The physiological possibility that palæo_Essays of an Americanist I. Ethnologic and Archæologic. II. Mythology and Folk Lore. III. Graphic Systems and Literature. IV. Linguistic.

has, as I have said, been already vindicated; and that he was

intellectually capable of speech could, I think, scarcely be denied by

any one who will contemplate the conceptions of symmetry, the technical

skill, and the wise adaptation to use, manifested in some of the oldest

specimens of his art; as for example the axes disinterred from the

ancient strata of San Isidro, near Madrid, those found forty feet deep

in the post-glacial gravels near Trenton, New Jersey, or some of those

figured by De Mortillet as derived from the beds of the Somme in

France.[332] We have evidence that at that period man made use of fire;

that he raised shelters to protect himself from the weather; that he

possessed some means of navigating the streams; that he could

occasionally overcome powerful and ferocious beasts; that he already

paid some attention to ornamenting his person; that he lived in

communities; and that his migrations were extensive.[333] In view of all

this, is it not highly improbable that he was destitute of any vocal

powers of expressing his plans and desires? I maintain that we should

dismiss the _Homo alalus_, as a scientific romance which has served its

time.

More than this, I believe that by a judicious study of existing

languages, especially those which have suffered little by admixture or

by distant removals, we can picture with reasonable fidelity the

character of the earliest tongues spoken by man, the speech of the

Palæolithic Age.

This primitive utterance was, of course, not the same everywhere. It

varied indefinitely. But for all that it is almost certain that in all

localities it proceeded on analogous lines of development, just as

languages have everywhere and at all times since. By studying simple and

isolated languages, those which have suffered least by contact with

others, or by alterations in conditions of culture, we can catch some

glimpses of the character of man’s earliest significant expression, the

“baby-talk of the race,” if I may use the expression. I have gleaned a

certain number of such traits in the field of American linguistics, and

present them to you as curiosities, which, like other curiosities, have

considerable significance to those who will master their full purport.

The question I am about to consider, is, you will observe, quite

different from that which concerns itself with the origin of _linguistic

stocks_. Many of these unquestionably arose long after man had acquired

well-developed languages, and when the cerebral convolutions whose

activity is manifested in articulate expression had acquired a high

grade of development through hereditary training. How such stocks may

have arisen has been lucidly set forth by my learned friend Mr. Horatio

Hale. He demonstrates by many examples that in the present cerebral

evolution of man, infants develop an articulate language with the same

natural facility that any other species of animal does the vocal

utterances peculiar to its kind.[334]

But in this essay I am contemplating man as he was before hundreds of

generations of speaking ancestors had evolved such cerebral powers.

I begin with some observations on the phonetic elements. These are no

other than what we call the alphabet, the simple sounds which combined

together make up the words of a language. In all European tongues, the

mere letters of the alphabet, by themselves, have no meaning and convey

no idea; furthermore, their value in a word is fixed; and, thirdly,

arranged in a word, they are sufficient to convey its sound and sense to

one acquainted with their values.

Judged by certain American examples, all three of these seemingly

fundamental characteristics of the phonetic elements were absent in

primitive speech, and have become stable only by a long process of

growth. We find tongues in which the primary sounds are themselves

significant, and yet at the same time are highly variable; and we find

many examples in which they are inadequate to convey the sense of the

articulate sound.

As exemplifying these peculiarities I take the Tinné or Athapascan,

spoken widely in British America, and of which the Apache and Navaho in

the United States are branches. You know that in English the vowels A,

E, I, O, U, and the consonants, as such, F, S, K, and the others, convey

to your mind no meaning, are not attached to any idea or train of ideas.

This is altogether different in the Tinné. We are informed by Bishop

Faraud,[335] a thorough master of that tongue, that its significant

radicals are the five primitive vowel sounds, A, E, I, O, U. Of these A

expresses matter, E existence, I force or energy, O existence doubtful,

and U existence absent, non-existence, negation or succession. These

vowels are “put in action,” as he phrases it, by single or double

consonants, “which have more or less value in proportion as the vowel is

more or less strong.” These consonantal sounds, as we learn at length

from the works on this language by Father Petitot, are also materially

significant. They are numerous, being sixty-three in all, and are

divided into nine different classes, each of which conveys a series of

related or associated ideas in the native mind.

Thus, the labials express the ideas of time and space, as age, length,

distance, and also whiteness, the last mentioned, perhaps, through

association with the white hair of age, or the endless snowfields of

their winter. The dentals express all that relates to force terminating,

hence uselessness, inanity, privation, smallness, feebleness; and also

greatness, elevation, the motor power. The nasals convey the general

notion of motion in repetition; hence, rotation, reduplication,

gravitation, and, by a singularly logical association, organic life. The

gutturals indicate motion in curves; hence, sinuousness, flexibility,

ebullition, roundness, and by a linear figure different from that which

underlies the Latin _rectitudo_, justness, correctness. The H, either as

an aspirate or an hiatus, introduces the ideas of command and

subjection, elevation and prostration, and the like.[336]

You will observe that in some of these cases the signification of a

sound includes both a notion and its opposite, as greatness and

smallness. This is an interesting feature, to which I shall refer later.

Turn now to another language, the Cree. Geographically it is contiguous

to the Tinné; but, says Bishop Faraud, who spoke them both fluently,

they resemble each other no more than the French does the Chinese.

Nevertheless, we discover this same peculiarity of materially

significant phonetic elements. Howse, in his _Cree Grammar_, observes

that the guttural K and the labial W constitute the essential part of

all intensive terms in that language, “whether the same be attributive,

formative, or personal accident.” Indeed, he maintains that the

articulate sounds of the Cree all express relative powers, feebleness or

force, independent of their position with reference to other sounds.

You may inquire whether in the different groups of American tongues the

same or a similar signification is attached to any one sound, or to the

sounds of any one organ. If it were so, it would give countenance to

those theories which maintain that there is some fixed relation between

sound and sense in the radicals of languages. I must reply that I have

found very little evidence for this theory; and yet some. For example,

the N sound expresses the notion of the _ego_, of myself-ness, in a

great many tongues, far apart geographically and linguistically. It is

found at the basis of the personal pronoun of the first person and of

the words for _man_ in numerous dialects in North and South America.

Again, the K sound is almost as widely associated with the ideas of

_otherness_, and is at the base of the personal pronoun of the second

person singular and of the expressions for superhuman personalities, the

divine existence.[337] It is essentially demonstrative in its power.

Again, in a long array of tongues in various parts of the world, the

subjective relation is expressed by the M sound, as has been pointed out

by Dr. Winkler; and other examples could be added. Many of these it is

impossible to attribute to derivation from a common source. Some writers

maintain that sounds have a subjective and fixed relation to ideas;

others call such coincidences “blind chance,” but these should remember

that chance itself means merely the action of laws not yet discovered.

You might suppose that this distinction, I mean that between _self_ and

_other_, between _I_, _thou_ and _he_, is fundamental, that speech could

not proceed without it. You would be mistaken. American languages

furnish conclusive evidence that for unnumbered generations mankind got

along well enough without any such discrimination. One and the same

monosyllable served for all three persons and both numbers. The meaning

of this monosyllable was undoubtedly “any living human being.” Only

after a long time did it become differentiated by the addition of

locative particles into the notions, “I—living human being,”

“Thou—living human being,” “He—living human being,” and so on. Even a

language spoken by so cultured a people as the ancient Peruvians bears

unmistakable traces of this process, as has been shown by Von Tschudi in

his admirable analysis of that tongue; and the language of the Baures of

Bolivia still presents examples of verbs conjugated without pronouns or

pronominal affixes.[338]

The extraordinary development of the pronouns in many American

languages—some have as many as eighteen different forms, as the person

is contemplated as standing, lying, in motion, at rest, alone, in

company, etc., etc.—this multiplicity of forms, I say, is proof to the

scientific linguist that these tongues have but recently developed this

grammatical category. Wherever we find overgrowth, the soil is new and

the crop rank.

In spite of the significance attached to the phonetic elements, they

are, in many American languages, singularly vague and fluctuating. If in

English we were to pronounce three words, _loll_, _nor_, _roll_,

indifferently as one or the other, you see what violence we should do to

the theory of our alphabet. Yet analogous examples are constant in many

American languages. Their consonants are “alternating,” in large groups,

their vowels “permutable.” M. Petitot calls this phenomenon “literal

affinity,” and shows that in the Tinné it takes place not only between

consonants of the same group, the labials for instance, but of different

groups, as labials with dentals, and dentals with nasals. These

differences are not merely dialectic; they are found in the same

village, the same family, the same person. They are not peculiar to the

Tinné; they recur in the Klamath. Dr. Behrendt was puzzled with them in

the Chapanec. “No other language,” he writes, “has left me in such doubt

as this one. The same person pronounces the same word differently; and

when his attention is called to it, will insist that it is the same.

Thus, for devil he will give _Tixambi_ and _Sisaimbui_; for hell,

_Nakupaju_ and _Nakapoti_.”[339] Speaking of the Guarani, Father Montoya

says: “There is in this language a constant changing of the letters, for

which no sufficient rules can be given.”[340] And Dr. Darapsky in his

recently published study of the Araucanian of Chile gives the following

equation of permutable letters in that tongue:

_B=W=F=U=Ú=I=E=G=GH=HU._[341]

The laws of the conversion of sounds of the one organ into those of

another have not yet been discovered; but the above examples, which are

by no means isolated ones, serve to admonish us that the phonetic

elements of primitive speech probably had no fixedness.

There is another oddity about some of these consonantal sounds which I

may notice in passing. Some of them are not true elementary sounds; they

cannot stand alone, but must always have another consonant associated

with them. Thus, the labial _B_ is common in Guarani; but it must always

be preceded by an _M_. In Nahuatl the liquid _L_ is frequent; but it is

the initial of no word in that language. The Nahuas apparently could not

pronounce it, unless some other articulate sound preceded it.

Albornoz, in his _Grammar of the Chapanec Tongue_,[342] states that the

natives cannot pronounce an initial _B_, _G_, _Y_, or _D_, without

uttering an _N_ sound before it.

The third point in the phonology of these tongues to which I alluded is

the frequency with which the phonetic elements, as graphically

expressed, are inadequate to convey the idea. I may quote a remark by

Howse in his _Cree Grammar_, which is true probably of all primitive

speech, “Emphasis, accent and modifications of vocal expression; which

are inadequately expressed in writing, seem to constitute an essential,

perhaps the vital part of Indian language.” In such modifications I

include tone, accent, stress, vocal inflection, quantity and pause.

These are with much difficulty or not at all includable in a graphic

method, and yet are frequently significant. Take the pause or hiatus. I

have already mentioned that in Tinné it correlates a whole series of

ideas. M. Belcourt, in his Grammar of the Sauteux, an Algonkin dialect,

states that the pause may completely change the meaning of a word and

place it in another class; it is also essential in that language in the

formation of the tenses.[343] This is the case in the Guarani of South

America. Montoya illustrates it by the example: _Peru o’u_, Peter ate

it; but _Peru ou_, Peter came; quite another thing, you will

observe.[344]

The stress laid on a vowel-sound often alters its meaning. In the

Sauteux, Belcourt points out that this constitutes the only distinction

between the first and second persons in participles. In the Nahuatl this

alone distinguishes many plural forms from their singulars; and many

similar examples could be cited.

With difficulties of this nature to encounter, a person accustomed to

the definite phonology of European tongues is naturally at a loss. The

Spanish scholar Uricoechea expresses this in relating his efforts to

learn the Chibcha of New Granada, a tongue also characterized by these

fluctuating phonetics. He visited the region where it is still spoken

with a grammar and phrase-book in his hand, and found to his

disappointment that they could not understand one word he said. He then

employed a native who spoke Spanish, and with him practiced some phrases

until he believed he had them perfect. Another disappointment—not one of

them was understood. He returned to his teacher and again repeated them;

but what was his dismay when not even his teacher recognized a single

word! After that Uricoechea gave up the attempt.[345]

Leaving now the domain of phonology and turning to that of lexicography,

I will point out to you a very curious phenomenon in primitive speech. I

have already alluded to it in quoting M. Petitot’s remark that in Tinné

a sound often means both a notion and its opposite; that, for instance,

the same word may express good and bad, and another both high and low.

To use M. Petitot’s own words, “a certain number of consonants have the

power of expressing a given order of ideas or things, and also the

contradictory of this order.” In Tinné, a great many words for opposite

ideas are the same or nearly the same, derived from the same significant

elements. Thus, _son_ good, _sona_ bad; _tezo_, sweet, _tezon_ bitter;

_ya_ immense, _ya_ very small; _inla_ one time, _inlasin_ every time;

and so on.

