Part 31

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.

The phonology of the Iroquois languages is notable in other respects besides those already referred to. According to M. Cuoq, an able philologist, who has laboured for many years as a missionary among the Iroquois of the Province of Quebec, the sounds are so simple that he considers an alphabet of twelve letters sufficient for their indication: _a_, _e_, _f_, _h_, _i_, _k_, _n_, _o_, _r_, _s_, _t_, _w_. The transliterations noticeable in the various Iroquois dialects, follow a well-known phonetic law. Thus the _l_ and _r_ are interchangeable, as _ronkwe_, “man,” in the Mohawk, becomes in the Oneida _lonhwe_; _raxha_, “boy,” becomes _laxha_; _rakeniha_, “my father,” becomes _lakenih_, etc. The same is seen throughout the compound numerals from “eleven” onward. The Cayuga and Tuscarora most nearly approach to the Mohawk in this use of the _r_. A characteristic change of a different kind is seen in the grammatical value of the initial _r_ in the Mohawk in relation to gender. For example, _onkwe_ is applied to mankind, as distinguished from _karyoh_, “the brute.” It becomes _ronkwe_, “man,” _yonkwe_ “woman.” So also _raxah_, “boy,” changes to _kaxha_, “girl”; _rihyeinah_, “my son,” to _kheyenah_, “my daughter,” etc. The change of gender is further illustrated in such examples as _raohih_, his apple; _raoyen_, his arrow; _ahkohih_, her apple; _ahkoyen_, her arrow; _raonahih_ (masc.), _aonahih_ (fem.), their apples; _raodiyenkwireh_ (masc.), _aodiyenkwireh_ (fem.), their arrows, etc. But this arrangement of the formative element as a prefix is characteristic of American languages, though not peculiar to them. Thus _Seshatsteaghseragwekough_, Almighty God (literally, “Thou who hast all power, or strength”), becomes, in the third person, _Rashatsteaghseragwekough_.

The vowel sounds are very limited. No distinction is apparent in any Huron-Iroquois language between the _o_ and the _u_. In writing it the _e_ and _u_ sounds are also often interchangeable. Where, for example, _e_ is used in one set of the Tuscarora numerals supplied to me, another substitutes _u_ for it wherever it is followed by an _n_; e.g. _enjih_, _unjih_; _ahsenh_, _ahsunh_; _endah_, _undah_, etc. So also the word for “man” is written for me in one case _onkwe_, and in another _unkweh_. It requires an acute and practised ear to discriminate the niceties of Indian pronunciation, and a no less practised tongue to satisfy the critical native ear. Dr. Oronhyatekha, when pressed to define the value of the _t_ sound in his own name, replied “It is not quite _t_ nor _d_.” The name is compounded of _oronya_, “blue,” the word used in the Prayer-Book for “heaven,” and _yodakha_, “burning.” In very similar terms, Asikinack, an educated Odahwah Indian, when asked by me whether we should say Ottawa, or Odawa—the Utawa of Morris’s “Canadian Boat Song,”—replied that the sound lay between the two,—a nicety discernible only by Indian ears.

The euphonic changes which mark the systematic transitions in the Mohawk language, though by no means peculiar to it, cannot fail to awaken an interest in the thoughtful student, who reflects on the social condition of the people among whom this elaborated vehicle of thought was the constraining power by means of which their chiefs and elders swayed the nations of the Iroquois confederacy with an eloquence more powerful and persuasive than that of many civilised nations. They have been illustrated in the verb; but the same systematic application of euphonic change through all the transitions of their vocabulary is seen in the elaborate word-sentences, so characteristic of the extreme length to which the incorporating mode of structure of the Turanian family of languages is carried in many of those spoken by the American nations. The habitual concentration of complex ideas in a single word has long been recognised, not only as giving a peculiar character to many of the Indian languages, but as one source of their adaptability to the aims of native oratory. From the Massachusetts Bible of Eliot, Professor Whitney quotes a word of eleven syllables; and Gallatin produces from the Cherokee another of seventeen syllables. This frequently embodies a descriptive holophrasm, and so aids the native rendering of novel objects and ideas into a language, the vocabulary of which is necessarily devoid of the requisite terms. But in such cases the agglutinative process is obvious, and the elements of the compounded word must be present to the mind of speaker and hearer. The English word “almighty” is itself an example of the process. It becomes in the Mohawk Prayer-Book _seshatsteaghseragwekonh_, from _seshatsteh_, “you are strong,” and _ahkwekonh_, “all,” or “the whole.” When the missionaries first undertook to render into the Mohawk language the Gospels and Service-Books for Christian worship, it may be doubted if many of their converts had ever seen a sheep. But they had to reproduce in Mohawk this general confession: “We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep.” They did it accordingly in this fashion: _Teyagwaderyeadawearyesneoni yoegwathaharagwaghtha tsisahate tsiniyouht yodiyadaghtoeouh teyodinakaroetoeha_, which may be literally rendered: “We make a mistake, and get off the track where your road is, the same as strayed animals with small horns.” The extreme literalness of the rendering may probably strike the mind of the English reader in a way that would not occur to the Indian, familiar with such descriptive holophrasms. But it illustrates a difficulty with which Eliot was very familiar when engaged on his Massachusetts Indian Bible. In translating, for example, the song of Deborah and Barak, where the mother of Sisera “cried through the lattice,” the good missionary looked in vain in the Indian wigwam for anything that corresponded to the term. At length he called an Indian and described to him a lattice as wicker-work, and obtained in response a rendering of the text which literally meant: “The mother of Sisera looked through an eel-pot.” It was the only kind of wicker-work of which the Indian had any knowledge.

