American Languages, and Why We Should Study Them

American Languages, and Why We Should Study Them
Daniel Brinton

Daniel G. Brinton

American Languages, and Why We Should Study Them

AMERICAN LANGUAGES, AND WHY WE SHOULD STUDY THEM

Mr. President, etc.:

I appear before you to-night to enter a plea for one of the most neglected branches of learning, for a study usually considered hopelessly dry and unproductive, – that of American aboriginal languages.

It might be thought that such a topic, in America and among Americans, would attract a reasonably large number of students. The interest which attaches to our native soil and to the homes of our ancestors – an interest which it is the praiseworthy purpose of this Society to inculcate and cherish – this interest might be supposed to extend to the languages of those nations who for uncounted generations possessed the land which we have occupied relatively so short a time.

This supposition would seem the more reasonable in view of the fact that in one sense these languages have not died out among us. True, they are no longer media of intercourse, but they survive in thousands of geographical names all over our land. In the State of Connecticut alone there are over six hundred, and even more in Pennsylvania.

Certainly it would be a most legitimate anxiety which should direct itself to the preservation of the correct forms and precise meanings of these numerous and peculiarly national designations. One would think that this alone would not fail to excite something more than a languid curiosity in American linguistics, at least in our institutions of learning and societies for historical research.

Such a motive applies to the future as well as to the past. We have yet thousands of names to affix to localities, ships, cars, country-seats, and the like. Why should we fall back on the dreary repetition of the Old World nomenclature? I turn to a Gazetteer of the United States, and I find the name Athens repeated 34 times to as many villages and towns in our land, Rome and Palmyra each 29 times, Troy 58 times, not to speak of Washington, which is entered for 331 different places in this Gazetteer!

What poverty of invention does this manifest!

Evidently the forefathers of our christened West were, like Sir John Falstaff, at a loss where a commodity of good names was to be had.

Yet it lay immediately at their hands. The native tongues supply an inexhaustible store of sonorous, appropriate, and unused names. As has well been said by an earlier writer, “No class of terms could be applied more expressive and more American. The titles of the Old World certainly need not be copied, when those that are fresh and fragrant with our natal soil await adoption.”[1 - H. R. Schoolcraft.]

That this study has received so slight attention I attribute to the comparatively recent understanding of the value of the study of languages in general, and more particularly to the fact that no one, so far as I know, has set forth the purposes for which we should investigate these tongues, and the results which we expect to reach by means of them. This it is my present purpose to attempt, so far as it can be accomplished in the scope of an evening address.

The time has not long passed when the only good reasons for studying a language were held to be either that we might thereby acquaint ourselves with its literature; or that certain business, trading, or political interests might be subserved; or that the nation speaking it might be made acquainted with the blessings of civilization and Christianity. These were all good and sufficient reasons, but I cannot adduce any one of them in support of my plea to-night; for the languages I shall speak of have no literature; all transactions with their people can be carried on as well or better in European tongues; and, in fact, many of these people are no longer in existence. They have died out or amalgamated with others. What I have to argue for is the study of the dead languages of extinct and barbarous tribes.

You will readily see that my arguments must be drawn from other considerations than those of immediate utility. I must seek them in the broader fields of ethnology and philosophy; I must appeal to your interest in man as a race, as a member of a common species, as possessing in all his families and tribes the same mind, the same soul. It was the proud prerogative of Christianity first to proclaim this great truth, to break down the distinctions of race and the prejudices of nationalities, in order to erect upon their ruins that catholic temple of universal brotherhood which excludes no man as a stranger or an alien. After eighteen hundred years of labor, science has reached that point which the religious instinct divined, and it is in the name of science that I claim for these neglected monuments of man’s powers that attention which they deserve.

Anthropology is the science which studies man as a species; Ethnology, that which studies the various nations which make up the species. To both of these the science of Linguistics is more and more perceived to be a powerful, an indispensable auxiliary. Through it we get nearer to the real man, his inner self, than by any other avenue of approach, and it needs no argument to show that nothing more closely binds men into a social unit than a common language. Without it, indeed, there can be no true national unity. The affinities of speech, properly analyzed and valued, are our most trustworthy guides in tracing the relationship and descent of nations.

If this is true in general, it is particularly so in the ethnology of America. Language is almost our only clue to discover the kinship of those countless scattered hordes who roamed the forests of this broad continent. Their traditions are vague or lost, written records they had none, their customs and arts are misleading, their religions misunderstood, their languages alone remain to testify to a oneness of blood often seemingly repudiated by an internecine hostility.

I am well aware of the limits which a wise caution assigns to the employment of linguistics in ethnology, and I am only too familiar with the many foolish, unscientific attempts to employ it with reference to the American race. But in spite of all this, I repeat that it is the surest and almost our only means to trace the ancient connection and migrations of nations in America.

Through its aid alone we have reached a positive knowledge that most of the area of South America, including the whole of the West Indies, was occupied by three great families of nations, not one of which had formed any important settlement on the northern continent. By similar evidence we know that the tribe which greeted Penn, when he landed on the site of this city where I now speak, was a member of one vast family, – the great Algonkin stock, – whose various clans extended from the palmetto swamps of Carolina to the snow-clad hills of Labrador, and from the easternmost cape of Newfoundland to the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, over 20° of latitude and 60° of longitude. We also know that the general trend of migration in the northern continent has been from north to south, and that this is true not only of the more savage tribes, as the Algonkins, Iroquois, and Athapascas, but also of those who, in the favored southern lands, approached a form of civilization, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Quiche. These and many minor ethnologic facts have already been obtained by the study of American languages.

