Some characteristics of the language, such as the absence of labials, constitute not only a distinctive difference from the old Huron speech, but afford proof of the latter being the older form. “It is a fact,” says Professor Max Müller, in referring to his intercourse with an intelligent native Mohawk, then a student at Oxford, “that the Mohawks never, either as infantsor as grown-up people, articulate with their lips. They have nop,b,m,f,v,w—no labials of any kind.”[145]The statement, so far as the Mohawk infants are concerned, is open to further inquiry; but Dr. Oronhyatekha, the Mohawk referred to, who pursued his studies for a time in the University of Toronto, and to whom I have been largely indebted in this and other researches in Indian philology, not only rejects the six letters already named, but alsoc,g,l,z. The alphabet is thus reduced to seventeen letters. Professor Max Müller notes in passing, that the name “Mohawk” would seem to prove the use of the labial. But it is of foreign origin, though possibly derived from their own term:oegwehokough, “people.” The name employed by themselves is “Canienga.” The practice of speaking without ever closing the lips is an acquired habit of later origin than the forms of the parent tongue. A comparison of any of the Iroquois dialects with the Huron as still spoken by the Wyandots of Ontario, shows themin use by the latter in what is no doubt a surviving example of the oldest form of the Huron-Iroquois language. This Huronmfrequently becomeswin the Iroquois dialects,e.g.skatamendjaweh, “one hundred,” becomes in Mohawkunskadewennyaweh;rume, “man,” Mohawk,ronkwe, etc. These and other examples of this interchangeable characteristic of Indian phonology, and the process of substitution in the absence of labials, are illustrated in the table of Huron-Iroquois numerals on the following page. The habit of invariably speaking with the lips open is the source of very curious modifications in the Iroquois vocabularies when compared with that of the Wyandots. Themgives place tow,nw,nh, ornhu; also tokuandnkw, and so frequently changes the whole character of the word by the modifications it gives rise to.
A comparison of the numerals of cognate languages and dialects is always instructive; and with the growing disposition of American philologists to turn to the Basques, as the only prehistoric race of Europe that has perpetuated the language of an Allophylian stock with possible analogies to the native languages of America, their numerals may be placed alongside of those of the Huron-Iroquois. The permanency of the names for numerals, and their freedom from displacement by synonyms,
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 thebi, “two,” and thesei, “six,” as in theassem, “ten” (decem), of the old Hochelaga, theahsenof the later Wyandots. Theehunof the Basque has also its remote, and probably accidental resemblance; but themilla, “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 Magyarharom; while theeyg, “one,” of the latter, seems to find its counterpart in the inseparable particle that transforms the Basque radicalham, “ten,” into thehamaika, “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 Onondagaskadah, while it becomesskatin the modern Huron, the Cayuga, and the Seneca. But in the compounded form of the Wyandot “one hundred,”skatamendjawe, as in the Onondagaskadahdewennyachweh, the terminalareappears.Tigneny, the old form of “two,” is abridged and strengthened totendi;asche, “three” (originally, in all probability,aschen, or, as still in use by the Hurons of Lorette,achin), survives asahsunhorahsenhin nearly all the Iroquois dialects, including the Tuscarora. In the Nottoway it is still discernible in the modifiedarsa. The exceptions are the Seneca, where it becomessen, while one Wyandot form isshenk; which reappears in the Seneca compounded form of “thirty,”shenkwashen.Honnacon, “four,” loses both its initial and terminalsyllables, and becomesdakin the Wyandot, andkeihorkei, an abbreviation of the Mohawkkayerih, in the Cayuga and the Seneca dialects. The ancient form of “five,”ouiscon, has partially survived in the Huronouisch. It becomeswisk,whisk,wish, or (in the Seneca)wis, in all the Iroquois dialects,—the Wyandot and Cayuga once more agreeing in form. Theayaga, “seven,” of the old Hochelaga, nearly resembles thejadahof several of the Iroquois dialects, as in the Cayugajadak, in the Tuscarorajanah, and in the Nottowayoyag; whereas in the Wyandot it istsotaré. Theadigue, “eight,” in its oldest form issadekonhin the Mohawk, anddekrunhin the Cayuga; with the substitution of thelforrit becomesdeklonhin the Oneida; and