1. Moon of the sugar maples (April).2. Moon of flowers (May).3. Moon of strawberries (June).4. Moon of heat (July).5. Moon of fruits (August).6. Moon of the summer hunts (September).7. Moon of leaves, (falling leaves) (October).8. Moon of cold (November).9. Moon of whiteness (i. e. of snow) (December).10. Moon of fogs (January).11. Moon of winter hunts (February).12. Moon of birds (returning). } (March).13. Moon of green (returning green). }
1. Moon of the sugar maples (April).2. Moon of flowers (May).3. Moon of strawberries (June).4. Moon of heat (July).5. Moon of fruits (August).6. Moon of the summer hunts (September).7. Moon of leaves, (falling leaves) (October).8. Moon of cold (November).9. Moon of whiteness (i. e. of snow) (December).10. Moon of fogs (January).11. Moon of winter hunts (February).12. Moon of birds (returning). } (March).13. Moon of green (returning green). }
1. Moon of the sugar maples (April).2. Moon of flowers (May).3. Moon of strawberries (June).4. Moon of heat (July).5. Moon of fruits (August).6. Moon of the summer hunts (September).7. Moon of leaves, (falling leaves) (October).8. Moon of cold (November).9. Moon of whiteness (i. e. of snow) (December).10. Moon of fogs (January).11. Moon of winter hunts (February).12. Moon of birds (returning). } (March).13. Moon of green (returning green). }
1. Moon of the sugar maples (April).
2. Moon of flowers (May).
3. Moon of strawberries (June).
4. Moon of heat (July).
5. Moon of fruits (August).
6. Moon of the summer hunts (September).
7. Moon of leaves, (falling leaves) (October).
8. Moon of cold (November).
9. Moon of whiteness (i. e. of snow) (December).
10. Moon of fogs (January).
11. Moon of winter hunts (February).
12. Moon of birds (returning). } (March).
13. Moon of green (returning green). }
How absurd on the face of it, such a calendar would be for the climate of Tensas Parish, La., need not be urged. The wonder is that any intelligent editor would pass it over without hesitation. The not infrequent references to snow and ice might and ought to have put him on his guard.
The text and vocabulary teem with such impossibilities; while the style of the alleged original songs is utterly unlike that reported from any other native tribe. It much more closely resembles the stilted and tumid imitations of supposed savage simplicity, common enough among French writers of the eighteenth century.
As a fair example of the nonsense of the whole, I will translate the last song given in the book, that called
THE MARRIAGE SONG.
THE MARRIAGE SONG.
THE MARRIAGE SONG.
1. The chief of the Chactas has come to the land of the warriors “I come.” “Thou comest.”
2. Around his body is a beautiful garment, he wears large leggings, sandals, tablets of white wood, feathers behind his head and behind his shoulders, on his head the antlers of a deer, a heavy war club in his right hand.
3. What is the wish of the great warrior who has come?
4. He wishes to speak to the chief of the numerous and powerful Taensas.
5. Let the warrior enter the house of the old men. The chief is seated in the midst of the old men. He will certainly hear thee. Enter the house of the old men.
6. Great chief, old man, I enter. Thou comest. Enter; bring him in. What wishes the foreign warrior? Speak, thou who hast come.
7. Old men, ancient men, I am the chief of many men; at ten days’ journey up the river there lies the land of poplars, the land of the wild rice, which belongs to the brave warriors, the brothers of the Taensas.
8. They said to me—since thou hast not chosen a bride, go to the Taensas our brothers, ask of them a bride; for the Chactas are strong; we will ask a bride of the Taensas.
9. That is well; but speak, warrior, are the Chactas numerous?
10. Count; they are six hundred, and I am stronger than ten.
11. That is well; but speak, do they know how to hunt the buffalo and the deer? does the squirrel run in your great forests?
12. The land of the wild rice has no great forests, but cows, stags and elks dwell in our land in great numbers.
13. What plants grow in your country?
14. Poplars, the slupe tree, the myrtle grow there, we have thesugar maple, ebony to make collars, the oak from which to make war clubs; our hills have magnolias whose shining leaves cover our houses.
15. That is well; the Taensas have neither the slupe tree nor the ebony, but they have the wax tree and the vine: has the land of the wild rice these also?
