LETTER XIII.

TO MR. HECKEWELDER.

PHILADELPHIA, 18th July, 1816.

DEAR SIR.--In your letter of the 27th of May you have said that you believed the Delaware nation were those whom the Baron La Hontan meant to designate by the name of _Algonkins_. In a subsequent letter, (June 20th,) you seem to consider them as distinct nations, but nearly allied to each other; you say you are not well acquainted with their language, which is not the same with that of the Lenape, though there is a considerable affinity between them. Upon the whole I suppose that you have meant to apply the denomination Algonkins, not only to the Delawares proper, but to all the nations and tribes of the same family.

This has led me to consider who those Algonkins might be that La Hontan speaks of, and upon the best investigation that I have been able to make of the subject, I am inclined to believe that La Hontan’s Algonkins are properly those whom we call _Chippeways_, a family or branch of the Delawares, but not the Delawares themselves. I first turned to Dr. Barton’s “New Views of the Origin of the Nations and Tribes of America,” in which I found that he considered the Delawares and Chippeways as two distinct people; but when I came to the specimens which he gives of their languages in his Vocabularies, I found no difference whatever in the idioms of the two nations. Pursuing the enquiry further, I compared the Vocabulary of the Chippeway language given by Carver in his travels, and that of the Algonkin by La Hontan, and was much astonished to find the words in each language exactly alike, without any difference but what arises from the French and English orthography. The words explained by the two authors, happen also to be precisely the same, and are arranged in the same alphabetical order. So that either Carver is a gross plagiarist, who has pretended to give a list of Chippeway words and has only copied the Algonkin words given by La Hontan, or the Chippeways and Algonkins are one and the same people. I shall be very glad to have your opinion on this subject.

I find in Zeisberger’s Grammar something that I cannot well comprehend. It is the verb “_n’dellauchsi_” which he translates “I live, move about,” or “I so live that I move about.” Pray, is this the only verb in the Delaware language, which signifies “_to live_,” and have the Indians no idea of “life,” but when connected with “_locomotion_”?

Is the _W_ in the Delaware, as your Missionaries write it, to be pronounced like the same letter in German, or like the English _W_ and the French _ou_? If this letter has the German sound, then it is exactly the same as that of our _V_; in that case I am astonished that the Delawares cannot pronounce the _F_, the two sounds being so nearly alike.

I am, &c.