after changing totekionin the Seneca, andnagronhin the Tuscarora, it reappears in the Nottoway asdekra. The ancientmadellon, “nine,” curiously survives in abridged form, with the substitute for the labial, in the Oneidawadlonhand the Onondagawadonh, while one Wyandot form isentron, and that of the Hurons of Loretteentson. In the Hochelagaassem, “ten,” we have the old form which is perpetuated in the Wyandotahsen, the Onondaga and Cayugawasenh, the Tuscarorawasunh, and the Nottowaywasha; while the Mohawk and the Oneida have the diverseoyerih, oroyelih, with the characteristic change ofrintol. The form of the Mohawk for “one thousand,”oyerihnadewunnyaweh, is an interesting illustration of the progressive development of numbers.Nais probably a contraction ofnikonh, “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. Allowancemust 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 page292, 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 undergoneamong 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 thetas in Cartier’s lists, and in that of the southern Wyandots, where thedis 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 interchangeablekandghave to be kept in view. Thus the Cayuga hasdekrunh, in the Oneidadekelonh, where the Tuscarora hasnagronh. But the Hurontendi, 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 theArchæologia Americana. In theSynopsis 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 slopesof 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 hisBasque Grammar, draws attention to the wordsbuluzkorri, andlarrugori, “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 thelandrare interchangeable, asronkwe, “man,” in the Mohawk, becomes in the Oneidalonhwe;raxha, “boy,” becomeslaxha;rakeniha, “my father,” becomeslakenih, 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 ther. A characteristic change of a different kind is seen in the grammatical value of the initialrin the Mohawk in relation to gender. For example,onkweis applied to mankind, as distinguished fromkaryoh, “the brute.” It becomesronkwe, “man,”yonkwe“woman.” So alsoraxah, “boy,” changes tokaxha, “girl”;rihyeinah, “my son,” tokheyenah, “my daughter,” etc. The change of gender is further illustrated in such examples asraohih, 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. ThusSeshatsteaghseragwekough, 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 theoand theu. In writing it theeandusounds are also often interchangeable. Where, for example,eis used in one set of the Tuscarora numerals supplied to me, another substitutesufor it wherever it is followed by ann; e.g.enjih,unjih;ahsenh,ahsunh;endah,undah, etc. So also the word for “man” is written for me in one caseonkwe, and in anotherunkweh. 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 thetsound in his own name, replied “It is not quitetnord.” The name is compounded oforonya, “blue,” the word used in the Prayer-Book for “heaven,” andyodakha, “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 frequentlyembodies 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-Bookseshatsteaghseragwekonh, fromseshatsteh, “you are strong,” andahkwekonh, “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-settledagricultural 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 wordkarorkaresignifies “to paint” or “draw.” The initialkin Iroquois words is usually not radical, and so rarely enters into composite terms. The root ofkar, isarorare, which added tokaiata, oroiata, “living thing, person, body,” makeskaiatare, “image” or “likeness,”i.e.“pictured body,” or as a verb “to paint” or “depict anything.” To this is added the verbal suffixtaortha, which occasionally becomesstha, and has different meanings, causative and instrumental. The Mohawk supplies such words and terms of art asahyeyatonh, “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 holophrasmasadatyaghdoenihseroenyea. It is compounded ofahsonniyon, “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 wordkaiata, oroiata, as already noted, signifies “a living thing, person,” or “body”;kakonsaorokonsa, is the “face” or “visage”; and from those come many derivatives. Bruyas givesgaiata, “a living thing”;gaiatare(orkaiatare) “image,” and as a verb, “to paint.” There is alsogaiatonni,“a doll” or “puppet,”i.e.“a made person,” fromoiataandkonnis, “to make.” From the same root we may probably derivekiaton, “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 wordkiatonnion, “I keep writing.” The same authority also givesguianatonh(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 ofthe 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.