This union of opposite significations reappears in the ultimate radicals

of the Cree language. These, says Mr. Howse,[346] whose _Grammar_ I

again quote, express _Being_ in its positive and negative modes: “These

opposite modes are expressed by modifications of the same element,

furnishing two classes of terms widely different from each other in

signification.” In Cree the leading substantive radical is _eth_, which

originally meant both Being and Not-Being. In the present language _eth_

remains as the current positive, _ith_ as the current privative. _It_

means within, _ut_ without; and like parallelisms run through many

expressions, indicating that numerous series of opposite ideas are

developments from the same original sounds.

I have found a number of such examples in the Nahuatl of Mexico, and I

am persuaded that they are very usual in American tongues. Dr. Carl Abel

has pointed out many in the ancient Coptic, and I doubt not they were

characteristic of all primitive speech.

To explain their presence we must reflect on the nature of the human

mind, and the ascertained laws of thought. One of these fundamental and

necessary laws of thought, that usually called the second, was expressed

by the older logicians in the phrase _Omnis determinatio est negatio_,

and by their modern followers in the formula, “_A_ is not _not-A_;” in

other words, a quality, an idea, an element of knowledge, can rise into

cognition only by being limited by that which it is not. That by which

it is limited is known in logic as its privative. In a work published

some years ago I pointed out that this privative is not an independent

thought, as some have maintained, but that the positive and its

privative are really two aspects of the same thought.[347] This highly

important distinction explains how in primitive speech, before the idea

had risen into clear cognition, both it and its privative were expressed

by the same sound; and when it did rise into such cognition, and then

into expression, the original unity is exhibited by the identity of the

radical. Thus it happens that from such an unexpected quarter as an

analysis of Cree grammar do we obtain a confirmation of the starting

point of the logic of Hegel in his proposition that the identity of the

_Being_ and the _Not-being_ is the ultimate equation of thought.

The gradual development of grammar is strikingly illustrated in these

languages. Their most prominent trait is what is called _incorporation_.

Subject, verb, direct object and remote object, are all expressed in one

word. Some have claimed that there are American languages of which this

is not true; but I think I have shown in an essay published some time

ago,[348] that this opinion arises from our insufficient knowledge of

the alleged exceptions. At any rate, this incorporation was undoubtedly

a trait of primitive speech in America and elsewhere. Primitive man,

said Herder, was like a baby; he wanted to say all at once. He condensed

his whole sentence into a single word. Archdeacon Hunter, in his

_Lecture on the Cree Language_, gives as an example the scriptural

phrase, “I shall have you for my disciples,” which, in that tongue, is

expressed by one word.[349]

So far as I have been able to analyze these primitive sentence-words,

they always express _being in relation_; and hence they partake of the

nature of verbs rather than nouns. In this conclusion I am obliged to

differ with the eminent linguist Professor Steinthal, who, in his

profound exposition of the relations of psychology to grammar, maintains

that while the primitive sentence was a single word, that word was a

noun, a name.[350]

It is evident that the primitive man did not connect his sentences. One

followed the other disjointedly, unconnectedly. This is so plainly

marked in American tongues that the machinery for connecting sentences

is absent. This machinery consists properly of the relative pronoun and

the conjunction. You will be surprised to hear that there is no American

language, none that I know, which possesses either of these parts of

speech. That which does duty for the conjunction in the Maya and

Nahuatl, for instance, is a noun meaning associate or companion, with a

prefixed possessive.[351]

Equally foreign to primitive speech was any expression of _time_ in

connection with verbal forms; in other words, there was no such thing as

tenses. We are so accustomed to link actions to time, past, present, or

future, that it is a little difficult to understand how this accessory

can be omitted in intelligible discourse. It is perfectly evident,

however, from the study of many American tongues, that at one period of

their growth they possessed for a long interval only one tense, which

served indifferently for past, present, and future;[352] and even yet

most of them form the past and future by purely material means, as the

addition of an adverb of time, by accent, quantity or repetition, and in

others the tense relation is still unknown.[353]

In some tongues, the Omagua of the upper Orinoco for example, there is

no sort of connection between the verbal stem and its signs of tense,

mode or person. They have not even any fixed order. In such languages

there is no difference in sound between the words for “I marry,” and “my

wife;” “I eat,” and “my food;” between “Paul dies,” “Paul died,” “Paul

will die,” and “Paul is dead.”[354] Through such tongues we can

distinctly perceive a time when the verb had neither tense, mode, nor

person; when it was not even a verb nor yet a verbal, but an epicene

sound which could be adapted to any service of speech.

It is also evident that things were not thought of, or talked of, out of

their natural relations. There are still in most American tongues large

classes of words, such as the parts of the body and terms of kinship,

which cannot stand alone. They must always be accompanied by a pronoun

expressing relation.

Few American tongues have any adjectives, the Cree, for instance, not a

dozen in all. Prepositions are equally rare, and articles are not found.

These facts testify that what are called “the grammatical categories”

were wholly absent in the primitive speech of man.

So also were those adjectives which are called _numerals_. There are

American tongues which have no words for any numerals whatever. The

numerical concepts one, two, three, four, cannot be expressed in these

languages for lack of terms with any such meaning.[355] This was a great

puzzle to the missionaries when they undertook to expound to their

flocks the doctrine of the Trinity. They were in worse case even than

the missionary to an Oregon tribe, who, to convey the notion of _soul_

to his hearers, could find no word in their language nearer to it than

one which meant “the lower gut.”

A very interesting chapter in the study of these tongues is that which

reveals the evolution of specific distinctions, those inductive

generalizations under which primitive man classified the objects of the

universe about him. These distinctions were either grammatical or

logical, that is, either formal or material. That most widely seen in

America is a division of all existence into those which are considered

living and those considered not living. This constitutes the second

great generalization of the primitive mind, the first, as I have said,

having been that into Being and Not-being. The distinctions of Living

and Not-living gave rise to the _animate_ and _inanimate_ conjugations.

A grammatical sex distinction, which is the prevailing one in the

grammars of the Aryan tongues, does not exist in any American dialect

known to me.[356]

It is true that abstract general terms are absent or rare in the most

primitive tongues. On the other hand, we find in them a great many

classificatory particles. These correspond only remotely to anything

known in Aryan speech, and seem far more abstract than generic nouns. I

will illustrate what they are by an example taken from the Hidatsa, a

dialect of the Dakota.

The word for sled in that dialect is _midu-maidutsada_. The first part

of this compound, _midu_, means anything of wood or into which wood

enters. Fire is _midé_ because it is kept up with wood. With the

phonetic laxity which I have before noted, the first syllable _mi_ may

as correctly be pronounced _bi_ or _wi_. It is a common nominal prefix,

of vague significance, but seems to classify objects as distinctives.

_Ma_ designates objects whose immediate use is not expressed; _i_

denotes instrument or material; _du_, conveys that the cause of the

action is not specified; _tsa_ intimates the action is that of

separating; _da_, that this is done quickly (_tsa-da_, to slide).[357]

Thus by the juxtaposition of one classificatory particle after another,

seven in number, all of them logical universals, the savage makes up the

name of the specific object.

This system was probably the first adopted by man when he began to set

in order his perceptions within the categories of his understanding,

with the aim of giving them vocal expression. It is a plan which we find

most highly developed in the rudest languages, and therefore we may

reasonably believe that it characterized prehistoric speech.

The question has been put by psychological grammarians, which one of the

senses most helped man in the creation of language—or to express it in

modern scientific parlance, was primitive man a _visuaire_ or an

_auditaire_? Did he model his sounds after what he heard, or what he

saw? The former opinion has been the more popular, and has given rise to

the imitative or “onomatopoetic” theory of language. No doubt there is a

certain degree of truth in this, but the analysis of American tongues

leans decidedly toward classing primitive man among the _visuaires_. His

earliest significant sounds seem to have been expressive of motion and

rest, energy and its absence, space and direction, color and form, and

the like. A different opinion has been maintained by Darwin and by many

who have studied the problems presented by the origin of words from a

merely physical or physiological standpoint, but a careful investigation

shows that it was the sense of sight rather than of hearing which was

the prompter to vocal utterance. But the consideration of the source of

primitive significant sounds lies without the bounds of my present

study.

It will be seen from these remarks that the primitive speech of man was

far more rudimentary than any language known to us. It had no

grammatical form; so fluctuating were its phonetics, and so much

depended on gesture, tone, and stress, that its words could not have

been reduced to writing, nor arranged in alphabetic sequence; these

words often signified logical contradictories, and which of the

antithetic meanings was intended could be guessed only from the accent

or sign; it possessed no prepositions nor conjunctions, no numerals, no

pronouns of any kind, no forms to express singular or plural, male or

female, past or present; the different vowel-sounds and the different

consonantal groups conveyed specific significance, and were of more

import than the syllables which they formed. The concept of time came

much later than that of space, and for a long while was absent.

THE CONCEPTION OF LOVE IN SOME AMERICAN LANGUAGES.[358]

“The words which denote love, describing a sentiment at once powerful

and delicate, reveal the inmost heart of those who created them. The

vital importance attached to this sentiment renders these beautiful

words especially adapted to point out the exceeding value of language as

a true autobiography of nations.”

This quotation is from an essay by a thoughtful writer, Dr. Carl Abel,

in which he has gathered from four languages, the Latin, English, Hebrew

and Russian, their expressions for this sweet emotion, and subjected

them to a careful analysis.[359] The perusal of his article has led me

to make some similar examinations of American languages; but with this

difference in method, that while Dr. Abel takes the languages named in

the fullness of their development and does not occupy himself with the

genesis of the terms of affection, I shall give more particular

attention to their history and derivation as furnishing illustrations of

the origin and growth of those altruistic sentiments which are revealed

in their strongest expression in the emotions of friendship and love.

Upon these sentiments are based those acts which unite man to man in

amicable fellowship and mutual interchange of kindly offices, thus

creating a nobler social compact than that which rests merely on

increased power of defence or aggression. These sentiments are those

which bind parent to child and child to parent, and thus supply the

foundation upon which the family in the true significance of the term

should rest. These are they which, directed toward the ruler or the

state, find expression in personal loyalty and patriotic devotion.

Surpassing all in fervor and potency, these sentiments, when exhibited

in love between the sexes, direct the greater part of the activity of

each individual life, mould the forms of the social relations, and

control the perpetuation of the species. Finally, in their last and

highest manifestations, these sentiments are those which have suggested

to the purest and clearest intellects both the most exalted intellectual

condition of man, and the most sublime definition of divinity.[360]

These are good reasons, therefore, why we should scan with more than

usual closeness the terms for the conception of love in the languages of

nations.

Another purpose which I shall have in view will be to illustrate by

these words the wonderful parallelism which everywhere presents itself

in the operations of the human mind, and to show how it is governed by

the same associations of ideas both in the new and the old worlds.

As a preparation for the latter object, let us take a glance at the

derivation of the principal words expressing love in the Aryan

languages. The most prominent of them may be traced back to one of two

ruling ideas, the one intimating a similarity or likeness between the

persons loving, the other a wish or desire. The former conveys the

notion that the feeling is mutual, the latter that it is stronger on one

side than on the other.

These diverse origins are well illustrated by the French _aimer_ and the

English _love_. _Aimer_, from the Latin _amare_, brings us to the Greek

αμα, ομος, both of which spring from the Sanscrit _som_; from which in

turn the Germans get their words _sammt_, along with, and _zusammen_,

together; while we obtain from this root almost without change our words

_similar_ and _same_. Etymologically, therefore, those who love are

alike; they are the _same_ in such respects that they are attracted to

one another, on the proverbial principle that “birds of a feather flock

together.”

Now turning to the word _love_, German _liebe_, Russian _lubov_,

_lubity_, we find that it leads us quite a different road. It is traced

back without any material change to the Sanscrit _lobha_, covetousness,

the ancient Coptic λἰβε, to want, to desire. In this origin we see the

passion portrayed as a yearning to possess the loved object; and in the

higher sense to enjoy the presence and sympathy of the beloved, to hold

sweet communion with him or her.

A class of ideas closely akin to this are conveyed in such words as

“attached to,” “attraction,” “affection,” and the like, which make use

of the figure of speech that the lover is fastened to, drawn toward, or

bound up with the beloved object. We often express this metaphor in full

in such phrases as “the bonds of friendship,” etc.

This third class of words, although in the history of language they are

frequently of later growth than the two former, probably express the

sentiment which underlies both these, and that is a dim, unconscious

sense of the unity which is revealed to man most perfectly in the purest

and highest love, which at its sublimest height does away with the

antagonism of independent personality, and blends the _I_ and the _thou_

in a oneness of existence.