16. The Taensas are strong and rich, the Chactas are strong also, they are the brothers of the Taensas.
17. The Taensas love the brave Chactas, they will give you a bride; but say, dost thou come alone? dost thou bring bridal presents.
18. Twenty warriors are with me, andbulls drag a wain.
19. Let six, seven, twenty Taensa warriors go forth to meet those who come. For thee, we will let thee see the bride, she is my daughter, of me, the great chief; she is young; she is beautiful as the lily of the waters; she is straight as the white birch; her eyes are like unto the tears of gum that distil from the trees; she knows how to prepare the meats for the warriors and the sap of the sugar maple; she knows how to knit the fishing nets and keep in order the weapons of war—we will show thee the bride.
20. The strangers have arrived, the bulls have dragged up the wain. The warrior offers his presents to the bride, paint for her eyes, fine woven stuff, scalps of enemies, collars, beautiful bracelets, rings for her feet, and swathing-bands for her first born.
21. The father of the bride and the old man receive skins, horns of deer, solid bows and sharpened arrows.
22. Now let the people repose during the night; at sunrise there shall be a feast; then you shall take the bride in marriage.
And this is the song of the marriage.
The assurance which has offered this as a genuine composition of a Louisiana Indian is only equalled by the docility with which it has been accepted by Americanists. The marks of fraud upon it are like Falstaff’s lies—“gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” The Choctaws are located tendays’ journey up the Mississippi in the wild rice region about the head-waters of the stream, whereas they were the immediate neighbors of the real Taensas, and dwelt when first discovered in the middle and southern parts of the present State of Mississippi. The sugar maple is made to grow in the Louisiana swamps, the broad-leaved magnolia and the ebony in Minnesota. The latter is described as the land of the myrtle, and the former of the vine. The northern warrior brings feet-rings and infant clothing as presents, while the southern bride knows all about boiling maple sap, and is like a white birch. But the author’s knowledge of aboriginal customs stands out most prominently when he has the up-river chief come with an ox-cart and boast of his cows! After that passage I need say nothing more. He is indeed ignorant who does not know that not a single draft animal, and not one kept for its milk, was ever found among the natives of the Mississippi valley.
I have made other notes tending in the same direction, but it is scarcely necessary for me to proceed further. If the whole of this pretended Taensa language has been fabricated, it would not be the first time in literary history that such a fraud has been perpetrated. In the last century, George Psalmanazar framed a grammar of a fictitious language in Formosa, which had no existence whatever. So it seems to be with the Taensa; not a scrap of it can be found elsewhere, not a trace of any such tongue remains in Louisiana. What is more, all the old writers distinctly deny that this tribe had any independent language. M. De Montigny, who was among them in 1699, Father Gravier, who was also at their towns, and Du Pratz, the historian,all say positively that the Taensas spoke the Natchez language, and were part of the same people. We have ample specimens of the Natchez, and it is nothing like this alleged Taensa. Moreover, we have in old writers the names of the Taensa villages furnished by the Taensas themselves, and they are nowise akin to the matter of this grammar, but are of Chahta-Muskoki derivation.
What I have now said is I think sufficient to brand this grammar and its associated texts as deceptions practiced on the scientific world. If it concerns the editors and introducers of that work to discover who practiced and is responsible for that deception, let the original manuscript be produced and submitted to experts; if this is not done, let the book be hereafter pilloried as an imposture.
As soon as I could obtain reprints of the above article I forwarded them to M. Adam and others interested in American languages, and M. Adam at once took measures to obtain from the now “Abbé” Parisot the original MSS. That young ecclesiastic, however, professed entire ignorance of their whereabouts; he had wholly forgotten what disposition he had made of this portion of his grandfather’s papers! He also charged M. Adam with having worked over (remanié) his material; and finally disclaimed all responsibility concerning it.
In spite, however, of his very unsatisfactory statements, M. Adam declined to recognize the fabrication of the tongue, and expressed himself so at length in a brochure entitled,Le Taensa a-t-il été forgé de toutes Pièces? Réponseà M. Daniel G. Brinton(pp. 22,Maissonneuve Frères et Ch. Leclerc, Paris, 1885). The argument which he made use of will be seen from the following reply which I published inThe American Antiquarian, September, 1885:
The criticism on the Taensa Grammar published in theAmerican Antiquarianlast March has led to a reply from M. Lucien Adam, the principal editor, under the following title: “Le Taensa a-t-il-été forgé de toutes Piéces?” As the question at issue is one of material importance to American archæology, I shall state M. Adam’s arguments in defense of the Grammar.
