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The task involved in the foregoing classification has been
accomplished by intermittent labors extending through more than
twenty years of time. Many thousand printed vocabularies, embracing
numerous larger lexic and grammatic works, have been studied and
compared. In addition to the printed material, a very large body of
manuscript matter has been used, which is now in the archives of the
Bureau of Ethnology, and which, it is hoped, will ultimately be
published. The author does not desire that his work shall be
considered final, but rather as initiatory and tentative. The task
of studying many hundreds of languages and deriving there from
ultimate conclusions as contributions to the science of philology is
one of great magnitude, and in its accomplishment an army of
scholars must be employed. The wealth of this promised harvest
appeals strongly to the scholars of America for systematic and
patient labor. The languages are many and greatly diverse in their
characteristics, in grammatic as well as in lexic elements. The
author believes it is safe to affirm that the philosophy of language
is some time to be greatly enriched from this source. From the
materials which have been and may be gathered in this field the
evolution of language can be studied from an early form, wherein
words are usually not parts of speech, to a form where the parts of
speech are somewhat differentiated; and where the growth of gender,
number, and case systems, together with the development of tense and
mode systems can be observed. The evolution of mind in the endeavor
to express thought, by coining, combining, and contracting words and
by organizing logical sentences through the development of parts of
speech and 140 their syntactic arrangement, is abundantly
illustrated. The languages are very unequally developed in their
several parts. Low gender systems appear with high tense systems,
highly evolved case systems with slightly developed mode systems;
and there is scarcely any one of these languages, so far as they
have been studied, which does not exhibit archaic devices in its
grammar.
The author has delayed the present publication somewhat, expecting
to supplement it with another paper on the characteristics of those
languages which have been most fully recorded, but such
supplementary paper has already grown too large for this place and
is yet unfinished, while the necessity for speedy publication of the
present results seems to be imperative. The needs of the Bureau of
Ethnology, in directing the work of the linguists employed in it,
and especially in securing and organizing the labor of a large body
of collaborators throughout the country, call for this publication
at the present time.
In arranging the scheme of linguistic families the author has
proceeded very conservatively. Again and again languages have been
thrown together as constituting one family and afterwards have been
separated, while other languages at first deemed unrelated have
ultimately been combined in one stock. Notwithstanding all this
care, there remain a number of doubtful cases. For example,
Buschmann has thrown the
Shoshonean and Nahuatlan families into one. Now the Shoshonean
languages are those best known to the author, and with some of them
he has a tolerable speaking acquaintance. The evidence brought
forward by Buschmann and others seems to be doubtful. A part is
derived from jargon words, another part from adventitious
similarities, while some facts seem to give warrant to the
conclusion that they should be considered as one stock, but the
author prefers, under the present state of knowledge, to hold them
apart and await further evidence, being inclined to the opinion that
the peoples speaking these languages have borrowed some part of
their vocabularies from one another.
After considering the subject with such materials as are on hand,
this general conclusion has been reached: That borrowed materials
exist in all the languages; and that some of these borrowed
materials can be traced to original sources, while the larger part
of such acquisitions can not be thus relegated to known families. In
fact, it is believed that the existing languages, great in number
though they are, give evidence of a more primitive condition, when a
far greater number were spoken. When there are two or more languages
of the same stock, it appears that this differentiation into diverse
tongues is due mainly to the absorption of other material, and that
thus the multiplication of dialects and languages of the same group
furnishes evidence that at some prior time there existed other
languages which are now lost except as they are partially preserved
in the divergent elements of the group. The conclusion which has
been reached, therefore, does not accord with the hypothesis upon
which the investigation began, namely, that common elements would be
discovered in all these languages, for the longer the study has
proceeded the more clear it has been made to appear that the grand
process of linguistic development among the tribes of North America
has been toward unification rather than toward multiplication, that
is, that the multiplied languages of the same stock owe their origin
very largely to absorbed languages that are lost. The data upon
which this conclusion has been reached can not here be set forth,
but the hope is entertained that the facts already collected may
ultimately be marshaled in such a manner that philologists will be
able to weigh the evidence and estimate it for what it may be worth.
The opinion that the differentiation of languages within a single
stock is mainly due to the absorption of materials from other
stocks, often to the extinguishment of the latter, has grown from
year to year as the investigation has proceeded. Wherever the
material has been sufficient to warrant a conclusion on this
subject, no language has been found to be simple in its origin, but
every language has been found to be composed of diverse elements.
The processes of borrowing known in historic times are those which
have been at work in prehistoric times, and it is not probable that
any simple language derived from some single pristine group of roots
can be discovered.
There is an opinion current that the lower languages change with
great rapidity, and that, by reason of this, dialects and languages
of the same stock are speedily differentiated. This widely spread
opinion does not find warrant in the facts discovered in the course
of this research. The author has everywhere been impressed with the
fact that savage tongues are singularly persistent, and that a
language which is dependent for its existence upon oral tradition is
not easily modified. The same words in the same form are repeated
from generation to generation, so that lexic and grammatic elements
have a life that changes very slowly. This is especially true where
the habitat of the tribe is unchanged. Migration introduces a potent
agency of mutation, but a new environment impresses its
characteristics upon a language more by a change in the semantic
content or meaning of words than by change in their forms. There is
another agency of change of profound influence, namely, association
with other tongues. When peoples are absorbed by peaceful or
militant agencies new materials are brought into their language, and
the affiliation of such matter seems to be the chief factor in the
differentiation of languages within the same stock. In the presence
of opinions that have slowly grown in this direction, the author is
inclined to think that some of the groups herein recognized as
families will ultimately be divided, as the common materials of such
languages, when they are more thoroughly studied, will be seen to
have been borrowed.
142 In the studies which have been made as preliminary to this
paper, I have had great assistance from Mr. James C. Pilling and Mr.
Henry W. Henshaw. Mr. Pilling began by preparing a list of papers
used by me, but his work has developed until it assumes the
proportions of a great bibliographic research, and already he has
published five bibliographies, amounting in all to about 1,200
pages. He is publishing this bibliographic material by linguistic
families, as classified by myself in this paper. Scholars in this
field of research will find their labors greatly abridged by the
work of Mr. Pilling. Mr. Henshaw began the preparation of the list
of tribes, but his work also has developed into an elaborate system
of research into the synonymy of the North American tribes, and when
his work is published it will constitute a great and valuable
contribution to the subject. The present paper is but a preface to
the works of Mr. Pilling and Mr. Henshaw, and would have been
published in form as such had not their publications assumed such
proportions as to preclude it. And finally, it is needful to say
that I could not have found the time to make this classification,
imperfect as it is, except with the aid of the great labors of the
gentlemen mentioned, for they have gathered the literature and
brought it ready to my hand. For the classification itself, however,
I am wholly responsible.
I am also indebted to Mr. Albert S. Gatschet and Mr. J. Owen Dorsey
for the preparation of many comparative lists necessary to my work.
The task of preparing the map accompanying this paper was greatly
facilitated by the previously published map of Gallatin. I am
especially indebted to Col. Garrick Mallery for work done in the
early part of its preparation in this form. I have also received
assistance from Messrs. Gatschet, Dorsey, Mooney and Curtin. The
final form which it has taken is largely due to the labors of Mr.
Henshaw, who has gathered many important facts relating to the
habitat of North American tribes while preparing a synonymy of
tribal names.
Indian Linguistic Families of America North of Mexico, 1891
Linguistic
Families
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