Although in this, its completest expression, we must seek examples

solely between persons of opposite sex, it will be well to consider in

an examination like the present the love between men, which is called

friendship, that between parents and children, and that toward the gods,

the givers of all good things. The words conveying such sentiments will

illustrate many features of the religious and social life of the nations

using them.

I. THE ALGONKIN.

I begin with this group of dialects, once widely spread throughout the

St. Lawrence valley and the regions adjoining; and among them I select

especially the Cree and the Chipeway, partly because we know more about

them, and partly because they probably represent the common tongue in

its oldest and purest type. They are closely allied, the same roots

appearing in both with slight phonetic variations.

In both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived

from the same monosyllabic root, _sak_. On this, according to the

inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up the terms for the love

of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, friend, friendship, and

the like. It is also occasionally used by the missionaries for the love

of man to God and of God to man.[361]

In the Chipeway this root has but one form, _sagi_; but in Cree it has

two, a weak and a strong form, _saki_ and _sakk_. The meaning of the

latter is more particularly to fasten to, to attach to. From it are

derived the words for string or cord, the verbs “to tie,” “to fasten,”

etc.; and also some of the coarsest words to express the sexual

relation.[362] Both these roots are traced back to the primary element

of the Algonkin language expressed by the letters _sak_ or _s—k_. This

conveys the generic notion of force or power exerted by one over

another,[363] and is apparently precisely identical with the fundamental

meaning of the Latin _afficio_, “to affect one in some manner by active

agency,”[364] from which word, I need hardly add, were derived

_affectus_ and _affectio_ and our “affection;” thus we at once meet with

an absolute parallelism in the working of the Aryan Italic and the

American Algonkin mind.

The Cree has several words which are confined to parental and filial

love and that which the gods have for men. These are built up on the

disyllabic radical _espi_ or _aspi_, which is an instrumental particle

signifying “by means of, with the aid of.”[365] Toward the gods, such

words refer to those who aid us; toward children those whom their

parents aid; and from children toward parents, again, those from whom

aid is received.

For love between men, friendship, the Cree employs some words from the

radical _sâki_; but more frequently those compounded with the root _wit_

or _witch_, which means “in company with,”[366] and is the precise

analogue of the syllable _com_ (Latin, _con_) in the English words

companion, comrade, compeer, confederate, etc.; it conveys the idea of

association in life and action, and that association a voluntary and

pleasure-giving one.

In the Chipeway there is a series of expressions for family love and

friendship which in their origin carry us back to the same psychological

process which developed the Latin _amare_ from the Sanscrit _sam_ (see

above). They may be illustrated by the melodious term, which in that

dialect means both friendship and relationship, _inawendawin_. This is

an abstract verbal noun from the theme _ni inawa_, I resemble him, which

is built up from the radicle _in_. This particle denotes a certain

prevailing way or manner, and appears both in Cree and Chipeway in a

variety of words.[367] The principle of similarity is thus fully

expressed as the basis of friendship. To see how apparent this is we

have but to remember the English, “I like him,” _i. e._, there is

something in him _like_ me.

The feebler sentiment of merely liking a person or thing is expressed in

the Chipeway by a derivative from the adjective _mino_, good, well, and

signifies that he or it seems good to me.[368]

The highest form of love, however, that which embraces all men and all

beings, that whose conception is conveyed in the Greek ἀγἀπη, we find

expressed in both the dialects by derivation from a root different from

any I have mentioned. It is in its dialectic forms _kis_, _keche_, or

_kiji_, and in its origin it is an intensive interjectional expression

of pleasure, indicative of what gives joy.[369] Concretely it signifies

what is completed, permanent, powerful, perfected, perfect. As

friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the

natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment,

hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that

adjective which they applied to the greatest and most benevolent

divinity.[370]

II. THE NAHUATL.

The Nahuatl, Mexican or Aztec language was spoken extensively throughout

Mexico and Central America, and every tribe who used it could boast of a

degree of culture considerably above that of any of the Algonkin

communities. Such being the case, it is rather surprising to note how

extremely poor in comparison is the Nahuatl in independent radicals

denoting love or affection. In fact, there is only one word in the

language which positively has this signification, and it, with its

derivatives, is called upon to express every variety of love, human and

divine, carnal and chaste, between men and between the sexes, and by

human beings toward inanimate things.

This word is _tlazótla_, he loves. It is no easy matter to trace its

history. By well known laws of Nahuatl etymology we know that the root

is _zo_. We have from this same root several other words of curiously

diverse meanings. Thus, _izo_, to bleed, to draw blood, either for

health, or, as was the custom of those nations, as a sacrifice before

idols; _izolini_, to grow old, to wear out, applied to garments;

_tlazoti_, to offer for sale at a high price; and _zozo_, to string

together, as the natives did flowers, peppers, beads, etc. Now, what

idea served as the common starting-point of all these expressions? The

answer is that we find it in the word _zo_ as applied to a sharp-pointed

instrument, a thorn, or a bone or stone awl, used in the earliest times

for puncturing or transfixing objects. From this came _zozo_, to

transfix with such an instrument, and string on a cord; _izoliui_, to be

full of holes, as if repeatedly punctured, and thus worn out; and _izo_,

to bleed, because that was done by puncturing the flesh with the thorns

of the maguey or sharp obsidian points.[371]

But how do we bring these into connection with the sentiment of love and

its verbal expression? We might indeed seek an illustration of the

transfer from classical mythology, and adduce the keen-pointed arrows of

Cupid, the darts of love, as pointing out the connection. But I fear

this would be crediting the ancient Nahuas with finer feelings than they

deserve. I gravely doubt that they felt the shafts of the tender passion

with any such susceptibility as to employ this metaphor. Much more

likely is it that _tlazótla_, to love, is derived directly from the noun

_tlazótl_, which means something strung with or fastened to another.

This brings us directly back to the sense of “attached to” in English,

and to that of the root _saki_ in Algonkin, the idea of being bound to

another by ties of emotion and affection.

But there is one feature in this derivation which tells seriously

against the national psychology of the Nahuas; this, their only word for

love, is not derived, as is the Algonkin, from the primary meaning of

the root, but from a secondary and later signification. This hints

ominously at the probability that the ancient tongue had for a long time

no word at all to express this, the highest and noblest emotion of the

human heart, and that consequently this emotion itself had not risen to

consciousness in the national mind.

But the omissions of the fathers were more than atoned for by the

efforts of their children. I know no more instructive instance in the

history of language to illustrate how original defects are amended in

periods of higher culture by the linguistic faculty, than this precise

point in the genesis of the Nahuatl tongue. The Nahuas, when they

approached the upper levels of emotional development, found their tongue

singularly poor in radicals conveying such conceptions. As the literal

and material portions of their speech offered them such inadequate means

of expression, they turned toward its tropical and formal portions, and

in those realms reached a degree of development in this direction which

far surpasses that in any other language known to me.

In the formal portion of the language they were not satisfied with one,

but adopted a variety of devices to this end. Thus: all verbs expressing

emotion may have an intensive termination suffixed, imparting to them

additional force; again, certain prefixes indicating civility, respect

and affection may be employed in the imperative and optative moods;

again, a higher synthetic construction may be employed in the sentence,

by which the idea expressed is emphasized, a device in constant use in

their poetry; and especially the strength of emotion is indicated by

suffixing a series of terminations expressing contempt, reverence or

love. The latter are wonderfully characteristic of Nahuatl speech. They

are not confined to verbs and nouns, but may be added to adjectives,

pronouns, participles, and even to adverbs and postpositions. Thus every

word in the sentence is made to carry its burden of affection to the ear

of the beloved object!

Add to these facilities the remarkable power of the Nahuatl to impart

tropical and figurative senses to words by the employment of rhetorical

resources, and to present them as one idea by means of the peculiarities

of its construction, and we shall not consider as overdrawn the

expression of Professor De la Rosa when he writes: “There can be no

question but that in the manifestation in words of the various emotions,

the Nahuatl finds no rival, not only among the languages of modern

Europe, but in the Greek itself.”[372]

The Nahuatl word for friendship is _icniuhtli_. This is a compound of

the preposition _ic_, with; the noun-ending _tli_; and the adverbial

_yuh_, or _noyuh_, which means “of the same kind.” The word, therefore,

has the same fundamental conception as the Latin _amicus_ and the Cree

_inawema_, but it was not developed into a verbal to express the

suffering of the passion itself.[373]

III. THE MAYA.

The whole peninsula of Yucatan was inhabited by the Mayas, and tribes

speaking related dialects of their tongue lived in Guatemala, Chipapas,

and on the Gulf Shore north of Vera Cruz. All these depended chiefly on

agriculture for subsistence, were builders of stone houses, and made use

of a system of written records. Their tongue, therefore, deserves

special consideration as that of a nation with strong natural tendencies

to development.

In turning to the word for love in the Maya vocabulary, we are at once

struck with the presence of a connected series of words expressing this

emotion, while at the same time they, or others closely akin to them and

from the same root, mean pain, injury, difficulty, suffering, wounds and

misery. Both are formed by the usual rules from the monosyllable

_ya_.[374]

Were the ancient Mayas so sensitive to love’s wounds and the pangs of

passion as to derive their very words for suffering from the name of

this sentiment?

No; that solution is too unlikely for our acceptance. More probable is

it that we have here an illustration of the development of language from

interjectional cries. In fact, we may be said to have the proof of it,

for we discover that this monosyllable _ya_ is still retained in the

language as a verb, with the signification “to feel anything deeply,

whether as a pain or as a pleasure.”[375] Its derivatives were developed

with both meanings, and as love and friendship are the highest forms of

pleasure, the word _ya_ in its happier senses became confined to them.

It seems to have sufficed to express the conception in all its forms,

for the writers in the language apply it to the love of the sexes, to

that between parents and children, that among friends, also to that

which men feel toward God, and that which He is asserted to feel toward

men.[376]

The Mayas, therefore, were superior to the Nahuas in possessing a

radical word which expressed the joy of love; and they must be placed

above even the early Aryans in that this radical was in significance

purely psychical, referring strictly to a mental state, and neither to

similarity nor desire.

It is noteworthy that this interjectional root, although belonging to

the substructure of the language, does not appear with the meaning of

love in the dialects of the Maya stock. In them the words for this

sentiment are derived from other roots.

Thus among the Huastecas, residing on the Gulf of Mexico, north of Vera

Cruz, the word for love is _canezal_. It is employed for both human and

divine love, and also means anything precious and to be carefully

guarded as of advantage to the possessor.[377] There is no difficulty in

following its development when we turn to the Maya, which preserves the

most numerous ancient forms and meanings of any dialect of this stock.

In it we discover that the verb _can_ means “to affect another in some

way, to give another either by physical contact or example a virtue,

vice, disease or attribute.”[378] Here again we come upon the precise

correlative of the Latin _afficio_, from which proceeds our “affection,”

etc.

The Guatemalan tribes, the principal of which were and are the Quiches

and Cakchiquels, did not accept either _ya_ or _can_ as the root from

which to build their expressions for the sentiment of love. In both

these dialects the word for to love is _logoh_. It also means “to buy,”

and this has led a recent writer to hold up to ridicule the Spanish

missionaries who chose this word to express both human and divine love.

Dr. Stoll, the writer referred to, intimates that it had no other

meaning than “to buy” in the pure original tongue, and that the only

word for the passion is _ah_, to want, to desire.[379] In this he does

not display his usual accuracy, for we find _logoh_ used in the sense

“to like,” “to love,” in the _Annals of the Cakchiquels_, written by a

native who had grown to manhood before the Spaniards first entered his

country.[380]

That the verb _logoh_ means, both in origin and later use, “to buy,” as

well as “to love,” is undoubtedly true. Its root _logh_ is identical

with the Maya _loh_, which has the meanings “to exchange, to buy, to

redeem, to emancipate.” It was the word selected by the Franciscan

missionaries to express the redemption of the world by Christ, and was

applied to the redemption of captives and slaves. It might be suggested

that it bears a reference to “marriage by purchase;” but I think that

“to buy,” and “to love,” may be construed as developments of the same

idea of _prizing highly_. When we say that a person is _appreciated_, we

really say that he has had a proper price put upon him. The Latin

_carus_, which Cicero calls _ipsum verbum amoris_,[381] means costly in

price as well as beloved; and the tender English “dear” means quite as

often that the object is expensive to buy, as that we dote very much

upon it. Nor need we go outside of American languages for illustrations;

in Nahuatl _tlazóti_ means to offer for sale at a high price; and in

Huasteca _canel_, from the same root as _canezal_, to love, means

something precious in a pecuniary sense, as well as an object of the

affections. Other instances will present themselves when we come to

examine some of the South American tongues. But from what I have already

given, it is evident that there is nothing contradictory in the double

meaning of the verb _logoh_.