But such external information is only a small part of what they are capable of disclosing. We can turn them, like the reflector of a microscope, on the secret and hidden mysteries of the aboriginal man, and discover his inmost motives, his impulses, his concealed hopes and fears, those that gave rise to his customs and laws, his schemes of social life, his superstitions and his religions.

The life-work of that eminent antiquary, the late Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, was based entirely on linguistics. He attempted, by an exhaustive analysis of the terms of relationship in American tribes, to reconstruct their primitive theory of the social compact, and to extend this to the framework of ancient society in general. If, like most students enamored of an idea, he carried its application too far, the many correct results he obtained will ever remain as prized possessions of American ethnology.

Personal 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.

Here is an unexpected antithesis, the words for a murderer and the Saviour both from one root! It illustrates how strange is the concatenation of human thoughts.

These are by no means all the derivatives from the root ni, I.

When reduplicated as nĕnĕ, it has a plural and strengthened form, like “our own.” With a pardonable and well-nigh universal weakness, which we share with them, the nation who spoke that language believed themselves the first created of mortals and the most favored by the Creator. Hence whatever they designated as “ours” was both older and better than others of its kind. Hence nenni came to mean ancient, primordial, indigenous, and as such it is a frequent prefix in the Delaware language. Again, as they considered themselves the first and only true men, others being barbarians, enemies, or strangers, nenno was understood to be one of us, a man like ourselves, of our nation.

In their different dialects the sounds of n, l, and r were alternated, so that while Thomas Campanius, who translated the Catechism into Delaware about 1645, wrote that word rhennus, later writers have given it lenno, and translate it “man.” This is the word which we find in the name Lenni Lenape, which, by its derivation, means “we, we men.” The antecedent lenni is superfluous. The proper name of the Delaware nation was and still is Len âpé, “we men,” or “our men,” and those critics who have maintained that this was a misnomer, introduced by Mr. Heckewelder, have been mistaken in their facts.

I have not done with the root nĕ. I might go on and show you how it is at the base of the demonstrative pronouns, this, that, those, in Delaware; how it is the radical of the words for thinking, reflecting, and meditating; how it also gives rise to words expressing similarity and identity; how it means to be foremost, to stand ahead of others; and finally, how it signifies to come to me, to unify or congregate together. But doubtless I have trespassed on your ears long enough with unfamiliar words.

Such suggestions as these will give you some idea of the value of American languages to American ethnology. But I should be doing injustice to my subject were I to confine my arguments in favor of their study to this horizon. If they are essential to a comprehension of the red race, not less so are they to the science of linguistics in general. This science deals not with languages, but with language. It looks at the idiom of a nation, not as a dry catalogue of words and grammatical rules, but as the living expression of the thinking power of man, as the highest manifestation of that spiritual energy which has lifted him from the level of the brute, the complete definition of which, in its origin and evolution, is the loftiest aim of universal history. As the intention of all speech is the expression of thought, and as the final purpose of all thinking is the discovery of truth, so the ideal of language, the point toward which it strives, is the absolute form for the realization of intellectual function.

In this high quest no tongue can be overlooked, none can be left out of account. One is just as important as another. Goethe once said that he who knows but one language knows none; we may extend the apothegm, and say that so long as there is a single language on the globe not understood and analyzed, the science of language will be incomplete and illusory. It has often proved the case that the investigation of a single, narrow, obscure dialect has changed the most important theories of history. What has done more than anything else to overthrow, or, at least, seriously to shake, the time-honored notion that the White Race first came from Central Asia? It was the study of the Lithuanian dialect on the Baltic Sea, a language of peasants, without literature or culture, but which displays forms more archaic than the Sanscrit. What has led to a complete change of views as to the prehistoric population of Southern Europe? The study of the Basque, a language unknown out of a few secluded valleys in the Pyrenees.

There are many reasons why unwritten languages, like those of America, are more interesting, more promising in results, to the student of linguistics than those which for generations have been cast in the conventional moulds of written speech.

Their structure is more direct, simple, transparent; they reveal more clearly the laws of the linguistic powers in their daily exercise; they are less tied down to hereditary formulæ and meaningless repetitions.

Would we explain the complicated structure of highly-organized tongues like our own, would we learn the laws which have assigned to it its material and formal elements, we must turn to the naïve speech of savages, there to see in their nakedness those processes which are too obscure in our own.

If the much-debated question of the origin of language engages us, we must seek its solution in the simple radicals of savage idioms; and if we wish to institute a comparison between the relative powers of languages, we can by no means omit them from our list. They offer to us the raw material, the essential and indispensable requisites of articulate communication.

As the structure of a language reflects in a measure, and as, on the other hand, it in a measure controls and directs the mental workings of those who speak it, the student of psychology must occupy himself with the speech of the most illiterate races in order to understand their theory of things, their notions of what is about them. They teach him the undisturbed evolution of the untrained mind.

As the biologist in pursuit of that marvellous something which we call “the vital principle” turns from the complex organisms of the higher animals and plants to life in its simplest expression in microbes and single cells, so in the future will the linguist find that he is nearest the solution of the most weighty problems of his science when he directs his attention to the least cultivated languages.