have found, or will find in Mr.
Zeisberger’s grammar, but the few examples that I have above put
together, are necessary to understand the explanation which I am about
to give.
The words you quote are: “_getannitowit n’quitayala_,” _I fear God_,
or rather, according to the Indian inversion, _God I fear_. Your
observation is that the inflection or case of the noun substantive
_God_, is carried to the verb. This is true; but if you enquire for the
reason or the manner in which it takes place, you will find that _ala_
is the inflection of the second or last person of the verb, in the
first personal form; thus as you have seen that _n’dahoala_ means _I
love him_, so _n’quitayala_, in the same form and person means _I fear
him_; it is therefore the same as if you said _God I fear him_. This
is not meant in the least to doubt or dispute the correctness of your
position, but to shew in what manner the combination of ideas is formed
that has led to this result. You have now, I believe, a wider field for
your metaphysical disquisitions.
I pass on to the other parts of your letter. I believe with you that
Professor Vater is mistaken in his assertion that the language of
the Chippeways is deficient in grammatical forms. I am not skilled
in the Chippeway idiom, but while in Upper Canada, I have often met
with French Canadians and English traders who understood and spoke it
very well. I endeavoured to obtain information from them respecting
that language, and found that it much resembled that of the Lenape.
The differences that I observed were little more than some variations
in sound, as _b_ for _p_, and _i_ for _u_. Thus, in the Delaware,
_wapachquiwan_ means a _blanket_, in the Chippeway it is _wabewian_;
_gischuch_ is Delaware for a _star_, the Chippeways say _gischis_;
_wape_ in Delaware _white_; in the Chippeway, _wabe_. Both nations
have the word _Mannitto_ for God, or the Great Spirit, a word which is
common to all the nations and tribes of the Lenape stock.
There is no doubt that the Chippeways, like the Mahicanni, Naticks,
Wampanos, Nanticokes, and many other nations, are a branch of the great
family of the Lenni Lenape, therefore I cannot believe that there is so
great a difference in the forms of their languages from those of the
mother tongue. I shall, however, write on the subject to one of our
Missionaries who resides in Canada, and speaks the Chippeway idiom,
and doubt not that in a short time I shall receive from him a full and
satisfactory answer.
On the subject of the numerals, I have had occasion to observe that
they sometimes differ very much in languages derived from the same
stock. Even the Minsi, a tribe of the Lenape or Delaware nation, have
not all their numerals like those of the Unami tribe, which is the
principal among them. I shall give you an opportunity of comparing them.
Numerals of the Minsi. Numerals of the Unami.
1. Gutti. 1. N’gutti.
2. Nischa. 2. Nischa.
3. Nacha. 3. Nacha.
4. Newa. 4. Newo.
5. _Nalan_, (algonk. _narau_.) 5. Palenach.
6. Guttasch. 6. Guttasch.
7. _Nischoasch_, (algonk. _nissouassou_.) 7. Nischasch.
8. Chaasch. 8. Chasch.
9. _Nolewi._ 9. _Peschkonk._
10. _Wimbat._ 10. _Tellen._
You will easily observe that the numbers five and ten in the Minsi
dialect, resemble more the Algonkin, as given by La Hontan, than the
pure Delaware. I cannot give you the reason of this difference. To this
you will add the numerous errors committed by those who attempt to
write down the words of the Indian languages, and who either in their
own have not alphabetical signs adequate to the true expression of the
sounds, or want an _Indian ear_ to distinguish them. I could write a
volume on the subject of their ridiculous mistakes. I am, &c.
LETTER XI.
FROM MR. HECKEWELDER.
BETHLEHEM, 24th June, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--I now proceed to answer the several queries contained in
your letter of the 13th inst.
1. The double consonants are used in writing the words of the Delaware
language, for the sole purpose of indicating that the vowel which
immediately precedes them is short, as in the German words _immer_,
_nimmer_, _schimmer_, and the English _fellow_, _terrible_, _ill_,
_butter_, &c. The consonant is not to be articulated twice.
2. The apostrophe which sometimes follows the letters _n_ and _k_, is
intended to denote the contraction of a vowel, as _n’pommauchsi_, for
_ni pommauchsi_, _n’dappiwi_, for _ni dappiwi_, &c. If Mr. Zeisberger
has placed the apostrophe in any case before the consonant, he must
have done it through mistake.