IV. THE QQUICHUA.

The ancient Peruvians who spoke the Qquichua language had organized a

system of government and a complex social fabric unsurpassed by any on

the continent. The numerous specimens of their arts which have been

preserved testify strongly to the licentiousness of their manners,

standing in this respect in marked contrast to the Aztecs, whose art was

pure. It must be regarded as distinctly in connection with this that we

find a similar contrast in their languages. We have seen that in the

Nahuatl there appears to have been no word with a primary signification

“to love” or any such conception. The Qquichua, on the contrary, is

probably the richest language on the continent, not only in separate

words denoting affection, but in modifications of these by imparting to

them delicate shades of meaning through the addition of particles. As an

evidence of the latter, it is enough to cite the fact that Dr.

Anchorena, in his grammar of the tongue, sets forth nearly six hundred

combinations of the word _munay_, to love![382]

The Qquichua is fortunate in other respects; it has some literature of

its own, and its structure has been carefully studied by competent

scholars; it is possible, therefore, to examine its locutions in a more

satisfactory manner than is the case with most American languages. Its

most celebrated literary monument is the drama of _Ollanta_, supposed to

have been composed about the time of the conquest. It has been

repeatedly edited and translated, most accurately by Pacheco

Zegarra.[383] His text may be considered as the standard of the pure

ancient tongue.

Of Qquichua words for the affections, that in widest use is the one

above quoted, _munay_. It is as universal in its application as its

English equivalent, being applied to filial and parental love as well as

to that of the sexes, to affection between persons of the same sex, and

to the love of God. No other word of the class has such a wide

significance. It ranges from an expression of the warmest emotion down

to that faint announcement of a preference which is conveyed in the

English, “I should prefer.”[384]

On looking for its earlier and concrete sense, we find that _munay_

expressed merely a sense of want, an appetite and the accompanying

desire of satisfying it, hence the will, or the wish, not subjectively,

but in the objective manifestation.[385] Therefore it is in origin

nearly equivalent to the earliest meaning of “love,” as seen in the

Sanscrit and the Coptic.

While _munay_ is thus to love on reasonable grounds and with definite

purpose, blind, unreasoning, absorbing passion is expressed by

_huaylluni_. This is nearly always confined to sexual love, and conveys

the idea of the sentiment showing itself in action by those sweet signs

and marks of devotion which are so highly prized by the loving heart.

The origin of this word indicates its sentient and spontaneous

character. Its radical is the interjection _huay_, which among that

people is an inarticulate cry of tenderness and affection.[386]

The verb _lluylluy_ means literally to be tender or soft, as fruit, or

the young of animals; and applied to the sentiments, to love with

tenderness, to have as a darling, to caress lovingly. It has less of

sexuality in it than the word last mentioned, and is applied by girls to

each other, and as a term of family fondness. It is on a parallel with

the English “dear,” “to hold dear,” etc.[387]

In the later compositions in Qquichua the favorite word for love is

_ccuyay_. Originally this expression meant to pity, and in this sense it

occurs in the drama of Ollanta; but also even there as a term signifying

the passion of love apart from any idea of compassion.[388] In the later

songs, those whose composition may be placed in this century, it is

preferred to _munay_ as the most appropriate term for the love between

the sexes.[389] From it also is derived the word for charity and

benevolence.

As _munay_ is considered to refer to natural affection felt within the

mind, _mayhuay_ is that ostentatious sentiment which displays itself in

words of tenderness and acts of endearment, but leaves it an open

question whether these are anything more than simulated signs of

emotion.[390]

This list is not exhaustive of the tender words in the Qquichua; but it

will serve to show that the tongue was rich in them, and that the

ancient Peruvians recognized many degrees and forms of this moving

sentiment.

What is also noteworthy is the presence in this language of the most

philosophical term for friendship in its widest sense that can be quoted

from any American language. It is _runaccuyay_, compounded of _ccuyani_,

mentioned above, and _runa_, man—the love of mankind. This compound,

however, does not occur in the Ollanta drama, and it may have been

manufactured by the missionaries. The usual term is _maciy_, which means

merely “associate,” or _kochomaciy_, a table-companion or _convive_.

V. THE TUPI-GUARANI.

The linguistic stock which has the widest extension in South America is

that which is represented in Southern Brazil by the Guarani, and in

Central and Northern by the Tupi or Lingoa Geral. The latter is spoken

along the Amazon and its tributaries for a distance of twenty-five

hundred miles. It is by no means identical with the Guarani, but the

near relationship of the two is unmistakable. The Guarani presents the

simpler and more primitive forms, and may be held to present the more

archaic type.

The word for love in the Guarani is _aihu_, in another form _haihu_, the

initial _h_ being dropped in composition. This expression is employed

for all the varieties of the sentiment, between men, between the sexes,

and for that which is regarded as divine.[391] For “a friend,” they have

no other term than one which means a visitor or guest; and from this

their expression for “friendship” is derived, which really means

“hospitality.”[392]

Verbal combinations in Guarani are visually simple, and I do not think

we can be far wrong in looking upon _aihu_ as a union of the two primary

words _ai_ and _hu_. The former, _ai_, means self or the same; and the

latter, _hu_, is the verb to find, or, to be present.[393] “To love,” in

Guarani, therefore, would mean, “to find oneself in another,” or, less

metaphysically, “to discover in another a likeness to one’s self.” This

again is precisely the primary signification of the Latin _amare_; and

if the sentiment impressed in that way the barbarous ancient Aryans,

there is no reason why it would not have struck the Guaranis in the same

manner.

In the Tupi or Lingua Geral the word for love is evidently but a

dialectic variation of that in Guarani. It is given by some authors as

_çaiçu_, plainly a form of _haihu_; and by others as _çauçu_.[394] These

forms cannot be analyzed in the Tupi itself, which illustrates its more

modern type.

There are other dialects of this widespread stem, but it would not be

worth while to follow this expression further in its diverse forms. It

is interesting, however, to note that which appears in the Arawack,

spoken in Guiana. In that tongue to love is _kanisin_, in which the

radical is _ani_ or _ansi_. Now we find that _ani_ means “of a kind,”

peculiar to, belonging to, etc. Once more it is the notion of

similarity, of “birds of a feather,” which underlies the expression for

the conception of love.[395]

CONCLUSIONS.

If, now, we review the ground we have gone over, and classify the

conception of love as revealed in the languages under discussion, we

find that their original modes of expression were as follows:

1. Inarticulate cries of emotion (Cree, Maya, Qquichua).

2. Assertions of sameness or similarity (Cree, Nahuatl, Tupi, Arawack).

3. Assertions of conjunction or union (Cree, Nahuatl, Maya).

4. Assertions of a wish, desire or longing (Cree, Cakchiquel, Qquichua,

Tupi).

These categories are not exhaustive of the words which I have brought

forward, but they include most of them, and probably were this

investigation extended to embrace numerous other tongues, we should find

that in them all the principal expressions for the sentiment of love are

drawn from one or other of these fundamental notions. A most instructive

fact is that these notions are those which underlie the majority of the

words for love in the great Aryan family of languages. They thus reveal

the parallel paths which the human mind everywhere pursued in giving

articulate expression to the passions and emotions of the soul. In this

sense there is a oneness in all languages, which speaks conclusively for

the oneness in the sentient and intellectual attributes of the species.

We may also investigate these categories, thus shown to be practically

universal, from another point of view. We may inquire which of them

comes the nearest to the correct expression of love in its highest

philosophic meaning. Was this meaning apprehended, however dimly, by man

in the very infancy of his speech-inventing faculty?

In another work, published some years ago, I have attempted a

philosophic analysis of the sentiment of love. Quoting from some of the

subtlest dissectors of human motive, I have shown that they pronounce

love to be “the volition of the end,” or “the resting in an object as an

end.” These rather obscure scholastic formulas I have attempted to

explain by the definition: “Love is the mental impression of rational

action whose end is in itself.”[396] As every end or purpose of action

implies the will or wish to that end, those expressions for love are

most truly philosophic which express the will, the desire, the yearning

after the object. The fourth, therefore, of the above categories is that

which presents the highest forms of expression of this conception. That

it also expresses lower forms is true, but this merely illustrates the

evolution of the human mind as expressed in language. Love is ever the

wish; but while in lower races and coarser natures this wish is for an

object which in turn is but a means to an end, for example, sensual

gratification, in the higher this object is the end itself, beyond which

the soul does not seek to go, in which it rests, and with which both

reason and emotion find the satisfaction of boundless activity without

incurring the danger of satiety.

THE LINEAL MEASURES OF THE SEMI-CIVILIZED NATIONS

OF MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA.[397]

Positive progress in constructive art can be accurately estimated by the

kind and perfection of the instruments of precision employed by the

artists. A correct theory of architecture or of sculpture must have as

its foundation a correct system of weights and measures, and recognized

units and standards of gravity and extension. Where these are not found,

all is guess-work, and a more or less haphazard rule-of-thumb.

In a study of the art-products of Mexico and Central America, it has

occurred to me that we may with advantage call linguistics to our aid,

and attempt to ascertain, by an analysis of the words for weights and

measures, what units, if any, were employed by those who constructed the

massive works in that region, which still remain for our astonishment.

The tongues I shall examine are the Maya of Yucatan, its related dialect

the Cakchiquel of Guatemala, and the Nahuatl or Aztec of Mexico. The

most striking monuments of art in North America are found in the

territories where these were spoken at the time of the Conquest. The

Cakchiquel may be considered to include the Quiche and the Tzutuhil,

both of which are closely associated to it as dialects of the same

mother tongue.

THE MAYAS.

The generic word in Maya for both measuring and weighing, and for

measures and weights, is at present _ppiz_, the radical sense of which

is “to put in order,” “to arrange definite limits.” Its apparent

similarity to the Spanish _pesar_, French _peser_, etc., seems

accidental, as it is in Maya the root of various words meaning battle,

to fight, etc., from the “order of battle,” observed on such occasions.

Any weight or measure is spoken of as _ppizib_, to measure land is

_ppiz-luum_, a foot measure _ppiz-oc_ etc. But I am quite certain that

the original scope of the word did not include weight, as there is no

evidence that the ancient Mayas knew anything about a system of

estimating quantity by gravity. If the word is not from the Spanish

_pesar_, it has extended its meaning since the conquest.

The Maya measures are derived directly, and almost exclusively, from the

human body, and largely from the hand and foot.

_Oc_, the foot; _chekoc_, the footstep, the print or length of the foot,

is a measure of length. Other forms of the same are _chekel_, _chekeb_,

_chekeb-oc_, etc.; and this abundance of synonyms would seem to show

that the measure of a foot was very familiar and frequent. The verb is

_chekoc_ (_tah_, _té_), as in the phrase:

_Chekoctè y-otoch Ku._

He measured by feet His house God.

_i. e._ He measured by feet the church. From this was distinguished—

_Xukab_, paces or strides, a word confined to the paces of man. The verb

is _Xukab_ (_tah_, _té_), to step off, to measure by paces.

Quite a series of measures were recognized from the ground (or, as some

say, from the point of the foot) to the upper portions of the body.

_Hun cal coy u-xul_ (one to the neck of the ankle its-end), extending

from the ground to the narrowest portion of the ankle.

_Hun ppuloc u-xul_ (one calf-of-the-leg its-end), from the ground to the

highest portion of the calf of the leg. The word _xul_ means end or

limit, and is used often adverbially, as in the phrase _uay u-xul_,

literally “here its end,” or “thus far” (Span. _hasta aqui_).

_Hun pixib_, the distance from the ground (or point of the toes) to the

knee-cap, from _piix_, the knee. Also called _hun hol piix_, from _hol_,

head, the knee-cap being called “the knee-head.”

_Hun hachabex_, one girdle, from the ground to the belt or girdle, to

which the skirt was fashioned (from _hach_, to tie, to fasten). The same

measure was called _hun theth_, the word _theth_ being applied to the

knot of the girdle.

_Hun tanam_, from the ground to the border of the true ribs; from

_tanam_, the liver. The _Diccionario de Motul_ gives the example, _hun

tanam in ual_, one _tanam_ (is) my corn, _i. e._, my corn reaches to my

chest. It adds that the measure is from the point of the foot to the

chest.

_Hun tzem_, a measure from the ground to a line drawn from one mamma to

the other.

_Hun cal u-xul_, one neck its-end, from the ground to the border (upper

or lower) of the neck.

_Hun chi_, from the mouth, _chi_, to the ground.

_Hun holom_, one head, from the top of the head to the ground. This is

also called _hun uallah_, one time the stature or height of a man, from

a root meaning “to draw to a point,” “to finish off.” The Spanish

writers say that one _uallah_ was equal to about three _varas_, and was

used as a square measure in meting corn fields.[398] The Spanish _vara_

differed as much as the English ell, and to the writer in question could

not have represented quite two feet. Elsewhere he defines the _vara_ as

half a _braza_ or fathom. (See below, _betan_.)

