mainly Huron-Iroquois, and a vocabulary largely recruited from some
foreign source. From this he infers that one portion of the conquered
Alligéwi, while the conflict still lasted, may have cast in their lot
with the conquering race, just as the Tlascalans did with the Spaniards
in their war against the Aztecs, and hence the origin of the great
Cherokee nation. The fugitive Alligéwi, he surmises, may have fled down
the Mississippi till they reached the country of the Choctaws,
themselves a mound-building people; and to the alliance of the two he
would thus trace the difference in the language of the latter from that
of their eastern kindred, the Creeks or Muskhogees.[143] On the
assumption of such a combination of ethnical elements, the origin of the
Creek confederacy is easily accounted for. It is to this same element of
language that we have to revert for guidance in the interpretation of
the history of this remarkable race. It would be an evasion of the most
essential evidence on which any reliable conclusions must be based, if
the fact were overlooked that the Iroquois never emerged beyond the
primitive stage of the Stone period. Nevertheless in one element of
intellectual development their progress had been great. Each nation of
the Iroquois league had its chief, to whom pertained the right of
kindling the symbolic council-fire, and of taking the lead in all public
assemblies. When the representative chiefs of the nations gathered in
the Long House around the common council-fire of the league, it was no
less necessary that they should be able and persuasive speakers than
brave warriors. Rhetoric was cultivated in the council-house of the
Iroquois no less earnestly than in the Athenian ekklesia or the Roman
forum. Acute reasoning and persuasive eloquence demanded all the
discriminating refinements of grammar, and the choice of terms which an
ample vocabulary supplies. The holophrastic element has been noted as a
peculiar characteristic of American languages. The word-sentences thus
constructed not only admitted of, but encouraged, an elaborate nicety of
discrimination; while the marked tendency of the process, so far as the
language itself is concerned, was to absorb all other parts in the verb.
Time, place, manner, aim, purpose, degree, and all the other
modifications of language are combined polysynthetically with the root.
Nouns are to a large extent verbal forms; and not only nouns and
adjectives, but adverbs and prepositions, are regularly conjugated.
Elaborated polysyllables, flexibly modified by systematic internal
changes, give expression, in one compounded word-sentence, to every
varying phase of intricate reasoning or emotion; and the complex
structure shows the growth of a language in habitual use for higher
purposes than the mere daily wants of life. The vocabulary in use in
some rural districts in England has been found to include less than
three hundred words; and in provincial dialects, thus restricted, the
refinements of grammatical expression disappear. Among such rustic
communities speech plays a very subordinate part in the business of
life. But upon the deliberations of the Indian council-house depended
the whole action of the confederacy. Hence, while in all else the
Iroquois remained an untutored savage, his language is a marvellously
systematised and beautiful structure, well adapted to the requirements
of intricate reasoning and persuasive subtlety.
Professor Whitney says, in reference to American languages generally,
what may more especially be applied to the Huron-Iroquois: “There are
infinite possibilities of expressiveness in such a structure; and it
would only need that some native American Greek race should arise, to
fill it full of thought and fancy, and put it to the uses of a noble
literature, and it would be rightly admired as rich and flexible,
perhaps beyond anything else that the world knew.”[144] Yet, on the
other hand, the Iroquois dispense with the whole labials, never
articulate with their lips, and throw entirely aside from their
alphabetical series of phonetics six of those most constantly in use by
us.
In this direction, then, lies an ethnological problem which cannot fail
to awaken ever-increasing interest. To the native languages of the New
World we must look for a true key to the solution of some of the most
curious and difficult questions involved in the peopling of the
continent. “There lies before us,” says Professor Whitney, “a vast and
complicated problem in the American races; and it is their language that
must do by far the greatest part of the work in solving it.”
Of the languages of the Huron-Iroquois, the Huron appears to be the
oldest, if not the parent stock. When this aggressive race had spread,
as conquerors, far to the south of the St. Lawrence, the mother nation
appears to have held on to the cradleland of the race, where its
representatives were found still in possession when the first European
explorers entered the St. Lawrence. Colonists, of French or English
origin, have been in more or less intimate intercourse with them ever
since, yet the materials for any satisfactory study of the Huron
language, or of a comparison between it and the various Iroquois
dialects, are still scanty and very inadequate. The languages of the
Five Nations that originally constituted the members of the Iroquois
league, are, in the strictest sense of the term, dialects. In their
council-house on the Grand river, the chiefs of the Mohawks, Oneidas,
Onandagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, speak each in their own language and
need no interpreter. Nevertheless, the differences are considerable; and
a Seneca would scarcely find the language of a Mohawk intelligible to
him in ordinary conversation. But the separation of the Tuscaroras from
the Iroquois on the Mohawk river had been of long duration, and their
language differs much more widely from the others.