But apart from the great compass of the Iroquois verb as illustrative of grammatical development in the languages of unlettered nations, another characteristic feature is the distinction between masculine and feminine forms both in speaking of and to a man or woman. In the study of the minute niceties of the Iroquois verb I have been largely indebted to Dr. Oronhyatekha, and to the Rev. Isaac Bearfoot, both educated Mohawks. When tracing out the comprehensive power of the Mohawk verb, I had in view at the same time the recovery of evidences that the language might supply of an inherent recognition of the artistic faculty. This is much more strongly manifested in other American races in all stages of progress, from the ingenious Haidahs and Tawatins of British Columbia, and the Pueblo Indians of Arizona, to the semi-civilised nations of Mexico and the lettered races of Central and Southern America. Nevertheless the Iroquois recorded in primitive picture-writing the deeds of their departed braves, and have left records in the same crude hieroglyphics, such as the graven rock on Cunningham Island, Lake Erie. Their pipes were carved, and their pottery modelled into representations of familiar objects indicative of a habitual, though simple practice of imitative art that could not fail to beget some counterpart in their languages. Hence the choice of the verbkyadarahste, “to draw.”Kayadareh, orkyadareh, signifies “a body or formin,”e.g.“in a frame” or “group”;kyadarastonh, on the other hand, implies “a body” or “form transferredonto something,”e.g.a board or canvas. The latter is therefore the more expressive and correct term to use for drawing or painting, while it illustrates the process of augmenting the vocabulary to meet the requirements of novel acquisitions in art. But its chief value consists in its affording illustration not only of the inherent capacity of the language to express with minute nicety of detail the manifestations of an æsthetic faculty, as yet very partially developed, but of the compass of its grammar to indicate every distinctive variation of form expressive of time, place, action, object, or subject. The latest results of philologicalresearch in this direction are set forth in theLexiqueand theÉtudes philologiqueof Abbé Cuoq, and in an admirablerésuméin Mr. Horatio Hale’s introduction toThe Iroquois Book of Rites.[147]The systematic processes by which the moods and tenses are indicated, either by changes of termination or prefixed particles, or by both conjoined, are carefully indicated by Mr. Hale; but he adds: “A complete grammar of this speech, as full and minute as the best Sanscrit or Greek grammars, would probably equal, and perhaps surpass those grammars in extent. The unconscious forces of memory and of discrimination required to maintain this complicated intellectual machine, and to preserve it constantly exact, and in good working order, must be prodigious.” This tendency to elaborate niceties of discrimination is in striking contrast to that of the modern cultivated languages of Europe; and it is not without reason that it is spoken of as a “complicated intellectual machine.” The contrast, for example, between the Mohawk or other Iroquois verb, in all its complex variations, and the extreme simplicity of the Anglo-Saxon verb, with only its Indefinite and Perfect Tenses,—the former predicated either of the present, or of a future time, and the latter of any past time,—can scarcely fail to impress the thoughtful student who keeps in view the relative civilisation of the Iroquois, and of the English people at the period when Anglo-Saxon in its purely inflectional stage was still the national language. The English verb has since then acquired wonderful power and compass by means of the auxiliary verbs; but its whole tendency is at variance with the elaborations in number and gender of the Iroquois verb. These are only partially illustrated in the above example, and might easily have been carried further. For example, the rendering of the Active, Indicative, Past Progressive, with Feminine Object is really a verb in the passive voice. To realise the full inflectional niceties of such minute grammatical distinctions, the two genders should be given; and also a mixed gender,i.e.the two genders together, as the artists may consist of both sexes. This is indicated in the two forms of the Future Indefinite, byeas’hakodiyadarahste, “they (mas.) shall draw her,”eayaktodiyadarahste, “they (fem.) shall draw her.” But a study of theparadigm of the Mohawk verb will be found to illustrate in a variety of interesting aspects the process of unpremeditated grammatical evolution among an unlettered people, with whom the influence of oratory in the councils of the tribe was one of their most powerful resources as a preliminary to war.