3. There is a difference in pronunciation between _ke_ and _que_; the
latter is pronounced like _kue_ or _kwe_. In a verb, the termination
_ke_ indicates the first person of the plural, and _que_ the second.
4. The word _wenn_, employed in the German translation of the tenses
of the conjunctive mood of the Delaware verbs, means both _when_,
and _if_, and is taken in either sense according to the content of
the phrase in which the word is used. Examples: _Ili gachtingetsch
pommauchsiane_, “IF I live until the next year”--_Payane Philadelphia_,
“WHEN I come to Philadelphia.”
5. Sometimes the letters _c_ or _g_, are used in writing the Delaware
language instead of _k_, to shew that this consonant is not pronounced
too hard; but in general _c_ and _g_ have been used as substitutes for
_k_, because our printers had not a sufficient supply of types for that
character.
6. Where words are written with _ij_, both the letters are to be
articulated; the latter like the English _y_ before a vowel. For this
reason in writing Delaware words I often employ the _y_ instead of _j_,
which Mr. Zeisberger and the German Missionaries always make use of.
Thus _Elsija_ is to be pronounced like _Elsiya_.
7. Answered in part above, No. 5. The double vowels are merely intended
to express length of sound, as in the German.
8. _Ch_, answers to the X of the Greeks, and _ch_ of the Germans. _Hh_,
like all other duplicated consonants, indicates only the short sound of
the preceding vowels.
I am, &c.
LETTER XII.
TO MR. HECKEWELDER.
PHILADELPHIA, 13th July, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--I have received your kind letters of the 20th and 24th ult.
It is impossible to be more clear, precise, and accurate, than you
are in your answers to my various questions. The information which
your letters contain is of the highest interest to me, and I doubt not
will prove so to the Committee, by whose orders I have engaged in this
Correspondence, on a subject entirely new to me, but with which I hope
in time and with your able assistance, to become better acquainted.
M. de Volney has said somewhere in his excellent Descriptive View of
the United States, that it were to be wished that five or six eminent
linguists should be constantly employed at the public expense to
compile Indian Grammars and Dictionaries. I cannot suppose that the
Count meant literally what he said, as he must have been sensible of
the difficulties attending on the execution of such a plan, but at any
rate, here is a noble display of enthusiasm for our favourite science,
and a sufficient encouragement for us to pursue our philological
enquiries. Alas! if the beauties of the Lenni Lenape language were
found in the ancient Coptic, or in some ante-diluvian Babylonish
dialect, how would the learned of Europe be at work to display them
in a variety of shapes and raise a thousand fanciful theories on that
foundation! What superior wisdom, talents and knowledge would they not
ascribe to nations whose idioms were formed with so much skill and
method! But who cares for the poor American Indians? They are savages
and barbarians and live in the woods; must not their languages be
savage and barbarous like them?
Thus reason those pretended philosophers who court fame by writing huge
volumes on the origin of human language, without knowing, perhaps, any
language but their own, and the little Latin and Greek that they have
been taught at College. You would think, when you read their works,
that they had lived in the first ages of the creation and had been
intimately acquainted with the family of our first parents. They know
exactly what words were first uttered when men began to communicate
their ideas to each other by means of articulated sounds; they can
tell you how the various parts of speech, in perfect regular order,
were successively formed, and with a little encouragement, they would,
I have no doubt, compile a Grammar and Dictionary of the primitive
language, as one Psalmanazar did once in England of a supposed Formosan
tongue. It is a pity, indeed, that the Delawares, the Wyandots and
the Potowatamies, with languages formed on a construction which had
not been before thought of, come to destroy their beautiful theories.
What then? are we to suppress the languages of our good Indians, or to
misrepresent them, that the existing systems on Universal Grammar and
the origin of language may be preserved? No, my friend, we shall on the
contrary, I hope, labour with all our might to make them known, and
provide, at least, additional facts for future theorists.
I have been led into this chain of ideas by reading the ponderous work
of a Scotch Lord named Monboddo, who has dreamt of languages more than
any other writer that I know. On the authority of a Father Sagard, (a
French Missionary) he represents the language of the Hurons as the
most incoherent and unsystematical heap of vocables that can possibly
be conceived. Their words have no regular formation or derivation,
no roots or radical syllables, there is no analogy whatever in the
construction or arrangement of this language. He says, for instance,
that there is a word for “two years” entirely different from those
which signify one, three, four or ten years; that “_hut_,” “_my hut_,”
and “_in my hut_,” are severally expressed by words entirely different
from each other. He adduces several other examples of the same kind,
with which I shall not trouble you, and concludes with saying, that
“the Huron language is the most imperfect of any that has been yet
discovered.” (Orig. of Lang., Vol. I., p. 478.)