The Mohawk language was adopted at an early date for communicating with
the Indians of the Six Nations. The New England Company, established in
1649, under favour of the Lord Protector, Cromwell, “for the propagation
of the Gospel in New England,” was revived on the restoration of Charles
II. under a royal charter; and with the eminent philosopher, Robert
Boyle, as its first governor, vigorous steps were taken for the
religious instruction of the Indians. The correspondence of Eliot, “the
Apostle of the Indians,” with the first governor of the Company, is
marked by their anxiety for the completion of the Massachusetts Bible,
which, along with other books, he had translated for the benefit of the
Indians of New England. The silver Communion Service, still preserved at
the reserve on the Grand river, presented to the ancestors of the Mohawk
nation by Queen Anne, is an interesting memorial of the early efforts
for their Christianisation. It bears the inscription: “A. R., 1711.
=The Gift of Her Majesty, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain,
France, and Ireland, and of her Plantations in North America, Queen: to
her Indian Chappel of the Mohawks.=” The date has a special
interest in evidence of the transforming influences already at work; for
it was not till three years later that the Tuscaroras were received into
the confederation, and the Iroquois became known by their later
appellation as the Six Nation Indians. In accordance with the efforts
indicated by the royal gift, repeated steps were taken for translating
the Scriptures and the Prayer-Book into their language. In a letter of
the Rev. Dr. Stuart, missionary to the Six Nations, dated 1771, he
describes his introduction to Captain Brant at the Mohawk village of
Canajoharie, and the aid received from him in revising the Indian
Prayer-Book, and in translating the Gospel of St. Mark and the Acts of
the Apostles into the Mohawk language. The breaking out of the
revolutionary war arrested the printing of these translations. The
manuscripts were brought to Canada in 1781, and placed in the hands of
Colonel Clause, the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs. This
gentleman subsequently carried them to England, where they were at
length printed. A more recent edition of the Mohawk Prayer-Book,
prepared under the direction of the Rev. Abraham Nelles, a missionary of
the New England Company, with the aid of a native catechist, issued from
the Canadian press in 1842. The Indian text is accompanied with its
English equivalent on the opposite page, and this _Kaghyadouhsera ne
Yoedereanayeadagwha_, or Book of Common Prayer, is still in use in the
religious services of the Six Nation Indians at their settlement on the
Grand river.
Some characteristics of the language, such as the absence of labials,
constitute not only a distinctive difference from the old Huron speech,
but afford proof of the latter being the older form. “It is a fact,”
says Professor Max Müller, in referring to his intercourse with an
intelligent native Mohawk, then a student at Oxford, “that the Mohawks
never, either as infants or as grown-up people, articulate with their
lips. They have no _p_, _b_, _m_, _f_, _v_, _w_—no labials of any
kind.”[145] The statement, so far as the Mohawk infants are concerned,
is open to further inquiry; but Dr. Oronhyatekha, the Mohawk referred
to, who pursued his studies for a time in the University of Toronto, and
to whom I have been largely indebted in this and other researches in
Indian philology, not only rejects the six letters already named, but
also _c_, _g_, _l_, _z_. The alphabet is thus reduced to seventeen
letters. Professor Max Müller notes in passing, that the name “Mohawk”
would seem to prove the use of the labial. But it is of foreign origin,
though possibly derived from their own term: _oegwehokough_, “people.”
