ART. II.

ESSAY ON THE CHIPPEWA LAnguage.

Read before the American Lyceum, at the third Annual Meeting, in the City of New York, May 3d, 1833.

BY EDWIN JAMES, M. D.

THE aborigines of our country have been declared on high authority to be in a state of pupilage to our government; and this principle has been adopted in the measures pursued in reference to them. Without discussing a question which does not belong to our work, we cannot pass by the fact, that this claim involves responsibilities, corresponding to the authority claimed. No duty of the guardian, no claim of the pupil, is more obvious than that of education. It is beyond the reach of the Indian we are bound to furnish it. We deprive him of the power to avail himself of the former means of support, &c, or to continue his former habits of hunting and warfare-in so doing we assume, in fact, as well as in the theory before stated, the obligation to provide some other mode of subsistence for him.

Indeed, the duty has been recognised, and in many of the tribes, has been performed. Colonies and schools have been established and sustained by the government, for the express purpose of communicating knowledge and civilization; and individuals are employed to act directly upon them. Benevolent societies have gone forward in the same work, with noble zeal, and with gratifying success; and even the distant Flatheads of the Rocky Mountains now excite the interest and efforts of one of the largest and most zealous classes of Christians in our country. All this is in a high degree praiseworthy; and is a new and absolute pledge that the work shall go on. We are committed, as a nation, and as a body of Christians, on this point, and we are bound to go on, until, as our settlements advance, not one uncivilized and uninstructed Indian shall be found within our borders. We are urged on by interest too; for no instance can be named, in which this process of civilization and instruction has not rendered a tribe less savage and less dangerous; and the very warriors who were ready to imbrue their hands in the white man's blood at the slightest provocation, have become his firmest friends, and in many cases, his obedient pupils.

Books have been published in several of their languages, and in a former volume, we have described the extraordinary effort to which Séquoyah, the Indian Cadmus, was prompted by his intercourse with whites, and the singularly perfect alphabet which he produced.* We are gratified to find that an important addition has * See Annals of Education, Vol. II. p. 174.

been made to the means of instruction by Dr Edwin James, of the United States Army, who is so well known as a traveller and a man of science. He has been engaged for ten years with a zeal and patience which can be admired, but can never be compensated, in translating the New Testament into the Chippewa language, and the work has recently been published in the English character. * This translation brings the truths of Christianity within the reach of six tribes in the Northwest, and it is said, of many others, to whom the Chippewa language is intelligible. We are happy in being able to present our readers with an account of the language itself, in an essay read by Dr James to the American Lyceum.†

CHIPPEWA Language.

The Chippewa is one of a group of about twenty dialects, spoken in a vast region of North America, extending in every direction around the Lake of the Woods, and the sources of the Mississippi. This group of dialects has been called the Algonkin, or Leni Lenape, in the early and more recent works on the languages of America. The Chippewa has many words in common with the Delaware, it is closely allied to the Massachusetts as preserved in the works of Mr Elliot, to the aboriginal language of *By Packard & Van Benthuysen, Albany.

Dr James has in the course of his official duties, been much among the Indians. How he is looked upon, by one of their chiefs at least, will appear from the annexed copy of a letter addressed to him by Thegud, a Chief of the band of Chippewas living at Tukquimenon, on the south shore of Lake Superior. N. Y. American.

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BOWWETING, May 12, 1833. My Brother-Now I cause this letter to be written to you. I wish to tell you my thoughts. I was very sorry when I heard that you had gone away. wished I had watched to have seen you. But I am yet alive. It pleases our Great Father in Heaven that I should still live here on the earth. And also of you J yet hear the sound of your living. I think great thanks that we are both yet alive. Perhaps we may not expect to see each other again on this earth. Do you take heed also to this our religion. I do not say this as distrusting you. I only am to be pitied. I was too long lost; and even now I am very much afraid of those things that destroyed us. But as much as I can now do, that I may look carefully to our Great Father in Heaven, this is what I say to you now. And I tell you now how I have lived. I lost one of my children. Afterwards I thought I could never be comforted, I had so loved my child. But I thank him that is above, that he thought good to leave me my other children. I am very much pleased at what the whites have done here at Bowweting. Truly they have had compassion on us. I am not now such as I used to be before I prayed. I do not now wish for those things I used to wish for. Now those that are here at Bowweting are to me as my own brothers. I tell you also that teachers are more and more abundant at Bowweting, but there are still many wicked men rejecting prayer [religion.] This is all I shall say to you. I request that you also will send to me your thinking. I salute all your family.

THEGUD.

a large part of Lower Canada, as may be inferred from specimens in the compilation of De Laet, the works of the Jesuits, and other early travellers.

It is now extensively spoken as a mother tongue by all the tribes about Lake Superior, on the St Croix, and all the eastern branches of the Upper Mississippi, by those on both sides of Lake Huron, and a large proportion of those about Lake Michigan, and as an acquired language by many among the Dahcotah lands, occupying the country between the Mississippi and Missouri, by the Winnebagoes, Poways, and a few among the Pawnees. The language of the Sacs and Foxes, of Black Hawk and his warriors, is a dialect chiefly distinguished from the Chippewa by substituting the consonant sound for the equivalent 7, as the Creek takes r in the same place. Its affinities with the Menomonic, Kickâpo, Shawne, and other more southern dialects, are more remote, but very manifest, both in the sound of words, and other peculiarities. Of the history of this language, as far as it can be derived from existing materials, foreign to itself, little need be said. It once extended over a large portion of the present territory of the United States. It was spoken on the banks of the Hudson, the Delaware, the James river, as well as in New England and Canada, while the less tractable tribes, speaking the guttural languages of the Iroquois stock, probably occupied the country about the great lakes. The race who speak it have been driven from place to place, harassed and hemmed in, they are now comparatively few in number, destitute and miserable in condition, shivering and starving in the cold_morasses of the Northern Lakes. Of the natural history of the language, we may remark, first, that it is harmonious and pleasing to the ear, having nearly such an intermixture of sounds of the different classes, as we meet with in the best European dialects. Hence it is acquired and spoken with facility by Europeans and their descendants. While the Iroquois, in speaking which the lips are never closed, the guttural Winebago, the Chippewyan, the Dahcotah, and Pawnee, in which are few labial and liquid sounds, are rarely acquired, and more rarely spoken well by foreigners. The consonant sounds, b, r, f, or ph, v, are not found in the Chippewa. Those of b, and p, d, and t, g, hard, and k, are so nearly interchangable, in all cases, that it would probably be well to dispense with one set of these characters.