Before we proceed further, let us suppose that a Huron or a Delaware
is writing a treatise on the origin of language, and in the pride of
pompous ignorance attempts to make similar observations on the English
idiom. Following Lord Monboddo’s course of reasoning, he will say: “The
English is the most imperfect language upon earth, for its words have
no kind of analogy to each other. They say, for instance, ‘_a house_,’
and the things that belong to a house they call ‘_domestic_.’ They say
‘_a year_,’ and ‘an _annual_ payment,’ for a sum of money payable every
_year_. That is not all; if the payment is to be made in _two_ years,
it is then called _biennial_, in which you find no trace of either the
word _two_ or the word ‘_year_,’ of which in a regular language it
should be compounded. What belongs to a _King_ is royal; to a _woman_,
feminine; to _ship_, naval; to a _town_, urban; to the _country_,
rural. Such another irregular, unmethodical dialect never existed, I
believe, on the back of the great tortoise!!”
Such would be the language of our Huron philosopher, and he would
be about as right as Lord Monboddo. I have read this work of Father
Sagard, of which there is a copy in the Congress library. It appears to
me that the good Father was an honest, well meaning, but most ignorant
friar, of one of the mendicant orders. His residence among the Hurons
was very short, not more than a twelve-month; he was, I know not for
what reason, called home by his superiors, and left America with great
regret. He has collected a number of words and phrases of the Huron
language in the form of a vocabulary, which he improperly calls a
dictionary. I have had it copied and shall shew it to you when you come
to town. You will be satisfied when you see it, that the good man not
only never analysed the language of the Hurons, but was incapable of
doing it. He was perfectly bewildered in the variety of its forms, and
drew the very common conclusion that what he could not comprehend was
necessarily barbarous and irregular. From an attentive perusal of his
“dictionary,” I am inclined to draw the opposite conclusion from that
which he has drawn. There appears to me to be in it sufficient internal
evidence to shew that the Huron language is rich in grammatical forms,
and that it is constructed much on the same plan with the Delaware. I
shall be very glad to have your opinion on it, with such information
as you are able and willing to give. I beg particularly that you will
let me know whether there are roots and derivations in the Indian
languages, analogous to those of our own?
I am, &c.
LETTER XIII.
TO MR. HECKEWELDER.
PHILADELPHIA, 18th July, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--In your letter of the 27th of May you have said that you
believed the Delaware nation were those whom the Baron La Hontan meant
to designate by the name of _Algonkins_. In a subsequent letter, (June
20th,) you seem to consider them as distinct nations, but nearly
allied to each other; you say you are not well acquainted with their
language, which is not the same with that of the Lenape, though there
is a considerable affinity between them. Upon the whole I suppose that
you have meant to apply the denomination Algonkins, not only to the
Delawares proper, but to all the nations and tribes of the same family.
This has led me to consider who those Algonkins might be that La
Hontan speaks of, and upon the best investigation that I have been
able to make of the subject, I am inclined to believe that La Hontan’s
Algonkins are properly those whom we call _Chippeways_, a family or
branch of the Delawares, but not the Delawares themselves. I first
turned to Dr. Barton’s “New Views of the Origin of the Nations and
Tribes of America,” in which I found that he considered the Delawares
and Chippeways as two distinct people; but when I came to the specimens
which he gives of their languages in his Vocabularies, I found no
difference whatever in the idioms of the two nations. Pursuing the
enquiry further, I compared the Vocabulary of the Chippeway language
given by Carver in his travels, and that of the Algonkin by La
Hontan, and was much astonished to find the words in each language
exactly alike, without any difference but what arises from the French
and English orthography. The words explained by the two authors,
happen also to be precisely the same, and are arranged in the same
alphabetical order. So that either Carver is a gross plagiarist, who
has pretended to give a list of Chippeway words and has only copied the
Algonkin words given by La Hontan, or the Chippeways and Algonkins are
one and the same people. I shall be very glad to have your opinion on
this subject.