The name employed by themselves is “Canienga.” The practice of speaking
without ever closing the lips is an acquired habit of later origin than
the forms of the parent tongue. A comparison of any of the Iroquois
dialects with the Huron as still spoken by the Wyandots of Ontario,
shows the _m_ in use by the latter in what is no doubt a surviving
example of the oldest form of the Huron-Iroquois language. This Huron
_m_ frequently becomes _w_ in the Iroquois dialects, _e.g._
_skatamendjaweh_, “one hundred,” becomes in Mohawk _unskadewennyaweh_;
_rume_, “man,” Mohawk, _ronkwe_, etc. These and other examples of this
interchangeable characteristic of Indian phonology, and the process of
substitution in the absence of labials, are illustrated in the table of
Huron-Iroquois numerals on the following page. The habit of invariably
speaking with the lips open is the source of very curious modifications
in the Iroquois vocabularies when compared with that of the Wyandots.
The _m_ gives place to _w_, _nw_, _nh_, or _nhu_; also to _ku_ and
_nkw_, and so frequently changes the whole character of the word by the
modifications it gives rise to.
A comparison of the numerals of cognate languages and dialects is always
instructive; and with the growing disposition of American philologists
to turn to the Basques, as the only prehistoric race of Europe that has
perpetuated the language of an Allophylian stock with possible analogies
to the native languages of America, their numerals may be placed
alongside of those of the Huron-Iroquois. The permanency of the names
for numerals, and their freedom from displacement by synonyms,
COMPARATIVE TABLE OF NUMERALS.
────┬──────────┬──────────────────┬─────────────────────┬─────────────────
│ │ │ │
│HOCHELAGA.│ HURON. │ │
│(Cartier.)│ (Lorette.) │ WYANDOT. │ MOHAWK.
│ │ │ │
────┼──────────┼──────────────────┼─────────────────────┼─────────────────
│ │ │ │
1│segada} │ │ │
│secata} │skāt │scat │unska
2│tigneny} │ │ │
│tignem } │tendi │tendee │dekenih
3│asche │chin │shaight │ahsunh
4│honnacon │ndak │andaght │kayerih
5│ouiscon │wisch │weeish │wisk
6│indahir │wahia │waushau │yayak
7│ayaga │tsotaré │sootaie │jadah
8│adigue │ateré │autarai │sadekonh
9│madellon │entson │aintru │tyodonh
10│assem │asen │aughsagh │oyerih
11│ ... │asenskatiskaré │assan escate escarhet│unskayawenreh
12│ ... │asentenditiskaré │asanteni escarhet │dekenihyawenreh
13│ ... │āsenachinskaré │ ... │ahsunhyawenreh
14│ ... │asendakskaré │ ... │kayerihyawenreh
15│ ... │asenwischskaré │ ... │wiskyawenreh
16│ ... │asenwahiaskaré │ ... │yayakyawenreh
17│ ... │asentsotaréskaré │ ... │jadahyawenreh
18│ ... │asenateréskaré │ ... │sadekonhyawenreh
19│ ... │asenentsonskaré │ ... │tyodonhyawenreh
20│ ... │tendi eouasen │tendeitawaughsa │dewasunh
30│ ... │achink iouasen │ ... │ahsunhniwasunh
100│ ... │enniot iouasen │scutemaingarwe │unskadewennyaweh
1000│ ... │asenate ouendiaré │assen attenoignauoy │oyerih-
│ │ │ │ nadewennyaweh
│ │ │ │
────┴──────────┴──────────────────┴─────────────────────┴─────────────────
are seen in the universality of one series of names throughout the whole
ancient and modern Aryan languages of Asia and Europe. But the Basque
numerals bear little or no resemblance to either, unless such can be
traced in the _bi_, “two,” and the _sei_, “six,” as in the _assem_,
“ten” (_decem_), of the old Hochelaga, the _ahsen_ of the later
Wyandots. The _ehun_ of the Basque has also its remote, and probably
accidental resemblance; but the _milla_, “one thousand,” is certainly
borrowed, and serves to show that the higher numerals, with the evidence
they afford of advancing civilisation, were the result of intrusive
Aryan influences in the natives of the Iberian peninsula. With the
growing tendency to turn to the prehistoric Iberians of Europe for one
possible key to the origin of the races and languages of America, it is
well to keep this test in view for comparison with the widely varying
native numerals. But the correspondence is slight, even with probable
Turanian congeners. One Biscayan form of “three,” _hirun_, is not unlike
the Magyar _harom_; while the _eyg_, “one,” of the latter, seems to find
its counterpart in the inseparable particle that transforms the Basque
radical _ham_, “ten,” into the _hamaika_, “eleven.” But such fragmentary
traces are in striking contrast to the radical agreement of Sanskrit,
Zend, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic, and Teutonic numerals. Mr. Hale
has drawn my attention to the curious manner in which the names of the
first five Hochelaga numerals in Cartier’s list are contracted and
strengthened in the modern Wyandot; and some of the modifications in the
Iroquois dialects are no less interesting. _Secata_, the Hochelaga
“one,” survives in the Onondaga _skadah_, while it becomes _skat_ in the
modern Huron, the Cayuga, and the Seneca. But in the compounded form of
the Wyandot “one hundred,” _skatamendjawe_, as in the Onondaga
_skadahdewennyachweh_, the terminal _a_ reappears. _Tigneny_, the old
form of “two,” is abridged and strengthened to _tendi_; _asche_, “three”
(originally, in all probability, _aschen_, or, as still in use by the
Hurons of Lorette, _achin_), survives as _ahsunh_ or _ahsenh_ in nearly
all the Iroquois dialects, including the Tuscarora. In the Nottoway it
is still discernible in the modified _arsa_. The exceptions are the
Seneca, where it becomes _sen_, while one Wyandot form is _shenk_; which
reappears in the Seneca compounded form of “thirty,” _shenkwashen_.
