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COMPARATIVE VOCABULARY
OF THE 
INDIAN LANGUAGES
OF THE 
UNITED STATES.

[[stamped]]BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY.
1884
LIBRARY. [[/stamped]]

PRELIMINARY NOTE.

This formula is issued to complete the comparison and classification of the several tribes.

Light breaks but slowly into investigations so recondite as the origins and principles of the American languages. I8t is believed that these languages are not original on this continent, but are, in all cases, derivatives, or sub-derivates, from very ancient primary foreign stocks. Facts already evolved, denote affinities with the plan of utterance, and to some extent the lexicography of some of the oriental nations. But before this question can be determined, and their history and international affinities fixed, the actual state of the various dialects and languages, must be accurately known. Vocabularies have been obtained of several of each of the great families or groupes of the existing tribes who are located, as general boundaries, east of the Rocky Mountains, and north of the Gulf of Mexico; but the returns of none of these groupes of languages, are entirely complete.

From the large geographical area of Texas, numbering thirteen tribes of affiliated or diverse stocks, but a single vocabulary has been received. It is, however, one of the most important, [the Cumanche,]and embraces about three-fourths of the estimated Indian population of that State. It is seen to belong to the groupe of the Shoshonees; --a people who occupy several degrees of the broad range of the Rocky Mountains. A band of this stock, estimated at 400 souls, was found by Lewis and Clarke, in 1806, at the extreme source of the Jefferson fork of the Missouri, and their abandoned lodges were seen as far north as the mouth of that river, in latitude 45 [[degree sign]] 24". Fremont, in 1842, found tribes of the same groupe, under the names of Snakes and Bonacks, or Root-diggers, in the great marine basin of the Southern Pass, at and south of latitude 42 [[degree sign]]. They are now observed to extend by affiliation, to the sub-mountains and genial plains of Texas, where their character is seen to have ben exalted far above the mountain tribes, by the use of the horse. It is desirable to ascertain the full limits of this groupe and its developments in the imperfectly explored area of New Mexico, California and Oregon. Fremont notices the Snake tribes on the Lewis or Sa-aptin fork of the Columbia, as far west and north as Burnt river, in latitude about 45 [[degree sign]], which agrees with their position east of the mountains, as observed by Lewis and Clarke.

East of the Shoshonee groupe, and extending below the base of the Rocky Mountains, in the area, of the Yellowstone, we have the family of the Upsarokas or Crows. Still east of this family, of whose affinities but little known, we find the Dacota or great groupe of leading prairie tribes, who now spread of the country from the sources of the Arkansas and Nebraska, to St. Anthony's Falls, and the red river of Lake Winnipee.

They are bounded northwardly and eastwardly, by the Algonquins, a family of tribes who have been so long

Transcription Notes:
This transcriber does not know how to indicate the small circle denoting geographic location "degree".