Evidences of an exceptional development of the æsthetic faculty among the nations of the New World have already been noted; but the Iroquois cannot be included among those specially noticeable for their imitative powers, or in other ways furnishing evidence of any highly developed artistic faculty. They cannot compare in this respect with the Zuñi or others of the Pueblo Indians, among whom the arts of long-settled agricultural communities have been developed for purposes of ornament as well as utility; nor is their inferiority less questionable when we compare them with some of the tribes of the north-west coast and the neighbouring islands. Their languages confirm this; for while, as Mr. Cushing has shown, the Zuñi language possesses many words relating to art-processes, the Iroquois and Algonkin dialects supply such terms for the most part only in descriptive holophrasms, and not in primitive roots.

In Iroquois, the word _kar_ or _kare_ signifies “to paint” or “draw.” The initial _k_ in Iroquois words is usually not radical, and so rarely enters into composite terms. The root of _kar_, is _ar_ or _are_, which added to _kaiata_, or _oiata_, “living thing, person, body,” makes _kaiatare_, “image” or “likeness,” _i.e._ “pictured body,” or as a verb “to paint” or “depict anything.” To this is added the verbal suffix _ta_ or _tha_, which occasionally becomes _stha_, and has different meanings, causative and instrumental. The Mohawk supplies such words and terms of art as _ahyeyatonh_, “to grave”; _rahyatonhs_, “an engraver”; _ahyekonteke_, “to paint”; _rakonteks_, “a painter”; _s’hakoyatarha_, “an artist”; _rahkaratahkwas_, “a carver”; _rateanakerahtha_, “a modeller,” or “one who models figures in clay.” In the Iroquois version of the Gospel of St. John, chap. viii. verse 6 reads thus: _Nok tanon ne Iesos wathastsake ehtake nok rasnonsake_ (more correctly, _rasnonkenh_) _warate wahiaton onwentsiake_, lit. “But instead Jesus bent low and with hand used, wrote,” or “engraved, on the earth.” The version of the second commandment in the Mohawk Prayer-Book affords another illustration, in the holophrasm _asadatyaghdoenihseroenyea_. It is compounded of _ahsonniyon_, “make”; _ahsadadonnyen_, “to make for yourself”; _kayadonnihsera_, “an image” or “doll.” _Toghsa asadatyaghdoenihseroenyea, shekonh othenouh taoesakyatayerea nene enekea karouhyakouh, neteas eghtake oughweatsyakonh_, etc., lit. “Do not make an image or idol for yourself, even anything like above in the sky, nor below in the earth,” etc.

The word _kaiata_, or _oiata_, as already noted, signifies “a living thing, person,” or “body”; _kakonsa_ or _okonsa_, is the “face” or “visage”; and from those come many derivatives. Bruyas gives _gaiata_, “a living thing”; _gaiatare_ (or _kaiatare_) “image,” and as a verb, “to paint.” There is also _gaiatonni_, “a doll” or “puppet,” _i.e._ “a made person,” from _oiata_ and _konnis_, “to make.” From the same root we may probably derive _kiaton_, “to write,” as in the Iroquois Gospels, _wahaiaton_, “wrote”; _kahiaton_, “it is written,” etc. The original meaning was, no doubt, picture-writing, _i.e._ making images of things. In the old Onondaga dictionary of the Jesuit Fathers is the word _kiatonnion_, “I keep writing.” The same authority also gives _guianatonh_ (_kianatonh_), “I paint,” apparently from another root, _oiana_ (_kaiana_) “track, walk, gait,” etc., which has many derivatives. The remarkable compass and minute nicety of expression which the Iroquois grammar had acquired in the various languages of the Six Nations, approximates to the wonderful expansion effected on the crude Anglo-Saxon verb by the evolution of the auxiliaries out of vague active verbs. This has been effected through the habitual resort to oratory as a source of combined action in the councils of the tribes, which constituted one of the most remarkable characteristics of this representative Indian stock. In this respect the expressive flexibility and rhetorical aptitude of the Iroquois languages stand out in striking contrast to the limited compass of grammatical discrimination in those of Europe’s Scandinavian and Teutonic races by whom the Roman empire was overthrown. They had indeed their “tun-moot,” the council meeting of the village community for justice and government; but the deliberations on the moot-hill, though they embodied the germ of all later parliaments, gave birth to no such development of language. It is when entering on the history of the grand constitutional struggle for a free parliament that Carlyle, in quaint irony, exclaims, or assigns to his apocryphal Dryasdust the exclamation: “I have known nations altogether destitute of printers’ types and learned appliances, with nothing better than old songs, monumental stone heaps and quipo-thrums to keep record by, who had truer memory of their memorable things. . . . The English, one can discern withal, have been perhaps as brave a people as their neighbours; perhaps, for valour of action and true hard labour in this earth, since brave peoples were first made in it, there has been none braver any where or any when:—but also, it must be owned, in stupidity of speech they have no fellow!”[146] It suited the purpose of the satirist to ignore for the moment that Shakespeare came of that same speechless race. But in its earlier stage when any comparison with Indian nations is permissible the irony is not extravagant.