_Honnacon_, “four,” loses both its initial and terminal syllables, and
becomes _dak_ in the Wyandot, and _keih_ or _kei_, an abbreviation of
the Mohawk _kayerih_, in the Cayuga and the Seneca dialects. The ancient
form of “five,” _ouiscon_, has partially survived in the Huron _ouisch_.
It becomes _wisk_, _whisk_, _wish_, or (in the Seneca) _wis_, in all the
Iroquois dialects,—the Wyandot and Cayuga once more agreeing in form.
The _ayaga_, “seven,” of the old Hochelaga, nearly resembles the _jadah_
of several of the Iroquois dialects, as in the Cayuga _jadak_, in the
Tuscarora _janah_, and in the Nottoway _oyag_; whereas in the Wyandot it
is _tsotaré_. The _adigue_, “eight,” in its oldest form is _sadekonh_ in
the Mohawk, and _dekrunh_ in the Cayuga; with the substitution of the
_l_ for _r_ it becomes _deklonh_ in the Oneida; and after changing to
_tekion_ in the Seneca, and _nagronh_ in the Tuscarora, it reappears in
the Nottoway as _dekra_. The ancient _madellon_, “nine,” curiously
survives in abridged form, with the substitute for the labial, in the
Oneida _wadlonh_ and the Onondaga _wadonh_, while one Wyandot form is
_entron_, and that of the Hurons of Lorette _entson_. In the Hochelaga
_assem_, “ten,” we have the old form which is perpetuated in the Wyandot
_ahsen_, the Onondaga and Cayuga _wasenh_, the Tuscarora _wasunh_, and
the Nottoway _washa_; while the Mohawk and the Oneida have the diverse
_oyerih_, or _oyelih_, with the characteristic change of _r_ into _l_.
The form of the Mohawk for “one thousand,” _oyerihnadewunnyaweh_, is an
interesting illustration of the progressive development of numbers. _Na_
is probably a contraction of _nikonh_, “of them,” or “of it,”—the whole
reading “of them ten hundred.”
In comparing the languages of the different members of the Iroquois
confederacy with the Wyandot or Huron, some of the facts already noted
in the history of the former have to be kept in view. Two and a half
centuries have transpired since the three western nations of the
confederacy, the Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas received great
additions to their numbers by the successive adoption of Attiwendaronk,
Huron, and Erie captives, while the Caniengas, or Mohawks, and the
Oneidas remained unaffected by such intrusions. There is direct evidence
that the Onondaga language has undergone great change; as a Jesuit
dictionary of the seventeenth century exists which shows a much nearer
resemblance between the Mohawk and Onondaga languages at that date than
now appears. Allowance must be made for similar changes affecting the
Hurons in their enforced migration from the St. Lawrence to their later
homes. Here, as in so many other instances, it becomes interesting to
note how the language of a people reflects its history.
In tracing out slighter and more remote resemblances, such as may be
discerned on a close scrutiny, where the variation between the Hochelaga
and the modern Wyandot numerals is widest, the different sources of
change have to be kept in view. In all such comparisons, moreover,
allowance must be made for the phonetic reproduction of unfamiliar words
learned solely by ear, as well as for the peculiar representation of the
nasal sounds in their reduction to writing by a French or English
transcriber.