The hand in Maya is expressed by the word _kab_, which also means the

arm, and is more correctly therefore translated by the anatomical term

“upper extremity.” This is not an uncommon example in American tongues.

When it is necessary to define the hand specifically the Mayas say _u

cheel kab_, “the branch of the arm,” and for the fingers _u nii kab_,

“the points (literally, noses) of the arm” or upper extremity.

The shortest measurements known to them appear to have been

finger-breadths, which are expressed by the phrase _u nii kab_. The

thumb was called _u nā kab_, literally “the mother of the hand” or arm,

and as a measure of length the distance from the first joint to the end

of the nail was in use and designated by the same term.

With the hand open and the fingers extended, there were three different

measures or spans recognized by the Mayas.

1. The _nāb_, from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the middle finger.

2. The _oecnab_, or little _nāb_, from the tip of the thumb to the tip

of the index finger. This is the span yet most in use by the native

inhabitants of Yucatan (Dr. Berendt).

3. The _chi nāb_, or the _nāb_ which extends to the edge, from the tip

of the thumb to the tip of the little finger (Pio Perez).

The _kok_ was a hand measure formed by closing the fingers and extending

the thumb. Measuring from the outer border of the hand to the end of the

thumb, it would be about seven inches.

The _cuc_ or _noch cuc_ (_noch_ is a term applied to a bony prominence,

in this instance to the olecranon) was the cubit, and was measured from

the summit of the olecranon to the end of the fingers, about eighteen

inches.

The most important of the longer measures was the _zap_ or _zapal_. It

was the distance between the extremities of the extended arms, and is

usually put down at a fathom or six feet.

The half of it was called _betan_ or _pātan_, meaning “to the middle of

the chest.” Canes and cords were cut of the fixed length of the _zap_

and bore the name _xapalche_, _zap_sticks, as our _yard-stiçk_ (_che_ ==

stick), and _hilppiz_, measuring rods (_hil_, a species of cane, and

_ppiz_, to measure, _Dicc. Motul_).

On this as a unit, the customary land measure was based. It was the

_kaan_, one shorter, _hun kaan tah ox zapalche_, a _kaan_ of three

_zap_, and one longer, _hun kaan tah can zapalche_, a _kaan_ of four

_zap_. The former is stated to be thirty-six fathoms square, the latter

forty-eight fathoms square. Twenty _kaan_ made a _vinic_, man, that

amount of land being considered the area requisite to support one family

in maize.

The uncertainty about this measure is increased by the evident error of

Bishop Landa, or more probably his copyist, in making the _vinic_ equal

to 400 square feet, which even in the most favored soils would never

support a family. He probably said “400 feet square,” which in that

climate would be sufficient. The _kaan_ is said by Spanish writers to be

equal to the Mexican _mecate_, which contains 5184 square feet. I

acknowledge, however, that I have not reconciled all the statements

reported by authors about these land measures.

Greater measures of length are rarely mentioned. Journeys were measured

by _lub_, which the Spaniards translated “leagues,” but by derivation it

means “resting places,” and I have not ascertained that it had a fixed

length.

The Mayas were given to the drawing of maps, and the towns had the

boundaries of their common lands laid out in definite lines. I have

manuscripts, some dated as early in 1542, which describe these town

lands. In most of them only the courses are given, but not the

distances. In one, a title to a domain in Acanceh, there are distances

given, but in a measure quite unknown to me, _sicina_, preceded by the

numeral and its termination indicating measures, _hulucppiz sicina_,

eleven sicinas.[399]

The maps indicate relative position only, and were evidently not

distinguished Yucatecan antiquary, the Rev. Don Crescencio Carrillo, in

his essay on the cartography of the ancient Mayas,[400] apparently came

to the same conclusion, as he does not mention any method of

measurement.

I do not know of any measurements undertaken in Yucatan to ascertain the

metrical standard employed by the ancient architects. It is true that

Dr. Augustus LePlongeon asserts positively that they knew and used _the

metric system_, and that the metre and its divisions are the only

dimensions that can be applied to the remains of the edifices.[401] But

apart from the eccentricity of this statement, I do not see from Dr.

LePlongeon’s own measurements that the metre is in any sense a common

divisor for them.

From the linguistic evidence, I incline to believe that the _oc_, the

foot, was their chief lineal unit. This name was also applied to the

seventh day of the series of twenty which made up the Maya month; and

there may be some connection between these facts and the frequent

recurrence of the number seven in the details of their edifices.[402]

THE CAKCHIQUELS.

The root-word for measuring length is, in Cakchiquel, _et_. Its

primitive meaning is, a sign, a mark, a characteristic. From this root

are derived the verbal _etah_, to measure length, to lay out a plan, to

define limits; _etal_, a sign, mark, limit; _etabal_, measuring field;

_etamah_, to know, _i. e._, to recognize the signs and characters of

things; _etamanizah_, to cause to know, to teach, to instruct, etc.

My authorities do not furnish evidence that the Cakchiquels used the

foot as the unit of measurement, differing in this from the Mayas. They

had, however, like the latter, a series of measurements from the ground

to certain points of the body, and they used a special terminal

particle, _bem_ (probably from _be_, to go), “up to” to indicate such

measurements, as _vexibem_, up to the girdle (_vex_, girdle, _i_,

connective, _bem_, up to, or “it goes to”).

These body measures, as far as I have found them named, are as follows:

_quequebem_, from the ground to the knee.

_ru-vach a_, from the ground to the middle of the thigh; literally “its

front, the thigh,” _ru_, its, _vach_, face, front, _a_, the muscles of

the thigh.

_vexibem_, from the ground to the girdle, _vex_.

_qaalqaxibem_, from the ground to the first true ribs.

_kulim_, from the ground to the neck (_kul_).

The more exact Cakchiquel measures were derived from the upper

extremity. The smallest was the finger breadth, and was spoken of as

one, two, three, four fingers, _han ca_, _cay ca_, _ox ca_, _cah ca_

(_ca_=finger). This was used in connection with the measure called

_tuvic_, the same that I have described as the Maya _kok_, obtained by

closing the hand and extending the thumb. They combined these in such

expressions as _ca tuvic raqin han ca_, two _tuvics_ with (plus) one

finger breadth.[403]

The span of the Cakchiquels was solely that obtained by extending the

thumb and fingers and including the space between the extremities of the

thumb and _middle_ finger. It was called _qutu_, from the radical _qut_,

which means to show, to make manifest, and is hence akin in meaning to

the root _et_, mentioned above.

The cubit, _chumay_, was measured from the point of the elbow to the

extremities of the fingers. We are expressly informed by Father Coto

that this was a customary building measure. “When they build their

houses they use this cubit to measure the length of the logs. They also

measure ropes in the same manner, and say, _Tin chumaih retaxic riqam_,

I lay out in cubits the rope with which I am to measure.”

The different measures drawn from the arms were:

_chumay_, from the elbow to the end of the fingers of the same hand.

_hahmehl_, from the elbow to the ends of the fingers of the opposite

hand, the arms being outstretched.

_telen_, from the point of the shoulder of one side to the ends of the

fingers of the outstretched arm on the other side.

_tzam telen_, from the point of the shoulder to the ends of the fingers

on the same side. _Tzam_ means nose, point, beak, etc.

_ru vach qux_, from the middle of the breast to the end of the

outstretched hand.

_hah_, from the tips of the fingers of one hand to those of the other,

the arms outstretched.

Another measure was from the point of the shoulder to the wrist.

The _hah_, or fathom, was one of the units of land measure, and the corn

fields and cacao plantations were surveyed and laid out with ropes,

_qam_, marked off in fathoms. The fields are described as of five ropes,

ten ropes, etc., but I have not found how many fathoms each rope

contained.

Another unit of land measure in frequent use was the _maaoh_. This was

the circumference of the human figure. A man stood erect, his feet

together, and both arms extended. The end of a rope was placed under his

feet and its slack passed over one hand, then on top of his head, then

over the other hand, and finally brought to touch the beginning. This

gives somewhat less than three times the height. This singular unit is

described by both Varea and Coto as in common use by the natives.

There were no accurate measures of long distances. As among the Mayas,

journeys were counted by resting places, called in Cakchiquel

_uxlanibal_, literally “breathing places,” from _uxla_, the breath,

itself, a derivative of the radical _ux_, to exist, to be, to live, the

breath being taken as the most evident sign of life.

There was originally no word in Cakchiquel meaning “to weigh,” as in a

balance, and therefore they adopted the Spanish _peso_, as _tin pesoih_,

I weigh. Nor, although they constructed stone walls of considerable

height, did they have any knowledge of the plumb line or plummet. The

name they gave it even shows that they had no idea what its use was, as

they called it “the piece of metal for fastening together,” supposing it

to be an aid in cementing the stone work, rather than in adjusting its

lines.[404]

THE AZTECS.

In turning to the Mexicans or Aztecs, some interesting problems present

themselves. As far as I can judge by the Nahuatl language, measures

drawn from the upper extremity were of secondary importance, and were

not the bases of their metrical standards, and, as I shall show, this is

borne out by a series of proofs from other directions.

The fingers, _mapilli_, appear to have been customary measures. They are

mentioned in the early writers as one equal to an inch. The name

_mapilli_, is a synthesis of _maitl_, hand, and _pilli_, child,

offspring, addition, etc.

The span was called _miztetl_ or _miztitl_, a word of obvious

derivation, meaning “between the finger nails,” from _iztetl_, finger

nail. This span, however, was not like ours, from the extremity of the

thumb to the extremity of the little finger, nor yet like that of the

Cakchiquels, from the extremity of the thumb to that of the middle

finger, but like that now in use among the Mayas (see above), from the

extremity of the thumb to that of the index finger.[405]

There were four measures from the point of the elbow; one to the wrist

of the same arm, a second to the wrist of the opposite arm, a third to

the ends of the fingers of the same arm, and the fourth to the ends of

the fingers of the opposite arm, the arms always considered as extended

at right angles to the body. The terms for these are given somewhat

confusedly in my authorities, but I believe the following are correct.

1. From the elbow to the wrist of the same arm; _cemmat__zotzopatzli_,

“a little arm measure,” from _ce_, a, one, _ma_ from _maitl_, arm or

hand, _tzotzoca_, small, inferior, _patzoa_, to make small, to diminish.

2. From the elbow to the wrist of the opposite arm, _cemmitl_, an arrow,

a shaft, from _ce_, and _mitl_, arrow, this distance being the approved

length of an arrow. We may compare the old English expression, a

“cloth-yard shaft.”

3. From the elbow to the ends of the fingers of the same arm,

_cemmolicpitl_, one elbow, _ce_, one, _molicpitl_, elbow. This is the

cubit.

4. From the elbow to the ends of the fingers of the opposite arm.

The following were the arm measures:

_Cemaçolli_, from the tip of the shoulder to the end of the hand (_ce_,

one, _maçoa_, to extend the arm).

_Cemmatl_, from the tip of the fingers of one hand to those of the

other. Although this word is apparently a synthesis of _ce_, one,

_maitl_, arm, and means “one arm,” it is uniformly rendered by the early

writers _una braza_, a fathom.

_Cenyollotli_, from the middle of the breast to the end of the fingers

(_ce_, one, _yollotl_, breast).

It is known that the Aztecs had a standard measure of length which they

employed in laying out grounds and constructing buildings. It was called

the _octacatl_, but neither the derivation of this word, nor the exact

length of the measure it represented, has been positively ascertained.

The first syllable, _oc_, it will be noticed, is the same as the Maya

word for foot, and in Nahuatl _xocopalli_ is “the sole of the foot.”

This was used as a measure by the decimal system, and there were in

Nahuatl two separate and apparently original words to express a measure

of ten foot-lengths. One was:

_Matlaxocpallatamachiualoni_, which formidable synthesis is analyzed as

follows: _matla_, from _matlactli_, ten, _xocpal_, from _xocpalli_,

foot-soles, _tamachiuia_, to measure (from _machiotl_, a sign or mark,

like the Cakchiquel _etal_) _l_, for _lo_, sign of the passive, _oni_, a

verbal termination “equivalent to the Latin _bilis_ or _dus_.”[406] Thus

the word means that which is measurable by ten foot-lengths.

The second word was _matlacyxitlatamachiualoni_.

The composition of this is similar to the former, except that in the

place of the perhaps foreign root _xoc_, foot, _yxitl_, foot, is used,

which seems to have been the proper Nahuatl term.