I find in Zeisberger’s Grammar something that I cannot well comprehend.
It is the verb “_n’dellauchsi_” which he translates “I live, move
about,” or “I so live that I move about.” Pray, is this the only verb
in the Delaware language, which signifies “_to live_,” and have the
Indians no idea of “life,” but when connected with “_locomotion_”?
Is the _W_ in the Delaware, as your Missionaries write it, to be
pronounced like the same letter in German, or like the English _W_
and the French _ou_? If this letter has the German sound, then it is
exactly the same as that of our _V_; in that case I am astonished that
the Delawares cannot pronounce the _F_, the two sounds being so nearly
alike.
I am, &c.
LETTER XIV.
FROM MR. HECKEWELDER.
BETHLEHEM, 22d July, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--I received at the same time your two letters of the 13th and
18th inst., the last by our friend Dr. Wistar. I think you are wrong
to complain of the little importance attached by the learned of Europe
to the study of Indian languages and of the false ideas which some
of them have conceived respecting them. The truth is that sufficient
pains have not been taken in this country to make them known. Our
Missionaries have, indeed, compiled grammars and dictionaries of
those idioms, but more with a view to practical use and to aid their
fellow-labourers in the great work of the conversion of the Indians to
Christianity, than in order to promote the study of the philosophy of
language. They have neither sought fame nor profit, and therefore their
compositions have remained unknown except in the very limited circle
of our religious society. It belongs to the literary associations of
America to pursue or encourage those studies in a more extended point
of view, and I shall be happy to aid to the utmost of my power the
learned researches of the American Philosophical Society.
Your remarks on Lord Monboddo’s opinion respecting the Indian
languages, and on Father Sagard’s work, on which that opinion is
founded, I believe to be correct. I am not acquainted with the language
of the Hurons, which I have always understood to be a dialect of that
of the Iroquois, or at least to be derived from the same stock, and
I cannot conceive why it should be so poor and so imperfect as the
good Father describes it, while its kindred idiom, the Iroquois, is
directly the reverse. At least, it was so considered by Mr. Zeisberger,
who was very well acquainted with it. Sir William Johnson thought the
same, and I believe you will find his opinion on the subject in one of
the Volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Society of London.[279]
Colden, in his History of the Five Nations, says “that the verbs of
that language are varied, but in a manner so different from the Greek
and Latin, that his informant could not discover by what rule it
was done.”[280] I suspect his informant had not yet acquired a very
profound knowledge of the Iroquois; but from his imperfect description
of their verbs, I am very nearly convinced that they are formed on
the same model with those of the Lenni Lenape, which Mr. Zeisberger
has well described in his Grammar of that language. Colden praises
this idiom in other respects; he says that “the Six Nations compound
their words without end, whereby their language becomes sufficiently
copious.” This is true also of the Delawares.
The Hurons are the same people whom we call Wyandots; the Delawares
call them _Delamattenos_. I am inclined to believe that the tribe whom
we call _Naudowessies_, and the French _Sioux_, who are said to live to
the west or north-west of Lake Superior, are a branch of the Hurons;
for the rivers which we call _Huron_, (of which there are three)[281]
are called by the Chippeways, _Naduwewi_, or _Naudowessie Sipi_.
But of this I cannot be sure; though I would rather conclude that
_Naudowessie_ is the Chippeway name for all the Wyandots or Hurons.
It is a fact which, I think, deserves to be ascertained. It is a very
common error to make several Indian nations out of one, by means of the
different names by which it is known.
I proceed to answer the questions contained in your letter of the 18th.
As it seems to me probable that the Naudowessies and Hurons, though
called by different names, are the same people; so it may be the case
with the Chippeways and the Algonkins, although I have no greater
certainty of this hypothesis than of the former. I have no doubt,
however, of their being both derived from the same stock, which is that
of the Lenni Lenape: that their languages are strikingly similar is
evident from the two vocabularies that you mention, and I had rather
believe that they both speak the same language, than that Captain
Carver was a plagiarist. The accounts which he gives of the Indians I
have found in general correct; which is the more remarkable, that from
his own account, it appears that he did not reside very long among
them. He must have been, therefore, a very attentive and accurate
observer.