The tradition, mentioned by Dooyentate, of Senecas and Wyandots living
in friendly contiguity on the Island of Montreal in the sixteenth
century, naturally suggests the probability that their dialects did not
greatly differ. Certain noticeable resemblances between the Seneca and
the Wyandot numerals have been noted above, but it is only their modern
forms that are thus open to comparison; and in the process of phonetic
decay the Seneca has suffered the greatest change. But after making
every allowance for modifications wrought by time, by adoption of
strangers into the tribe, and other internal sources of change, as well
as for the imperfection of Cartier’s renderings of the Hochelaga tongue,
and for subsequent errors of transcribers and printers, there still
remains satisfactory evidence of relationship between nearly half of
Cartier’s vocabulary and the corresponding words of the Wyandot tongue.
A comparison has been made between the Hochelaga numerals and those of
the Wyandots of Anderdon. In the comparative table of numerals given on
page 292, I have placed alongside of the old Hochelaga series derived
from Cartier’s lists those now in use among the Hurons of Lorette, as
supplied to me by M. Paul Picard, the son of the late Huron chief. In
the third column another version of the Wyandot numerals is given, from
Gallatin’s comparative vocabulary. It is derived from different sources,
including the United States War Department; and therefore, no doubt,
illustrates the changes which the language has undergone among the
Wyandots on their remote Texas reserve. Gallatin also gives another
version of Huron numerals derived from Sagard. It will be seen that M.
Picard used the _t_ as in Cartier’s lists, and in that of the southern
Wyandots, where the _d_ is employed in others, except in the Nottoway
numerals, where the use of both is, no doubt, due to the English
transcriber. In comparing the different lists, this variation in
orthography and also the interchangeable _k_ and _g_ have to be kept in
view. Thus the Cayuga has _dekrunh_, in the Oneida _dekelonh_, where the
Tuscarora has _nagronh_. But the Huron _tendi_, in use now both at
Lorette and Anderdon, shows the result of long intercourse with
Europeans begetting an appreciation of their discrimination between the
hard and soft consonants. Had the whole series been derived from one
source, such orthographic variations would have disappeared. The lists
have been furnished to me by the Rev. J. G. Vincent and M. Picard,
educated Hurons; L. A. Dorion, an educated Iroquois; Dr. Oronhyatekha,
an educated Mohawk; Mr. Horatio Hale; and also from Gallatin’s valuable
comparative tables of Indian vocabularies in the _Archæologia
Americana_. In the _Synopsis of the Indian Tribes_, to which these
vocabularies form an appendix, Gallatin classed both the Tuteloes and
the Nottoways, along with the Tuscaroras, as southern Iroquois tribes.
But recent researches of Mr. Hale have established the true place of the
Tuteloes to be with the Dakotan, and not the Huron-Iroquois family. It
is otherwise with the Cherohakahs, or Nottoways, whose home was in
south-eastern Virginia, where their memory is perpetuated in the name of
the river on which they dwelt. At the close of the seventeenth century
they still numbered 130 warriors, or about 700 in all; but twenty years
later, of the whole tribe only twenty souls survived. At that date two
vocabularies of the language were obtained, which furnish satisfactory
evidence of the correctness of their classification among southern
Iroquois tribes. Their numerals, as shown in the tables, approximate, as
might be anticipated, to those of the Tuscaroras, at least in the
majority of the primary numbers; whereas those of the Tuteloes are
totally dissimilar. As to the Basque numerals introduced alongside of
them in the comparative tables, they only suffice to show that the
pre-Aryan language still spoken, in varying dialects, on both slopes of
the Pyrenees, differed equally widely from the Aryan languages of
Europe, and from the Iroquois or any other known American language,
except in so far as the latter are agglutinative in structure. Van Eys,
in his _Basque Grammar_, draws attention to the words _buluzkorri_, and
_larrugori_, “naked”; the first of which literally signifies “red hair,”
and the second “red skin.” They are interesting illustrations of the way
in which important historical facts lie embedded in ancient languages.
But the colour of the hair forbids the inference that the ruddy Basques
of primitive centuries were akin to the “Redskins” of the New World.