LETTER XIV.

FROM MR. HECKEWELDER.

BETHLEHEM, 22d July, 1816.

DEAR SIR.--I received at the same time your two letters of the 13th and 18th inst., the last by our friend Dr. Wistar. I think you are wrong to complain of the little importance attached by the learned of Europe to the study of Indian languages and of the false ideas which some of them have conceived respecting them. The truth is that sufficient pains have not been taken in this country to make them known. Our Missionaries have, indeed, compiled grammars and dictionaries of those idioms, but more with a view to practical use and to aid their fellow-labourers in the great work of the conversion of the Indians to Christianity, than in order to promote the study of the philosophy of language. They have neither sought fame nor profit, and therefore their compositions have remained unknown except in the very limited circle of our religious society. It belongs to the literary associations of America to pursue or encourage those studies in a more extended point of view, and I shall be happy to aid to the utmost of my power the learned researches of the American Philosophical Society.

Your remarks on Lord Monboddo’s opinion respecting the Indian languages, and on Father Sagard’s work, on which that opinion is founded, I believe to be correct. I am not acquainted with the language of the Hurons, which I have always understood to be a dialect of that of the Iroquois, or at least to be derived from the same stock, and I cannot conceive why it should be so poor and so imperfect as the good Father describes it, while its kindred idiom, the Iroquois, is directly the reverse. At least, it was so considered by Mr. Zeisberger, who was very well acquainted with it. Sir William Johnson thought the same, and I believe you will find his opinion on the subject in one of the Volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Society of London.[279] Colden, in his History of the Five Nations, says “that the verbs of that language are varied, but in a manner so different from the Greek and Latin, that his informant could not discover by what rule it was done.”[280] I suspect his informant had not yet acquired a very profound knowledge of the Iroquois; but from his imperfect description of their verbs, I am very nearly convinced that they are formed on the same model with those of the Lenni Lenape, which Mr. Zeisberger has well described in his Grammar of that language. Colden praises this idiom in other respects; he says that “the Six Nations compound their words without end, whereby their language becomes sufficiently copious.” This is true also of the Delawares.

The Hurons are the same people whom we call Wyandots; the Delawares call them _Delamattenos_. I am inclined to believe that the tribe whom we call _Naudowessies_, and the French _Sioux_, who are said to live to the west or north-west of Lake Superior, are a branch of the Hurons; for the rivers which we call _Huron_, (of which there are three)[281] are called by the Chippeways, _Naduwewi_, or _Naudowessie Sipi_. But of this I cannot be sure; though I would rather conclude that _Naudowessie_ is the Chippeway name for all the Wyandots or Hurons. It is a fact which, I think, deserves to be ascertained. It is a very common error to make several Indian nations out of one, by means of the different names by which it is known.

I proceed to answer the questions contained in your letter of the 18th.

As it seems to me probable that the Naudowessies and Hurons, though called by different names, are the same people; so it may be the case with the Chippeways and the Algonkins, although I have no greater certainty of this hypothesis than of the former. I have no doubt, however, of their being both derived from the same stock, which is that of the Lenni Lenape: that their languages are strikingly similar is evident from the two vocabularies that you mention, and I had rather believe that they both speak the same language, than that Captain Carver was a plagiarist. The accounts which he gives of the Indians I have found in general correct; which is the more remarkable, that from his own account, it appears that he did not reside very long among them. He must have been, therefore, a very attentive and accurate observer.

It is very probable that I did not express myself with sufficient precision in the passages of my letters of the 27th of May and 20th of June to which you refer. The Lenni Lenape, or Delawares, are the head of a great family of Indian nations who are known among themselves by the generic name of _Wapanachki_, or “Men of the East.” The same language is spread among them all in various dialects, of which I conceive the purest is that of the chief nation, the Lenape, at whose residence the grand national councils meet, and whom the others, by way of respect, style _grandfather_. The Algonkins are a branch of that family, but are not, in my opinion, entitled to the pre-eminence which the Baron La Hontan ascribes to them. He applied the name “Algonkin,” in a more extensive sense than it deserves, and said that the Algonkin language was the finest and most universally spread of any on the continent; a praise to which I think the Lenni Lenape idiom alone is entitled. In this sense only I meant to say that the Baron included the Delawares in the general descriptive name of “Algonkins.”

I have yet to answer your questions respecting the language, which I shall do in a subsequent letter.

I am, &c.