It is very probable that I did not express myself with sufficient
precision in the passages of my letters of the 27th of May and 20th of
June to which you refer. The Lenni Lenape, or Delawares, are the head
of a great family of Indian nations who are known among themselves
by the generic name of _Wapanachki_, or “Men of the East.” The same
language is spread among them all in various dialects, of which I
conceive the purest is that of the chief nation, the Lenape, at whose
residence the grand national councils meet, and whom the others, by way
of respect, style _grandfather_. The Algonkins are a branch of that
family, but are not, in my opinion, entitled to the pre-eminence which
the Baron La Hontan ascribes to them. He applied the name “Algonkin,”
in a more extensive sense than it deserves, and said that the Algonkin
language was the finest and most universally spread of any on the
continent; a praise to which I think the Lenni Lenape idiom alone is
entitled. In this sense only I meant to say that the Baron included the
Delawares in the general descriptive name of “Algonkins.”
I have yet to answer your questions respecting the language, which I
shall do in a subsequent letter.
I am, &c.
LETTER XV.
FROM THE SAME.
BETHLEHEM, 24th July, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--I have now to answer your question on the subject of the
Delaware verb, _n’dellauchsi_, which Zeisberger translates by “I live,
or move about,” or “I so live that I move about.” You ask whether this
is the only verb in the language which expresses “_to live_,” and
whether the Indians have an idea of _life_, otherwise than as connected
with _locomotion_?
Surely they have; and I do not see that the contrary follows from Mr.
Zeisberger’s having chosen this particular verb as an example of the
first conjugation. I perceive you have not yet an adequate idea of the
copiousness of the Indian languages, which possess an immense number of
comprehensive words, expressive of almost every possible combination
of ideas. Thus the proper word for “_to live_” is in the pure Unami
dialect _lehaleheen_. An Unami meeting an aged acquaintance, whom
he has not seen for a length of time, will address him thus: “_Ili
k’lehelleya?_”[282] which means, “are you yet alive?” The other will
answer “_Ili n’papomissi_,”[283] “I am yet able to walk about.” The
verb _n’dellauchsin_, which Mr. Zeisberger quotes, is more generally
employed in a spiritual sense, “_n’dellauchsin Patamawos wulelendam_,”
“I live up, act up to the glory of God.” This verb, like _pommauchsin_,
implies action or motion, connected with _life_, which is still the
principal idea. I do not know of any thing analogous in the English
language, except, perhaps, when we say “To _walk_ humbly before God;”
but here the word _walk_ contains properly no idea in itself but that
of locomotion, and is not coupled with the idea of _life_, as in the
Indian verb which I have cited. The idea intended to be conveyed arises
in English entirely from the _figurative_ sense of the word, in the
Delaware from the _proper_ sense.
I should never have done, were I to endeavour to explain to you in all
their details the various modes which the Indians have of expressing
ideas, shades of ideas, and combinations of ideas; for which purpose
the various parts of speech are successively called to their aid. In
the conjugations of the verbs, in Zeisberger’s Grammar, you will find
but three tenses, present, past, and future; but you will be much
mistaken if you believe that there are no other modes of expressing
actions and passions in the verbal form as connected with the idea
of time. It would have been an endless work to have given all those
explanations in an elementary grammar intended for the use of young
Missionaries, who stood in need only of the principal forms, which they
were to perfect afterwards by practice. Let me now try to give you a
faint idea of what I mean by a few examples in the Delaware language.
N’mitzi, _I eat_.[284]
N’mamitzi, _I am eating, or am in the act of eating_.
N’mitzihump, _I have eaten_.
Metschi n’gischi mitzi, _I am come from eating_.
N’dappi mitzi, _I am returned from eating_.
The first two _n’mitzi_ and _n’mamitzi_, both mean _I eat_, but the one
is used in the indefinite, and the other in the definite sense, and a
good speaker will never employ the one instead of the other. The three
last expressions are all past tenses of the verb “_I eat_,” and all
mean, “_I have eaten_,” but a person just risen from table, will not
say, “_n’dappi mitzi_;” this expression can only be used after leaving
the place where he has been eating, in answer to a person who asks him
“where he comes from.” The word “_n’dappi_” is connected with the verb
_apatschin_, to return. There is another distinction, proper to be
mentioned here. If the place where the person comes from is near, he
says “_n’dappi_,” if distant “_n’dappa_.” Thus:
N’dappi pihm, _I am come from sweating_ (_or from the sweat oven_.)