It will be remembered that the criticism published last March closed with an urgent call for the production of the original MS., which M. Adam himself had never seen. To meet this, M. Adam as soon as practicable applied to M. Parisot, who alleged that he had translated the Grammar from the Spanish original, to produce that original. This M. Parisot professed himself unable to do; although only two or three years have elapsed, he cannot remember what he did with it, and he thinks it possible that it is lost or destroyed! The investigations, however, reveal two facts quite clearly: first, that the original MS., if there was one, was not in Spanish as asserted, and was not in the handwriting of M. Parisot’s grandfather, as was also asserted, as the latter was certainly not the kind of man to occupy himself with any such document. He kept a sort of boardinghouse, and the suggestion now is that one of his temporaryguests left this supposed MS. at his house. As its existence is still in doubt, this uncertainty about its origin need not further concern us.
The more important question is whether the language as presented in the Grammar and texts bears internal evidence of authenticity or not.
M. Adam begins with the texts, the so-called poems. To my surprise, M. Adam, so far as they pretend to be native productions, tosses them overboard without the slightest compunction. “In my own mind,” he writes, “I have always considered them the work of some disciple of the Jesuit Fathers, who had taken a fancy to the Taensa poetry.” This emphatic rejection of their aboriginal origin has led me to look over the volume again, as it seemed to me that if such was the opinion of the learned editor he should certainly have hinted it to his readers. Not the slightest intimation of the kind can be found in its pages.
The original MS. having disappeared, and the texts having been ruled out as at best the botch-work of some European, M. Adam takes his stand on the Grammar and maintains its authenticity with earnestness.
I named in my criticism six points in the grammatical structure of the alleged Taensa, specifying them as so extremely rare in American languages, that it demanded the best evidence to suppose that they all were present in this extraordinary tongue.
These points are discussed with much acuteness and fairness by M. Adam, and his arguments within these limits are considered convincing by so eminent an authority as Professor Friederich Müller, of Vienna, to whom they weresubmitted, and whose letter concerning them he publishes. What M. Adam does is to show that each of the peculiarities named finds a parallel in other American tongues, or he claims that the point is not properly taken. As I never denied the former, but merely called attention to the rarity of such features, the question is, whether the evidence is sufficient to suppose that several of them existed in this tongue; while as to the correctness of my characterization of Taensa Grammar, scholars will decide that for themselves.
It will be seen from the above that, even if some substructure will be shown to have existed for this Taensa Grammar and texts (which, individually, I still deny), it has been presented to the scientific world under conditions which were far from adequate to the legitimate demands of students.
M. Adam in the tone of his reply is very fair and uniformly courteous, except in his last sentence, where he cannot resist the temptation to have a fling at us for the supposed trait which Barnum and his compeers have conferred upon us among those who do not know us. “Permettezmoi de vous dire,” he writes, “que la France n’est point la terre classique duhumbug.” Has M. Adam forgotten that George Psalmanazar, he who in the last century manufactured a language out of the whole cloth, grammar and dictionary and all, was a Frenchman born and bred? And that if the author of the Taensa volume has done the same, his only predecessor in this peculiar industry is one of his own nation?
M. Adam continued his praiseworthy efforts to unearth the imaginary originals of the Abbé Parisot’s hoax, but with the results one can easily anticipate—they were not forthcoming.[416]
The discussion continued in a desultory manner for some time, and Mr. Gatschet made the most strenuous efforts during his official journeys as government linguist in the southwest and in the Indian territory to find evidence showing that he had not been taken in by the ingenious French seminarists; but his continued silence was evidence enough that none such came to his ken.
In 1886 Professor Julien Vinson reviewed the question for theRévue de Linguistique, and delivered what may be considered the final verdict in the case. It is to the effect that the whole alleged language of the Taensas,—grammar, vocabulary, prose and poetry—is a fabrication by a couple of artful students to impose on the learned. I may close with the Professor’s own closing words:
“Que restera-t-il dutaensa?A mon avis, une mystification sans grande portée etmuch ado about nothing.”