Second. It is a primary and pure language. By this it is intended that there are few foreign words, and no foreign idioms. The minds of the Indians are in a great measure destitute of that excursive and accumulating power which has enriched our mother English with shreds and patches from all languages, past and present, dead and living.

While we recognise in the New England word tompung applied to a one-horse sled, the Chippewa Ctâban, in wegewam, mukkesin, and some others, the words of this dialect transplanted into our own; and in the word Yankee, now not at all used by the Indians, one of our own words borrowed from them under a vicious pronunciation, we rarely find the Indians using, or attempting to use, words from our language. Instead of adopting the monosyllable Cow, the Indian prefers to use his own designation for the Bison. Instead of the easy word horse, he employs, in accordance with the combining and explanatory genius of his own language, the compound babashekokashe, a word worthy of Linnæus himself, signifying the animal that has a single nail on each leg.

Third. It is in a great measure destitute of prepositions and auxiliary words; hence the great and almost exclusive importance of the verb. In Chippewa this part of speech may aptly be called the working word. As in the eastern languages, the ground form of the verb, which is either monosyllabic or polysyllabic, much more commonly the former, receives affixes of person; and these are both prefixed and suffixed, as is also the case with the numerous particles used with the radical form, to express the various modifications of significations. As the language is probably more destitute of proper auxiliaries than either the Hebrew or the Arabic, so it is likely the number of conjugations exceeds that in either of those languages, while the number of Paradigmata required to exhibit the plan of formation of all the verbs, is probably less than in either. By way of illustrating the manner in which the successive trains of forms or conjugations take rise from the radical syllable, we may instance the two verbs to see, and to hear. The radical syllables, or ground forms, stripped of all circumstance, are wâb, see, nond, hear, in the third person singular, indicative present, they become wâbe, he sees, nondum, he hears; and the signification is not so abstract as in our language, but it is implied that something is heard or seen. The more accurate rendering would be, he sees' it, he hears it. This then is one conjugation. That which would follow in the order of our thoughts would perhaps be the conjugation expressing the idea of an animate object, to which the signification of the verb may be said to pass over. To effect this, the syllable appended to the ground form in the former case is dropped, and other particles substituted, thus wâbe becomes owâbomán, nondum becomes onōndowwân, he sees him, he hears him, where we have a prefixed pronoun, and a suffixed termination depending upon that prefix. The suffixed pronoun is usually pleonastic; thus if an Indian says, newâbonián, babashekokazheen, it is equivalent to saying in English, I see him a horse;' hence this redundant manner of expression is commonly observed in the imperfect English of such

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Indians as learn a little of that language. Another conjugation is passive in signification; newâbun dugo, I am seen; neennondago, I am heard. Here it will be perceived these verbs fall not under the same paradigm, for while one receives only the two syllables ago, the other receives four, undiigo. In another conjugation, a particle added to the passive form expresses an accessary idea of great importance, while newâbun digo, and neewnondago, express definitely the ideas 'I am seen,' 'I am heard, newâbundiigowiz, and neennondagowiz express with equal certainty and precision, 'I am seen of the Deity,' 'I am heard of the Deity.' Neennondumoshewa signifies 'I cause to be heard,' newâbun diewa, 'I cause to be seen,' or 'I show.' To mention all the conjugations that occur in almost any one verb, with an illustration of each by a single example would exceed the limits proposed in this communication. To give an intimation of the great importance of the verb, and to acquaint the philologist with the manner in which its various and complicated applications are made is all that is here intended. Without a careful study of the verb, arranged according to the above suggestions, in the manner of the Shemitic languages, any attempt to acquire a competent knowledge of the Chippewa by a foreigner, would prove abortive. This will be the more evident, if we consider that in a great majority of the verbs, there are from 15 to 20 conjugations, and that each of these in all its derivatives, is in signification really unlike all the rest. For example, the derived substantives remotely connected with either of the two radical words above given, have a great range of signification; e. g. nondumōwin, nondagawin, nõndagowin, nondágowizzewin, nondumozhewawin, nondumokâzowin, and many others which might be enumerated, all give the substantive idea of hearing, or the hearing, but under great and essential modifications. They mean according to the order in which they stand, the hearing it; the hearing it by the agency of some one; the being heard; the being heard of the Deity; the making to be heard; the affecting or pretending to hear;' so that though either of them might be rendered hearing, that word would give no knowledge of the true import of either. This feature of the language is rendered peculiarly manifest in the conversation of such as speak it imperfectly, as an acquired tongue; who, when they talk of almost any thing, introduce great confusion of words, such as would result from calling love, self-love, the being loved, reciprocal love, the causing to be loved, or something else equally remote from what was intended.

It has been the more dwelt on here, with a view of fixing attention upon a peculiarity of the language which may not be easy to name, but which consists in the remarkable definiteness, and closeness of application, of all phrases and words. Abstract terms