As these words prove that the foot-length was one of the standards of

the Aztecs, it remains to be seen whether they enlighten us as to the

_octacail_. I quote in connection an interesting passage by the native

historian, Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl in his _Historia Chichimeca_,

published in Lord Kingsborough’s great work on Mexico (Vol. ix., p.

242). Ixtlilxochitl is describing the vast communal dwelling built by

the Tezcucan chieftain Nezahualcoyotl, capable of accommodating over two

thousand persons. He writes: “These houses were in length from east to

west four hundred and eleven and a half [native] measures, which reduced

to our [Spanish] measures make twelve hundred and thirty-four and a half

yards (_varas_), and in breadth, from north to south three hundred and

twenty-six measures, which are nine hundred and seventy-eight yards.”

This passage has been analyzed by the learned antiquary, Señor Orozco y

Berra.[407] The native measure referred to by Ixtlilxochitl was that of

Tezcuco, which was identical with that of Mexico. The yard was the _vara

de Burgos_, which had been ordered to be adopted throughout the colony

by an ordinance of the viceroy Antonio de Mendoza. This vara was in

length 0.838 metre, and, as according to the chronicler, the native

measurement was just three times this (411½ x 3 = 1234½, and 326 x 3 =

978), it must have been 2.514 metre. This is equal in our measure to

9.842 feet, or, say, nine feet ten inches.

This would make the _octacatl_ identical with those long-named ten-foot

measures, which, as I have shown, were multiples of the length of the

foot, as is proved by an analysis of their component words.

This result is as interesting as it is new, since it demonstrates that

the metrical unit of ancient Mexico was the same as that of ancient

Rome—the length of the foot-print.

Some testimony of another kind may be brought to illustrate this point.

In 1864, the Mexican government appointed a commission to survey the

celebrated ruins of Teotihuacan, under the care of Don Ramon Almaraz. At

the suggestion of Señor Orozco, this able engineer ran a number of lines

of construction to determine what had been the metrical standard of the

builders. His decision was that it was “about” met. 0.8, or, say, 31½

inches.[408] This is very close to an even third of the _octacatl_, and

would thus be a common divisor of lengths laid off by it.

I may here turn aside from my immediate topic to compare these metrical

standards with that of the Mound-Builders of the Ohio valley.

In the _American Antiquarian_, April, 1881, Prof. W. J. McGee applied

Mr. Petrie’s arithmetical system of “inductive metrology” to a large

number of measurements of mounds and earthworks in Iowa, with the result

of ascertaining a common standard of 25.716 inches.

In 1883, Col. Charles Whittlesey, of Cleveland, analyzed eighty-seven

measurements of Ohio earthworks by the method of even divisors and

concluded that thirty inches was about the length, or was one of the

multiples, of their metrical standard.[409]

Moreover, fifty-seven per cent of all the lines were divisible without

remainder by ten feet. How much of this may have been owing to the

tendency of hurried measurers to average on fives and tens, I cannot

say; but leaving this out of the question, there is a probability that a

ten foot-length rule was used by the “mound-builders” to lay out their

works.

It may not be out of place to add a suggestion here as to the

applicability of the methods of inductive metrology to American

monuments. The proportions given above by Ixtlilxochitl, it will be

noted, are strikingly irregular (411½, 326). Was this accident or

design? Very likely the latter, based upon some superstitious or

astrological motive. It is far from a solitary example. It recurs

everywhere in the remarkable ruins of Mitla. “Careful attention,” says

Mr. Louis H. Aymé, “has been paid to make the whole asymmetrical. * * *

This asymmetry of Mitla is not accidental, I am certain, but made

designedly. M. Desiré Charnay tells me he has observed the same thing at

Palenque.” These examples should be a warning against placing implicit

reliance on the mathematical procedures for obtaining the lineal

standards of these forgotten nations.[410]

Whatever the lineal standard of the Aztecs may have been, we have ample

evidence that it was widely recognized, very exact, and officially

defined and protected. In the great market of Mexico, to which thousands

flocked from the neighboring country (seventy thousand in a day, says

Cortes, but we can cut this down one-half in allowance for the

exaggeration of an enthusiast), there were regularly appointed

government officers to examine the measures used by the merchants and

compare them with the correct standard. Did they fall short, the

measures were broken and the merchant severely punished as an enemy to

the public weal.[411]

The road-measures of the Aztecs was by the stops of the carriers, as we

have seen was also the case in Guatemala. In Nahuatl these were called

_neceuilli_, resting places, or _netlatolli_, sitting places; and

distances were reckoned numerically by these, as one, two, three, etc.,

resting places. Although this seems a vague and inaccurate method, usage

had attached comparatively definite ideas of distance to these terms.

Father Duran tells us that along the highways there were posts or stones

erected with marks upon them showing how many of these stops there were

to the next market-towns—a sort of mile-stones, in fact. As the

competition between the various markets was very active, each set up its

own posts, giving its distance, and adding a curse on all who did not

attend, or were led away by the superior attractions of its rivals.[412]

So far as I have learned, the lineal measures above mentioned were those

applied to estimate superficies. In some of the plans of fields, etc.,

handed down, the size is marked by the native numerals on one side of

the plan, which are understood to indicate the square measure of the

included tract. The word in Nahuatl meaning to survey or measure lands

is _tlalpoa_, literally “to count land,” from _tlalli_ land, _poa_ to

count.

The Aztecs were entirely ignorant of balances, scales or weights. Cortes

says distinctly that when he visited the great market of

Mexico-Tenochtitlan, he saw all articles sold by number and measure, and

nothing by weight.[413] The historian Herrera confirms this from other

authorities, and adds that when grass or hay was sold, it was estimated

by the length of a cord which could be passed around the bundle.[414]

The plumb-line must have been unknown to the Mexicans also. Their called

it _temetztepilolli_, “the piece of lead which is hung from on high,”

from _temetzli_, lead, and _piloa_, to fasten something high up. Lead

was not unknown to the Aztecs before the conquest. They collected it in

the Provinces of Tlachco and Itzmiquilpan, but did not esteem it of much

value, and their first knowledge of it as a plummet must have been when

they saw it in the hands of the Spaniards. Hence their knowledge of the

instrument itself could not have been earlier.

The conclusions to which the above facts tend are as follows:

1. In the Maya system of lineal measures, foot, hand, and body measures

were nearly equally prominent, but the foot unit was the customary

standard.

2. In the Cakchiquel system, hand and body measures were almost

exclusively used, and of these, those of the hand prevailed.

3. In the Aztec system, body measurements were unimportant, hand and arm

measures held a secondary position, while the foot measure was adopted

as the official and obligatory standard both in commerce and

architecture.

4. The Aztec terms for their lineal standard being apparently of Maya

origin, suggest that their standard was derived from that nation.

5. Neither of the three nations was acquainted with a system of

estimation by weight, nor with the use of the plumb-line, nor with an

accurate measure of long distances.

THE CURIOUS HOAX OF THE TAENSA LANGUAGE.

One might think it a difficult task to manufacture a new language “from

the whole cloth;” but, in fact, it is no great labor. We have but to

remember that within the last dozen years more than a dozen

“world-languages” have been framed and offered for acceptance, and we at

once perceive that a moderate knowledge of tongues and some linguistic

ingenuity are all that is required.

It is an innocent amusement so long as no fraudulent use is made of the

manufactured product; but the temptation to play a practical joke, and

to palm off a deception on overeager linguists, is as great in languages

as it is in archæology—and every antiquary knows how suspiciously he has

to scrutinize each new specimen.

A curious hoax, which deceived some of the best linguists of Europe and

America, was perpetrated about a decade ago by two young French

seminarists, Jean Parisot and A. Dejouy. Interested by reading

Châteaubriand, and by various publications on American languages which

appeared in France about that time, they made up a short grammar and a

list of words of what they called the _Tansa_ language, from a name they

found in Châteaubriand’s _Voyage en Amerique_, and into this invented

tongue they translated the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, an Algonkin hymn

published in Paris, and other material.

At first, the two students pursued this occupation merely as an

amusement, but it soon occurred to them that more could be made of it;

so M. Parisot sent a batch of the alleged “fragments” of the “Tansa” to

the publishers, Maisonneuve et Cie, Paris, for publication. The

manuscripts were passed over to M. Julien Vinson, editor of the _Révue

de Linguistique_, who addressed the young author for further

particulars. M. Parisot replied that these pieces were copies of

originals obtained many years before by his grandfather, from what

source he knew not, and on the strength of this vague statement, they

duly appeared in the _Révue_.

Their publication attracted the attention of the eminent French

linguist, M. Lucien Adam, who had long occupied himself with American

tongues, and he entered into correspondence with M. Parisot. The

latter’s stock meanwhile had considerably increased. He and his friend

had published at Epinal, apparently privately, a small pamphlet, with an

introductory note in bad Spanish, containing a number of “songs” in the

“Taensa,” as they now called their language. They claimed in the note

that the songs had been obtained by a traveler in America, in the year

1827 or 1828, “in the Taensa town, on the banks of the Mississippi or

the Alabama”(!)[415]

With this abundant material at hand, young Parisot replied cheerfully to

M. Adam, and supplied that scientist with “copy” from the alleged

ancestral MSS. quite enough to fill a goodly volume of grammar, songs,

lexicon, and the various paraphernalia of a linguistic apparatus, all of

which eager M. Adam and his collaborator, Mr. A. S. Gatschet, the expert

linguist attached to our Bureau of Ethnology, received in good faith and

without a suspicion of the joker who victimized them; and what is more

singular, without having a doubt excited by the many and gross blunders

of the young seminarist.

Their joint work reached the United States in 1883, and for two years

was received both here and in Europe as a genuine production. My

attention was first attracted to it in 1883, and then I referred to it

as a “strange” production; but I did not give it a close examination

until the close of 1884. This examination led me to prepare the

following article, which was published in the _American Antiquarian_ for

March, 1885:

THE TAENSA GRAMMAR AND DICTIONARY.

_A Deception Exposed._

The student of American languages is under many obligations to the

editors and publishers of the _Bibliothéque Linguistique Américaine_,

nine volumes of which have been issued by the firm of Maisonneuve et

Cie., Paris. Most of these contain valuable authentic original material,

from approved sources, and edited with judgment. The exception to this

rule is the volume last issued, which from its character deserves more

than a passing criticism.

This volume bears the following title: _Grammaire et Vocabulaire de la

Langue Taensa, avec Textes Traduits et Commentés par J. D. Haumonté,

Parisot, L. Adam_. Pp. 19, III. It contains what professes to be a

grammar of the Taensas Indians, who lived near the banks of the lower

Mississippi, in the parish of that name in Louisiana, when it was first

discovered, but who have long since become extinct. Following the

grammar are the “Texts,” a remarkable series of native songs in the

alleged Taensa tongue, with a French translation, accompanied by a

commentary and a vocabulary.

All this array has been received by scholars without question. It looks

so extremely scientific and satisfactory that no one has dared assail

its authenticity. Moreover, the book appears with an historical

introduction by Mr. Albert S. Gatschet, of our Bureau of Ethnology, and

one of the editors is M. Lucien Adam, a gentleman who stands at the head

of European Americanists. Mr. Gatschet, moreover, fully recognizes the

authenticity of the whole in his latest work, and up to the present I

know of no one who has doubted it, either in this country or in Europe.

It is, therefore, only after a great deal of consideration and

hesitation that I now give publicity to the opinion I have long

entertained, that a gross deception has been somewhere practiced in the

preparation of this book, and that it is not at all what it purports to

be. Let it be understood that I distinctly exculpate the gentlemen I

have named from any share in this; they can only be charged with the

venial error of allowing their enthusiasm for knowledge to get the

better of their critical acumen.

I shall proceed to give with as much brevity as possible the reasons

which have led me to reject the pretended character of this work.

And first I may note that both the history of the alleged original

manuscript and the method in which it has been presented are to the last

degree unsatisfactory. About the former, M. Haumonté tells us that among

the papers of his grandfather, who died as mayor of Plombères, in 1872,

he found a manuscript in Spanish, without date or name of author, and

that it is this manuscript “translated and arranged,” which is the work

before us. M. Adam adds that for his part he had revised this

translation and advised the omission of certain passages not “profitable

to science.” I have been informed by a private source that M. Adam was

not shown the original Spanish manuscript, although he asked to see it.

We are deprived therefore of any expert opinion as to the age of the

manuscript, or its authorship.

We naturally ask, how did this manuscript come to be in Spanish? No one

has been able to point out in the voluminous histories of the Spanish

Missions a single reference to any among the Taensas. Moreover, this

tribe was constantly under French observation from its first discovery

by La Salle in 1682, until its entire destruction and disappearance

about 1730–40, as is minutely recorded by Charlevoix, who even adds the

name of the planter who obtained the concession of their lands. With the

knowledge we have of the early Louisiana colony, it would have been next

to impossible for a Spanish monk to have lived with them long enough to

have acquired their language, and no mention to have been made of him in

the French accounts. That a Spaniard, not a monk, should have attempted

it, would have excited still more attention from national distrust.

