American Languages, and Why We Should Study Them
TextPersonal names, family names, titles, forms of salutation, methods of address, terms of endearment, respect, and reproach, words expressing the emotions, these are what infallibly reveal the daily social family life of a community, and the way in which its members regard one another. They are precisely as correct when applied to the investigation of the American race as elsewhere, and they are the more valuable just there, because his deep-seated distrust of the white invaders – for which, let us acknowledge, he had abundant cause – led the Indian to practise concealment and equivocation on these personal topics.
In no other way can the history of the development of his arts be reached. You are doubtless aware that diligent students of the Aryan languages have succeeded in faithfully depicting the arts and habits of that ancient community in which the common ancestors of Greek and Roman, Persian and Dane, Brahmin and Irishman dwelt together as of one blood and one speech. This has been done by ascertaining what household words are common to all these tongues, and therefore must have been in use among the primeval horde from which they are all descended. The method is conclusive, and yields positive results. There is no reason why it should not be addressed to American languages, and we may be sure that it would be most fruitful. How valuable it would be to take even a few words, as maize, tobacco, pipe, bow, arrow, and the like, each representing a widespread art or custom, and trace their derivations and affinities through the languages of the whole continent! We may be sure that striking and unexpected results would be obtained.
Similar lines of research suggest themselves in other directions. You all know what a fuss has lately been made about the great Pyramid as designed to preserve the linear measure of the ancient Egyptians. The ascertaining of such measures is certainly a valuable historical point, as all artistic advance depends upon the use of instruments of precision. Mathematical methods have been applied to American architectural remains for the same purpose. But the study of words of measurement and their origin is an efficient auxiliary. By comparing such in the languages of three architectural people, the Aztecs of Mexico, the Mayas of Yucatan, and the Cakchiquel of Guatemala, I have found that the latter used the span and the two former the foot, and that this foot was just about one-fiftieth less than the ordinary foot of our standard. Certainly this is a useful result.
I have made some collections for a study of a different character. Of all the traits of a nation, the most decisive on its social life and destiny is the estimate it places upon women, – that is, upon the relation of the sexes. This is faithfully mirrored in language; and by collecting and analyzing all words expressing the sexual relations, all salutations of men to women and women to men, all peculiarities of the diction of each, we can ascertain far more exactly than by any mere description of usages what were the feelings which existed between them. Did they know love as something else than lust? Were the pre-eminently civilizing traits of the feminine nature recognized and allowed room for action? These are crucial questions, and their answer is contained in the spoken language of every tribe.
Nowhere, however, is an analytic scrutiny of words more essential than in comparative mythology. It alone enables us to reach the meaning of rites, the foundations of myths, the covert import of symbols. It is useless for any one to write about the religion of an American tribe who has not prepared himself by a study of its language, and acquainted himself with the applications of linguistics to mythology. Very few have taken this trouble, and the result is that all the current ideas on this subject are entirely erroneous. We hear about a Good Spirit and a Bad Spirit, about polytheism, fetichism, and animism, about sun worship and serpent worship, and the like. No tribe worshipped a Good and a Bad Spirit, and the other vague terms I have quoted do not at all express the sentiment manifested in the native religious exercises. What this was we can satisfactorily ascertain by analyzing the names applied to their divinities, the epithets they use in their prayers and invocations, and the primitive sense of words which have become obscured by alterations of sounds.
A singular example of the last is presented by the tribes to whom I have already referred as occupying this area, – the Algonkins. Wherever they were met, whether far up in Canada, along the shores of Lake Superior, on the banks of the Delaware, by the Virginia streams, or in the pine woods of Maine, they always had a tale to tell of the Great Hare, the wonderful Rabbit which in times long ago created the world, became the father of the race, taught his children the arts of life and the chase, and still lives somewhere far to the East where the sun rises. What debasing animal worship! you will say, and so many others have said. Not at all. It is a simple result of verbal ambiguity. The word for rabbit in Algonkin is almost identical with that for light, and when these savages applied this word to their divinity, they agreed with him who said, “God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.”
These languages offer also an entertaining field to the psychologist.
On account of their transparency, as I may call it, the clearness with which they retain the primitive forms of their radicals, they allow us to trace out the growth of words, and thus reveal the operations of the native mind by a series of witnesses whose testimony cannot be questioned. Often curious associations of ideas are thus disclosed, very instructive to the student of mankind. Many illustrations of this could be given, but I do not wish to assail your ears by a host of unknown sounds, so I will content myself with one, and that taken from the language of the Lenāpé, or Delaware Indians, who, as you know, lived where we now are.
I will endeavor to trace out one single radical in that language, and show you how many, and how strangely diverse ideas were built up upon it.
The radical which I select is the personal pronoun of the first person, I, Latin Ego. In Delaware this is a single syllable, a slight nasal, Nĕ, or Ni.
Let me premise by informing you that this is both a personal and a possessive pronoun; it means both I and mine. It is also both singular and plural, both I and we, mine and our.
The changes of the application of this root are made by adding suffixes to it.
I begin with ni´hillan, literally, “mine, it is so,” or “she, it, is truly mine,” the accent being on the first syllable, ni´, mine. But the common meaning of this verb in Delaware is more significant of ownership than this tame expression. It is an active animate verb, and means “I beat, or strike, somebody.” To the rude minds of the framers of that tongue, ownership meant the right to beat what one owned.
We might hope this sense was confined to the lower animals; but not so. Change the accent from the first to the second syllable, ni´hillan, to nihil´lan, and you have the animate active verb with an intensive force, which signifies “to beat to death,” “to kill some person;” and from this, by another suffix, you have nihil´lowen, to murder, and nihil´lowet, murderer. The bad sense of the root is here pushed to its uttermost.
But the root also developed in a nobler direction. Add to ni´hillan the termination ape, which means a male, and you have nihillape, literally, “I, it is true, a man,” which, as an adjective, means free, independent, one’s own master, “I am my own man.” From this are derived the noun, nihillapewit, a freeman; the verb, nihillapewin, to be free; and the abstract, nihillasowagan, freedom, liberty, independence. These are glorious words; but I can go even farther. From this same theme is derived the verb nihillape-wheu, to set free, to liberate, to redeem; and from this the missionaries framed the word nihillape-whoalid, the Redeemer, the Saviour.