N’dappihackiheen, _I am come from planting_.
N’dappi wickheen, _I am come from building a house_.
N’dappimanschasqueen, _I am come from mowing grass_.
N’dappi notamæsin, _I am come from striking fish with a spear_.
N’dappallauwin, _I am come (returned) from hunting_.
N’dappachtopalin, _I am come (returned) from making war_.
In the future tense I could shew similar distinctions, but it would
lead me too far.
I must now take notice of what Father Sagard says, as you have
mentioned in your letter of the 13th inst., that the Indian languages
have “no _roots_, and that there is no regularity in the formation of
their words.” It is certain that the manner in which the Indians in
general form their words is different from that of the Europeans, but I
can easily prove to you that they understand the manner of forming them
from “_roots_.” I take, for instance, the word _wulit_, good, proper,
right, from which are derived:
Wulik, _the good_.
Wulaha, _better_.
Wulisso, _fine, pretty_.
Wulamoewagan, _truth_.
Wulatenamuwi, _happy_.
Wulatenamoagan, _happiness_.
Wulapensowagan, _blessing_.
Wulapan, _fine morning_.
Wuliechen, _it is good, or well done_.
Wulittol, _they are good_.
Wuliken, _it grows well, thrives_.
Wuliechsin, _to speak well_.
Wulelendam, _to rejoice_.
Wulamallsin, _to be well, happy_.
Wulandeu, }
Wuligischgu,} _a fine day_.
Wulapeyu, _just, upright_.
Wuliwatam, _to be of good understanding_.
Wuliachpin, _to be in a good place_.
Wulilissin, _to do well_.
Wulilissu, _he is good_.
Wulilissick, _behave ye well_.
Wulinaxin, _to look well_.
Wulamoeyu, _it is true_.
Wulantowagan, _grace_.
Wulatopnachgat,[285] _a good word_.
Wulatopnamik, _good tidings_.
Wulatonamin,[286] _to be happy_.
Wulissowagan, _prettiness, handsome appearance_.
Wulihilleu, _it is good_.
Wulineichquot, _it is well to be seen_.
Wulelemileu, _it is wonderful_.
Wulitehasu, _well cut or hewed_.
Wuliwiechinen, _to rest well_.
Welsit Mannitto, _the Good Spirit_.
From Machtit, _bad_.
Machtitsu, _nasty_.
Machtesinsu, _ugly_.
Machtschi _or_ Matschi Mannitto _or_ Machtando, _the evil Spirit,
the Devil_, &c.
You will naturally observe that the words derived from the root
_Wulit_, imply in general the idea of what is good, handsome, proper,
decent, just, well, and so pursuing the same general object to
_happiness_ and its derivatives; _happiness_ being considered as a good
and pleasant feeling, or situation of the mind, and a person who is
_happy_, as being well. This does not, as you might suppose, make the
language ambiguous; for the Indians speak and understand each other
with great precision and clearness.
I have yet to answer your question about the _f_ and _w_. There are in
the Delaware language no such consonants as the German _w_, or English
_v_, _f_, or _r_. Where _w_ in this language is placed before a vowel,
it sounds the same as in English; before a consonant, it represents a
_whistled_ sound of which I cannot well give you an idea on paper, but
which I shall easily make you understand by uttering it before you when
we meet.
_I am, &c._
LETTER XVI.
TO MR. HECKEWELDER.
PHILADELPHIA, 31st July, 1816.
DEAR SIR.--I have received with the greatest pleasure your two favours
of the 24th and 26th inst.; the last, particularly, has opened to
me a very wide field for reflection. I am pursuing with ardour the
study of the Indian languages (I mean of their grammatical forms) in
all the authors that I can find that have treated of the subject,
and am astonished at the great similarity which I find between those
different idioms from Greenland even to Chili. They all appear to me
to be compounded on a model peculiar to themselves, and of which I had
not before an idea. Those personal forms of the verbs, for instance,
which you mention in your letter of the 20th of June, I find generally
existing in the American languages. The Spanish-Mexican Grammarians
call them _transitions_, but they are not all equally happy in their
modes of explaining their nature and use. The word “_transition_,”
however, I think extremely well chosen, as it gives at once an idea of
the passage of the verb from the pronoun that governs to that which
is governed, from “I love” to “I love you.” The forms of the Indian
verbs are so numerous, that a proper technical term is very much wanted
to distinguish this particular class, and I adopt with pleasure this
appropriate Spanish name, at least, until a better one can be found.