This preliminary ground of skepticism is not removed by turning to the

grammar itself. As M. Adam remarks, the language is one “of extreme

simplicity,” such simplicity that it excites more than the feeling of

astonishment. How much liberty M. Haumonté allowed himself in his

translation he unfortunately does not inform us; but I suppose that he

scarcely went so far as to offer original opinions on the pronunciation

of a language which no man has heard spoken for more than a century. If

he did not, then the writer of the original manuscript must have been a

pretty good linguist for his day, since he explains the pronunciation of

the Taensa by the French, the English, the German, and the Spanish!! (p.

4). I suppose the references on p. 11, to the Nahuatl, Kechua and

Algonkin tongues are by the translator, though we are not so told; at

any rate, they are by some one who has given a certain amount of study

to American languages, and could get up one not wholly unlike them.

There is, however, just enough unlikeness to all others in the so-called

Taensa to make us accept it “with all reserves,” as the French say. That

an American language should have a distinctively grammatical gender,

that it should have a true relative pronoun, that its numeral system

should be based on the nine units in the extraordinarily simple manner

here proposed, that it should have three forms of the plural, that its

verbs should present the singular simplicity of these,—these traits are

indeed not impossible, but they are too unusual not to demand the best

of evidence.

But the evidence which leaves no doubt as to the hum-buggery in this

whole business is found in the so-called “Cancionero Taensa,” or Taensa

Poems. There are eleven of these, and according to M. Adam, “they give

us unexpected information about the manners, customs and social

condition of the Taensas.” If he had also added, still more unexpected

information about the physical geography of Louisiana, he would have

spoken yet more to the point. For instance, our botanists will be

charmed to learn that the sugar maple flourishes in the Louisiana

swamps, and that it furnished a favorite food of the natives. It is

repeatedly referred to (pp. 31, 34, 45, 67). They will also learn that

the sugar cane was raised by the Taensas, although the books say it was

introduced into Louisiana by the Jesuits in 1761 (p. 45). The potato and

rice, apples and bananas, were also familiar to them, and the white

birch and wild rice are described as flourishing around the bayous of

the lower Mississippi! It may be urged that these are all

mistranslations of misunderstood native words. To this I reply, what

sort of editing is that which not only could commit such unpardonable

blunders, but send them forth to the scientific world without a hint

that they do not pretend to be anything more than guesses?

But no such apology can be made. The author of this fabrication had not

taken the simplest precaution to make his statements coincide with

facts. How dense was his ignorance of the climate of Louisiana is

manifested in the pretended “Calendar of the Taensas,” which is printed

on p. 41 of his book. He tells us that their year began at the vernal

equinox and consisted of twelve or thirteen months named as follows:

1. Moon of the sugar maples (April).

2. Moon of flowers (May).

3. Moon of strawberries (June).

4. Moon of heat (July).

5. Moon of fruits (August).

6. Moon of the summer hunts (September).

7. Moon of leaves, (falling leaves) (October).

8. Moon of cold (November).

9. Moon of whiteness (i. e. of snow) (December).

10. Moon of fogs (January).

11. Moon of winter hunts (February).

12. Moon of birds (returning). } (March).

13. Moon of green (returning green). }

How absurd on the face of it, such a calendar would be for the climate

of Tensas Parish, La., need not be urged. The wonder is that any

intelligent editor would pass it over without hesitation. The not

infrequent references to snow and ice might and ought to have put him on

his guard.

The text and vocabulary teem with such impossibilities; while the style

of the alleged original songs is utterly unlike that reported from any

other native tribe. It much more closely resembles the stilted and tumid

imitations of supposed savage simplicity, common enough among French

writers of the eighteenth century.

As a fair example of the nonsense of the whole, I will translate the

last song given in the book, that called

THE MARRIAGE SONG.

1. The chief of the Chactas has come to the land of the warriors “I

come.” “Thou comest.”

2. Around his body is a beautiful garment, he wears large leggings,

sandals, tablets of white wood, feathers behind his head and behind

his shoulders, on his head the antlers of a deer, a heavy war club

in his right hand.

3. What is the wish of the great warrior who has come?

4. He wishes to speak to the chief of the numerous and powerful

Taensas.

5. Let the warrior enter the house of the old men. The chief is

seated in the midst of the old men. He will certainly hear thee.

Enter the house of the old men.

6. Great chief, old man, I enter. Thou comest. Enter; bring him in.

What wishes the foreign warrior? Speak, thou who hast come.

7. Old men, ancient men, I am the chief of many men; at ten days’

journey up the river there lies the land of poplars, the land of the

wild rice, which belongs to the brave warriors, the brothers of the

Taensas.

8. They said to me—since thou hast not chosen a bride, go to the

Taensas our brothers, ask of them a bride; for the Chactas are

strong; we will ask a bride of the Taensas.

9. That is well; but speak, warrior, are the Chactas numerous?

10. Count; they are six hundred, and I am stronger than ten.

11. That is well; but speak, do they know how to hunt the buffalo

and the deer? does the squirrel run in your great forests?

12. The land of the wild rice has no great forests, but cows, stags

and elks dwell in our land in great numbers.

13. What plants grow in your country?

14. Poplars, the slupe tree, the myrtle grow there, we have the

sugar maple, ebony to make collars, the oak from which to make war

clubs; our hills have magnolias whose shining leaves cover our

houses.

15. That is well; the Taensas have neither the slupe tree nor the

ebony, but they have the wax tree and the vine: has the land of the

wild rice these also?

16. The Taensas are strong and rich, the Chactas are strong also,

they are the brothers of the Taensas.

17. The Taensas love the brave Chactas, they will give you a bride;

but say, dost thou come alone? dost thou bring bridal presents.

18. Twenty warriors are with me, and _bulls drag a wain_.

19. Let six, seven, twenty Taensa warriors go forth to meet those

who come. For thee, we will let thee see the bride, she is my

daughter, of me, the great chief; she is young; she is beautiful as

the lily of the waters; she is straight as the white birch; her eyes

are like unto the tears of gum that distil from the trees; she knows

how to prepare the meats for the warriors and the sap of the sugar

maple; she knows how to knit the fishing nets and keep in order the

weapons of war—we will show thee the bride.

20. The strangers have arrived, the bulls have dragged up the wain.

The warrior offers his presents to the bride, paint for her eyes,

fine woven stuff, scalps of enemies, collars, beautiful bracelets,

rings for her feet, and swathing-bands for her first born.

21. The father of the bride and the old man receive skins, horns of

deer, solid bows and sharpened arrows.

22. Now let the people repose during the night; at sunrise there

shall be a feast; then you shall take the bride in marriage.

And this is the song of the marriage.

The assurance which has offered this as a genuine composition of a

Louisiana Indian is only equalled by the docility with which it has been

accepted by Americanists. The marks of fraud upon it are like Falstaff’s

lies—“gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” The Choctaws are located ten

days’ journey up the Mississippi in the wild rice region about the

head-waters of the stream, whereas they were the immediate neighbors of

the real Taensas, and dwelt when first discovered in the middle and

southern parts of the present State of Mississippi. The sugar maple is

made to grow in the Louisiana swamps, the broad-leaved magnolia and the

ebony in Minnesota. The latter is described as the land of the myrtle,

and the former of the vine. The northern warrior brings feet-rings and

infant clothing as presents, while the southern bride knows all about

boiling maple sap, and is like a white birch. But the author’s knowledge

of aboriginal customs stands out most prominently when he has the

up-river chief come with an ox-cart and boast of his cows! After that

passage I need say nothing more. He is indeed ignorant who does not know

that not a single draft animal, and not one kept for its milk, was ever

found among the natives of the Mississippi valley.

I have made other notes tending in the same direction, but it is

scarcely necessary for me to proceed further. If the whole of this

pretended Taensa language has been fabricated, it would not be the first

time in literary history that such a fraud has been perpetrated. In the

last century, George Psalmanazar framed a grammar of a fictitious

language in Formosa, which had no existence whatever. So it seems to be

with the Taensa; not a scrap of it can be found elsewhere, not a trace

of any such tongue remains in Louisiana. What is more, all the old

writers distinctly deny that this tribe had any independent language. M.

De Montigny, who was among them in 1699, Father Gravier, who was also at

their towns, and Du Pratz, the historian, all say positively that the

Taensas spoke the Natchez language, and were part of the same people. We

have ample specimens of the Natchez, and it is nothing like this alleged

Taensa. Moreover, we have in old writers the names of the Taensa

villages furnished by the Taensas themselves, and they are nowise akin

to the matter of this grammar, but are of Chahta-Muskoki derivation.

What I have now said is I think sufficient to brand this grammar and its

associated texts as deceptions practiced on the scientific world. If it

concerns the editors and introducers of that work to discover who

practiced and is responsible for that deception, let the original

manuscript be produced and submitted to experts; if this is not done,

let the book be hereafter pilloried as an imposture.

* * * * *

As soon as I could obtain reprints of the above article I forwarded them

to M. Adam and others interested in American languages, and M. Adam at

once took measures to obtain from the now “Abbé” Parisot the original

MSS. That young ecclesiastic, however, professed entire ignorance of

their whereabouts; he had wholly forgotten what disposition he had made

of this portion of his grandfather’s papers! He also charged M. Adam

with having worked over (_remanié_) his material; and finally disclaimed

all responsibility concerning it.

In spite, however, of his very unsatisfactory statements, M. Adam

declined to recognize the fabrication of the tongue, and expressed

himself so at length in a brochure entitled, _Le Taensa a-t-il été forgé

de toutes Pièces? Réponse à M. Daniel G. Brinton_ (pp. 22, Maissonneuve

Frères et Ch. Leclerc, Paris, 1885). The argument which he made use of

will be seen from the following reply which I published in _The American

Antiquarian_, September, 1885:

THE TAENSA GRAMMAR AND DICTIONARY.

The criticism on the Taensa Grammar published in the _American

Antiquarian_ last March has led to a reply from M. Lucien Adam, the

principal editor, under the following title: “_Le Taensa a-t-il-été

forgé de toutes Piéces?_” As the question at issue is one of material

importance to American archæology, I shall state M. Adam’s arguments in

defense of the Grammar.

It will be remembered that the criticism published last March closed

with an urgent call for the production of the original MS., which M.

Adam himself had never seen. To meet this, M. Adam as soon as

practicable applied to M. Parisot, who alleged that he had translated

the Grammar from the Spanish original, to produce that original. This M.

Parisot professed himself unable to do; although only two or three years

have elapsed, he cannot remember what he did with it, and he thinks it

possible that it is lost or destroyed! The investigations, however,

reveal two facts quite clearly: first, that the original MS., if there

was one, was not in Spanish as asserted, and was not in the handwriting

of M. Parisot’s grandfather, as was also asserted, as the latter was

certainly not the kind of man to occupy himself with any such document.

He kept a sort of boardinghouse, and the suggestion now is that one of

his temporary guests left this supposed MS. at his house. As its

existence is still in doubt, this uncertainty about its origin need not

further concern us.

The more important question is whether the language as presented in the

Grammar and texts bears internal evidence of authenticity or not.

M. Adam begins with the texts, the so-called poems. To my surprise, M.

Adam, so far as they pretend to be native productions, tosses them

overboard without the slightest compunction. “In my own mind,” he

writes, “I have always considered them the work of some disciple of the

Jesuit Fathers, who had taken a fancy to the Taensa poetry.” This

emphatic rejection of their aboriginal origin has led me to look over

the volume again, as it seemed to me that if such was the opinion of the

learned editor he should certainly have hinted it to his readers. Not

the slightest intimation of the kind can be found in its pages.

The original MS. having disappeared, and the texts having been ruled out

as at best the botch-work of some European, M. Adam takes his stand on

the Grammar and maintains its authenticity with earnestness.

I named in my criticism six points in the grammatical structure of the

alleged Taensa, specifying them as so extremely rare in American

languages, that it demanded the best evidence to suppose that they all

were present in this extraordinary tongue.

These points are discussed with much acuteness and fairness by M. Adam,

and his arguments within these limits are considered convincing by so

eminent an authority as Professor Friederich Müller, of Vienna, to whom

they were submitted, and whose letter concerning them he publishes. What

M. Adam does is to show that each of the peculiarities named finds a

parallel in other American tongues, or he claims that the point is not

properly taken. As I never denied the former, but merely called

attention to the rarity of such features, the question is, whether the

evidence is sufficient to suppose that several of them existed in this

tongue; while as to the correctness of my characterization of Taensa

Grammar, scholars will decide that for themselves.