The grand movement of the barbarian races of Northern Europe in the fifth and following centuries is spoken of as the wandering of the nations. The natural barriers of the continent seemed for a time to have given way, and the unknown tribes from beyond the Baltic and from the shores of the North Sea poured into the valley of the Danube, and swept beyond the Alps and the Pyrenees to the furthest shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The physical geography of the New World presents fewer barriers to be surmounted. But if the student of North American ethnology spread before him a map of the continent, and trace out the wanderings of the Huron-Iroquois, he must revert in fancy to that remote era when confederated Iroquois and Algonkins swept in triumphant fury through the wasted valley of the Ohio, and repeated there what Goth and Hun did for Europe, in Rome’s decline and fall. The long-settled and semi-civilised Mound-Builders fled before the furious onset, leaving the great river-valley a desolate waste. The barrier of an old-settled and well-organised community, which, probably for centuries, had kept America’s northern barbarians in check, was removed, and the fierce Huron-Iroquois ranged at will over the eastern regions of the continent, far southward of the North Carolina river-valleys, where the Nottoways and Tuscaroras found a new home. As to the Nottoways, they appear to have passed out of all remembrance as an Iroquois tribe; yet it is suggestive of a long-forgotten chapter of Indian history, that the name is still in use among the northern Algonkins as the designation of the whole Iroquois stock. The Nottawa saga is doubtless a memorial of their presence on the Georgian Bay, and the Notaway (Náhdahwe) river which falls into Hudson Bay at James Bay, is so named in memory of Huron-Iroquois wanderers into that Algonkin region.
Some portion of the ancient Huron stock tarried on the banks of the St. Lawrence, in what is known to us now as the traditional cradleland of those Canadian aborigines.Others found their way down the Hudson, or selected new homes for themselves on the rivers and lakes that lay to the west, till they reached the shores of Lake Erie; and all that is now the populous region of Western New York was in occupation of the Iroquois race. Feuds broke out between them and the parent stock in the valley of the St. Lawrence. They meted out to those of their own race the same vengeance as to strangers; and the survivors, abandoning their homes, fled westward in search of settlements beyond their reach. The Georgian Bay lay remote from the territory of the Iroquois, but the nations of the Wyandot stock spread beyond it, until the Niagara peninsula and the fertile regions between Lake Huron and Lake Erie were occupied by them, and the Niagara river alone kept apart what were now hostile tribes. But wherever the test of linguistic evidence can be obtained their affinities are placed beyond dispute. On the other hand, the multiplication of dialects is no less apparent, and in many ways helps to throw light on the history of the race.
The old Huron mother tongue still partially preserves the labials which have disappeared from all the Iroquois languages. The Mohawk approaches nearest to this, and appears to be the main stem from whence other languages of the Six Nations have branched off. But the diversities in speech of the various members of the confederacy leave no room to doubt the prolonged isolation of the several tribes, or “nations,” before they were induced to recognise the claims of consanguinity, and to band together for their common interest. Some of the noteworthy diversities of tongue may be pointed out, such as thersound which predominates in the Mohawk, while theltakes its place in the Oneida. In the Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca, they are no longer heard. The last of these reduces the primary forms to the narrowest range; but beyond, to the westward, the old Eries dwelt, speaking, it may be presumed, a modified Seneca dialect, but of which unfortunately no record survives. As to the Tuscaroras and the Nottoways, if we knew nothing of their history, their languages would suffice to tell that they had been longest and most widely separated from the parent stock.
It is not without interest to note in conclusion that the main body of the representatives of the nations of the ancientIroquois league sprung from the Huron-Iroquois stock of Eastern Canada,—after sojourning for centuries beyond the St. Lawrence, until the traditions of the home of the race had faded out of memory, or given place to mythic legends of autochthon origin,—has returned to Canadian soil. At Caughnawaga, St. Regis, Oka, and on the river St. Charles, in the Province of Quebec; at Anderdon, the Bay of Quinté, and above all, on the Grand river, in Ontario; the Huron-Iroquois are now settled to the number of upwards of 8000, without reckoning other tribes. If, indeed, the surviving representatives of the aborigines in the old provinces of the Canadian Dominion are taken as a whole, they number upwards of 34,000, apart from the many thousands in Manitoba, British Columbia, and the North-west Territories. But the nomad Indians must be classed wholly apart from the settlers on the Grand river reserves. The latter are a highly intelligent, civilised people, more and more adapting themselves to the habits of the strangers who have supplanted them; and they are destined as certainly to merge into the predominant race, as the waters of their ancient lakes mingle and are lost in the ocean. Yet the process is no longer one of extinction but of absorption; and will assuredly leave traces of the American autochthones, similar to those which still in Europe perpetuate some ethnical memorial of Allophylian races.