I am sufficiently satisfied from the examples in your last letter
that the Indians have in their languages “roots,” or radical words
from which many others are derived; indeed, I never doubted it
before, and only meant to shew you by the instances of Father Sagard,
and Lord Monboddo, what false ideas the Europeans have conceived
on this subject. The various meanings of the word “_wulit_” and
its derivatives, obtained, as you have shewn, by easy or natural
transitions from one kindred idea to another, are nothing new in
language. The Greek has the word “_kalos_,” which in its various
meanings is very analogous to “_wulit_.” Instances of similar
“transitions” from different European idioms might be cited without
end. There is one in the French which strikes me at this moment
with peculiar force. In that language, an honest man is “_just_” in
his dealings and a judge in his judgments; but a pair of shoes is
so likewise, when made exactly to fit the foot, and by a natural
transition, when the shoes are too tight, they are said to be too
_just_ (trop justes). A foreigner in France is reported to have said
to his shoemaker, complaining of the tightness of a pair of new made
shoes: “_Monsieur, ces souliers sont trop équitables_.” I remember also
an English song, beginning with the words “_Just like love_,” where you
see the word “_just_” is employed without at all implying the idea of
_equity_ or _justice_. But justice is strict, exact, correct, precise,
and therefore the word _just_ is employed for the purpose of expressing
these and other ideas connected with that to which it was first applied.
I have made these trite observations, because I am well aware that
many _a priori_ reasoners would not fail to find in so many words
of different meanings derived from the same root, a proof of the
poverty of the Indian languages. They would say that they are poor,
because they have but few radical words, a conclusion which they
would infallibly make without taking the pains of ascertaining the
fact. If they were told that the Greek (the copiousness of which is
universally acknowledged) has itself but a comparatively small number
of roots, they would not be at a loss to find some other reason in
support of their pre-conceived opinion. I have read somewhere (I
cannot recollect in what book), that there was not a greater proof of
the barbarism of the Indian languages, than the comprehensiveness of
their locutions. The author reasoned thus: Analysis, he said, is the
most difficult operation of the human mind; it is the last which man
learns to perform. Savage nations, therefore, express many ideas in a
single word, because they have not yet acquired the necessary skill
to separate them from each other by the process of analysis, and to
express them simply.
If this position were true, it would follow that all the languages
of savage nations have been in the origin formed on the same model
with those of the American Indians, and that simple forms have been
gradually introduced into them by the progress of civilisation. But if
we take the trouble of enquiring into facts, they will by no means lead
us to this conclusion. It is not many centuries since the Scandinavian
languages of the North of Europe were spoken by barbarous and savage
nations, but we do not find that in ancient times they were more
comprehensive in their grammatical forms than they are at present,
when certainly they are the least so, perhaps, of any of the European
idioms; on the other hand, the Latin and Greek were sufficiently so by
means of the various moods and tenses of their verbs, all expressed
in one single word, without the use of auxiliaries; and yet these two
nations had attained a very high degree, at least, of civilisation.
I do not, therefore, see as yet, that there is a necessary connexion
between the greater or lesser degree of civilisation of a people, and
the organisation of their language. These general conclusions from
insulated facts ought constantly to be guarded against; they are the
most fruitful sources of error in the moral as well as in the natural
sciences. Facts ought to be collected and observations multiplied long
before we venture to indulge in theoretical inferences; for unobserved
facts seem to lie in ambush, to start up at once in the face of
finespun theories, and put philosophers in the wrong.
I wish very much that some able linguist would undertake to make a
good classification of the different languages of the world (as far
as they are known) in respect to their grammatical forms. It was once
attempted in the French Encyclopedia, but without success, because the
author had only in view the Latin and Greek, and those of the modern
languages which he was acquainted with. His division, if I remember
right, was formed between those idioms in which inversions are allowed,
and those in which they are not. Of course, it was the Latin and Greek
on the one side, and the French, Italian, &c., on the other. This
meagre classification has not been generally adopted, nor does it, in
my opinion, deserve to be. A greater range of observation ought to be
taken.
I do not pretend to possess talents adequate to carrying into execution
the plan which I here suggest; but I beg you will permit me to draw a
brief sketch of what I have in view.