It will be seen from the above that, even if some substructure will be

shown to have existed for this Taensa Grammar and texts (which,

individually, I still deny), it has been presented to the scientific

world under conditions which were far from adequate to the legitimate

demands of students.

M. Adam in the tone of his reply is very fair and uniformly courteous,

except in his last sentence, where he cannot resist the temptation to

have a fling at us for the supposed trait which Barnum and his compeers

have conferred upon us among those who do not know us. “Permettezmoi de

vous dire,” he writes, “que la France n’est point la terre classique du

_humbug_.” Has M. Adam forgotten that George Psalmanazar, he who in the

last century manufactured a language out of the whole cloth, grammar and

dictionary and all, was a Frenchman born and bred? And that if the

author of the Taensa volume has done the same, his only predecessor in

this peculiar industry is one of his own nation?

* * * * *

M. Adam continued his praiseworthy efforts to unearth the imaginary

originals of the Abbé Parisot’s hoax, but with the results one can

easily anticipate—they were not forthcoming.[416]

The discussion continued in a desultory manner for some time, and Mr.

Gatschet made the most strenuous efforts during his official journeys as

government linguist in the southwest and in the Indian territory to find

evidence showing that he had not been taken in by the ingenious French

seminarists; but his continued silence was evidence enough that none

such came to his ken.

In 1886 Professor Julien Vinson reviewed the question for the _Révue de

Linguistique_, and delivered what may be considered the final verdict in

the case. It is to the effect that the whole alleged language of the

Taensas,—grammar, vocabulary, prose and poetry—is a fabrication by a

couple of artful students to impose on the learned. I may close with the

Professor’s own closing words:

“Que restera-t-il du _taensa_? A mon avis, une mystification sans grande

portée et _much ado about nothing_.”

INDEX OF AUTHORS AND AUTHORITIES.

Abbot, C. C., 27, 32, 53, 185.

Abel-Remusat, 339.

Abel, Carl, 402, 410.

Adair, James, 71, 78.

Adam, Lucien, 36, 355–7, 374, 379, 389, 405, 406, 453, _sq._

Adler, C. J., 328, 329.

Aglio, Agostino, 250.

Aguilar, Pedro Sanchez de, 236.

Albornoz, R. F., 399.

Alcazar, Padre, 76.

Almaraz, Ramon, 446.

Ameghino, Fiorentino, 31.

Anales de Chimalpahin, 283.

Anales de Cuauhtitlan, 86, 90, 210, 283.

Anales del Museo Nacional, 210, 439.

Anchieta, Joseph de, 381, _sq._

Anchorena, Jose D., 365, 425, 428.

“Ancient Nahuatl Poems,” 97, 154.

Ancona, Eligio, 258.

Andrews, 414.

Angrand, Leonce, 84, 253.

Annals of the Kakchiquels, 100, 423.

Anthony, A. S., 181–192.

Archives paléographiques de l’Orient et de l’Amérique, 253.

Aubin, J. M. A., 196, 209, 210, 212, 220, 231, 282.

Avé Lallemant, Dr. R., 64.

Aymé, Louis H., 448.

Babbitt, Frances, 54.

Baeza, Bart. G. de, 164, 166.

Baker, Theodore, 293.

Bandelier, A. F., 275, 278.

Baraga, Frederic, 131, 364, 414.

Bartram, John, 75.

Bartram, William, 71, 76, 78.

Beach, W. W., 45.

Beauvois, E., 148.

Belcourt, Pere, 399, 400.

Berendt, C. H., 119, 164, 171, 175, 179, 237, 272, 288, 295, 398.

Beverly, Robert, 70.

Bibliothéque Linguistique Américaine, 454.

Bichat, 57.

Biedma, his narrative, 72, 74.

Bienvenida, Lorenzo de, 26.

Blomes, Richard, 76.

Blumenbach, F. J., 38, 56, 57.

Boas, Franz, 22, 64, 286.

Books of the Jew, MS., 273.

Boole, Professor, 402.

Borde, M. de la, 123.

Boturini, B., 116.

Bourbourg, Brasseur de, _see_ Brasseur.

Brasseur (de Bourbourg), C., 84, 105, 107, 120, 126, 128, 167, 170,

199, 210, 227, 231, 243, 263, 282.

Bristock, his fabulous narrative, 76.

Buenaventura, Gabriel de San, 237, 249.

Buschmann, J. C. E., 23, 92, 93.

Byington, Cyrus, 364.

Campanius, Thomas, 315.

Cancionero, Americano, 453.

Carochi, Horacio, 325, 418.

Carrillo, Crescencio, 258, 265, 439.

Carrillo, Estanislao, 164.

Cartailhac, Emile de, 391.

Casas, Bartolome de las, 124, 234.

Catherwood, Frederick, 254.

Cavalcanti, Amaro, 380–385, 430.

Ceron, Francisco, 107.

Champollion, 227.

Charencey, H. de, 59, 84, 167, 196, 372.

Charlevoix, P. F. X., 69, 456.

Charnay, D., 83, 86, 89, 97, 448.

Chateaubriand, 452.

Chilan Balam, Book of, 248, 254 _sqq._, 303.

Chimalpahin, D. F. de, 283.

Chronicles of the Mayas, 99, 100.

Cicero, M. T., 127, 424.

Clavigero, F., 84.

Codex Bolognensis, 158.

Codex Chimalpopoca, 210, 221.

Codex Cortesianus, 198, 253.

Codex Dresdensis, 199, 200, 250, _sq._

Codex Mexicanus, No. II., 252.

Codex Peresianus, 252, 265.

Codex Poinsett, 154.

Codex Ramirez, the, 84, 89, 90, 91, 92.

Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 280.

Codex Troano, 114, 200, 202, 230, 253, 265.

Codex Vaticanus, 155, 280.

Codex Zumarraga, 250.

Codice Perez, 265.

Cogolludo, D. L., 127, 168, 235, 238, 268.

Colden, C., 68.

Coleccion de Documentos para la Historia de España, 235.

Comte, Auguste, 57.

Copway, George, 154.

Cortes, H. de, 448, 449.

Coto, Thomas, 106, 107, 110, 111 _sq._, 440 _sq._

Cresson, H. T., 41, 53.

Cuesta, Arroyo de la, 386–388.

Culin, Stewart, 151.

Cuoq, J. A., 132.

Cushing, Frank, 108.

Cuvier, G., 38, 57, 61.

Darapsky, Dr., 398.

Darwin, Charles, 39, 43, 408.

Dawson, J. William, 44.

Dawson, George M., 395.

Dead, Book of the, 136–140.

Dejouy, A., 452 _sq._

Dias, 430.

Diccionario Historico de Yucatan, 263.

Diccionario Huasteca-Español, MS., 221.

Diccionario Maya-Español de Motul, MS., _see_ Motul.

Dictionaire Galibi, 123.

Distel, Theodore, 330.

D’Orbigny, Alcide, 39.

Dorsey, J. O., 108.

Dumont, M., 77, 78.

Dumoutier, M., 150.

Dunbar, John B., 291.

Dupaix, Captain, 275, 276.

Duponceau, P. S., 36, 94, 191, 321, 351, 389.

Du Pratz, Le Page, 462.

Duran, Diego, 88, 89, 99, 159, 449.

Ehrenreich, Paul, 38, 65.

Eliot, John, 190.

El Siglo que Acaba, 274.

Ettwein, J., 183, 191.

Faraud, Henry, 21, 394, 395.

Fernandez, Alonzo, 124.

Finch, Prof., 70.

Flint, Earl, 28, 42.

Foley, Dr., 57.

Forneri, R. P., 329.

Förstemann, Dr. E., 200, 243, 251.

Foster, J. W., 67.

França, E. F., 430.

Gabb, William M., 374–378.

Gage, Thomas, 170.

Gallatin, Albert, 88, 100.

Garcia y Garcia, Ap. 165.

Gatschet, A. S., 75, 454 sq.

Gayangos, P. de, 449.

Gœthe, J. W. von, 260, 284, 316.

Granados y Galvez, I. J., 117.

Gravier, P., 462.

Guzman, Pantaleon de, 107, 128.

Haeckel, E., 390.

Hale, Horatio, 35, 393.

Hamann, 284.

Hamy, E. T., 148, 140, 210, 367.

Harpe, M. de la, 77.

Hartmann, W., 189.

Hartt, Charles F., 380, 382.

Haumonté, J. D., 455 _sq._

Haynes, H. W., 18, 31.

Heckewelder, John, 191, 315.

Hegel, 403.

Henry, V., 405, 467.

Herder, 284, 403.

Herrera, Antonio de, 89, 91, 92, 448, 450.

Hervas, Abbé, 330.

Hervé, Georges, 62.

Holden, 196, 197.

Holguin, R. P., 426, 428.

Holmes, W. H., 148.

Hovelacque, Abel, 62.

Howse, James, 36, 383, 395, 399, 401, 414, 415.

Humboldt, Alexander von, 20, 33, 60, 251, 338, 374, 377.

Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 36, 284, 318, 328–348, 353, 405.

Hunter, Archdeacon, 403.

Iconographic Encyclopædia, The, 52.

Ixtlilxochitl, F., 84, 87, 90, 92, 97, 283, 445.

Jesuits, Relations des, 78.

Jones, C. C., 79, 80.

Kalm, Peter, 185.

Kane, Paul, 69.

Kingsborough, Lord, 84, 87, 90, 99, 155, 210, 221, 231, 251, 280, 445.

Kollmann, J., 40.

Lacombe, Al., 131, 364, 366, 414.

Lafitau, J. F., 69.

Landa, Diego de, 119, 127, 159, 166, 199, 227, 240 _sq._, 256, 257,

265, 438.

Lang, Andrew, 102.

Leland, Charles G., 130, 133.

LePlongeon, A., 439.

Lieber, Francis, 355, 357.

Lindstrom, 183.

Linnæus, C., 38, 349.

Lizana, Bernardo de, 235, 260, 261.

Lower, M. A., 219.

Lopez, J. M., 164.

Luchan, von, 149.

Lund, Dr., 29.

Macedo, F. de, 148, 157, 159.

MacLean, J. P., 67.

Magalhaes, Dr. Couto de, 381, 430.

Magio, R. P., 397.

Mallery, Garrick, 156, 159.

Manuscrito Hieratico, 225.

Martyr, Peter, 233.

Matthews, Washington, 62, 407.

McGee, W. J., 447.

Meigs, James A., 63.

Mendoza, Gumesindo, 59.

Michel, F., 21.

Mitre, Bartolome, 26, 27.

Molina, Alonso de, 93, 325, 418, 443.

Montesinos, H., 23.

Montigny, M. de, 462.

Montoya, Ruiz de, 381–5, 398, 400, 429.

Morgan, Lewis A., 44, 45, 60.

Morgues, Le Moyne de, 75.

Morse, E. G., 60.

Mortillet, G. de, 390, 391.

Motolinia, P., 85, 99.

Motul, Diccionario de, MS., 119, 127, 177, 250, 325, 421 _sq._, 435

_sq._

Müller, Frederick, 230, 357, 374, 379, 380, 386, 465.

Müller, Max, 338.

Narvaez, Pamfilo de, 72.

Naxera, Emanuel, 366, 371.

Neve y Molina, Luis de, 366, 370, 371.

Nikkanoche, Occola, his narrative, 77.

Nogueira, D. C. Da., 381.

Nostradamus, Michael, 301.

Ollanta, Drama of, 300, 425 _sq._

Olshausen, 149.

Orozco y Berra, 23, 84, 87, 90, 95, 196, 210, 231, 277, 282, 446.

Ossado, Ricardo, 273.

Paredes, R. P., 420.

Parisot, J., 452 _sq._

Peñafiel, Antonio, 210.

Perez, Francisco, 366, 370.

Perez, Pio, 120, 263, 264, 272.

Peschel, Oscar, 64.

Petit, Pere C., 77.

Petitot, Emile, 21, 58, 394, 398, 401.

Petrie, Prof., 447.

Piccolomini, Count, 367.

Pickering, Charles, 33.

Pickett, Thomas E., 82.

Pierret, Paul, 138.

Pimentel, Francisco, 368, 373.

Platzmann, Julius, 58.

Ponce, Alonzo, 234, 255.

“Popol Vuh,” the, 105 _sq._, 171, 424.

Powell, J. W., 68, 319, 358.

Pratz, Le Page du, 78.

Prescott, W. H., 84.

Essays of an Americanist I. Ethnologic and Archæologic. II. Mythology and Folk Lore. III. Graphic Systems and Literature. IV. Linguistic. · 第 7 / 9 章

The physiological possibility that palæolithic man possessed a language