| of original material.
Subsequently, when the Bureau of Ethnology was
organized, this store was largely increased through the
labors of others. Since then a very large body of
literature published in Indian languages has been
accumulated, and a great number of vocabularies have
been gathered by the Bureau assistants and by
collaborators in various parts of the country. The
results of a study of all this material, and of much
historical data, which necessarily enters largely into
work of this character, appear in the accompanying map.
The contributions to the subject during the last fifty
years have been so important, and the additions to the
material accessible to the student of Gallatin’s time
have been so large, that much of the reproach which
deservedly attached to American scholars because of the
neglect of American linguistics has been removed. The
field is a vast one, however, and the workers are
comparatively few. Moreover, opportunities for
collecting linguistic material are growing fewer day by
day, as tribes are consolidated upon reservations, as
they become civilized, and as the older Indians, who
alone are skilled in their language, die, leaving, it
may be, only a few imperfect vocabularies as a basis for
future study. History has bequeathed to us the names of
many tribes, which became extinct in early colonial
times, of whose language not a hint is left and whose
linguistic relations must ever remain unknown.
It is vain to grieve over neglected opportunities unless
their contemplation stimulates us to utilize those at
hand. There are yet many gaps to be filled, even in so
elementary a part of the study as the classification of
the tribes by language. As to the detailed study of the
different linguistic families, the mastery and analysis
of the languages composing them, and their comparison
with one another and with the languages of other
families, only a beginning has been made.
After the above statement it is hardly necessary to add
that the accompanying map does not purport to represent
final results. On the contrary, it is to be regarded as
tentative, setting forth in visible form the results of
investigation up to the present time, as a guide and aid
to future effort.
Each of the colors or patterns upon the map represents a
distinct linguistic family, the total number of families
contained in the whole area being fifty-eight. It is
believed that the families of languages represented upon
the map can not have sprung from a common source; they
are as distinct from one another in their vocabularies
and apparently in their origin as from the Aryan or the
Scythian families. Unquestionably, future and more
critical study will result in the fusion of some of
these families. As the means for analysis and comparison
accumulate, resemblances now hidden will be brought to
light, and relationships hitherto unsuspected will be
shown to exist. Such a result may be anticipated with
the more certainty inasmuch as the present
classification has been made upon a conservative plan.
Where relationships between families are suspected, but
can not be demonstrated by convincing evidence, it has
been deemed wiser not to unite them, but to keep them
apart until more material shall have accumulated and
proof of a more convincing character shall have been
brought forward. While some of the families indicated on
the map may in future be united to other families, and
the number thus be reduced, there seems to be no ground
for the belief that the total of the linguistic families
of this country will be materially diminished, at least
under the present methods of linguistic analysis, for
there is little reason to doubt that, as the result of
investigation in the field, there will be discovered
tribes speaking languages not classifiable under any of
the present families; thus the decrease in the total by
reason of consolidation may be compensated by a
corresponding increase through discovery. It may even be
possible that some of the similarities used in combining
languages into families may, on further study, prove to
be adventitious, and the number may be increased
thereby. To which side the numerical balance will fall
remains for the future to decide.
As stated above, all the families occupy the same basis
of dissimilarity from one another—i.e., none of them are
related—and consequently no two of them are either more
or less alike than any other two, except in so far as
mere coincidences and borrowed material may be said to
constitute likeness and relationship. Coincidences in
the nature of superficial word resemblances are common
in all languages of the world. No matter how widely
separated geographically two families of languages may
be, no matter how unlike their vocabularies, how
distinct their origin, some words may always be found
which appear upon superficial examination to indicate
relationship. There is not a single Indian linguistic
family, for instance, which does not contain words
similar in sound, and more rarely similar in both sound
and meaning, to words in English, Chinese, Hebrew, and
other languages. Not only do such resemblances exist,
but they have been discovered and pointed out, not as
mere adventitious similarities, but as proof of genetic
relationship. Borrowed linguistic material also appears
in every family, tempting the unwary investigator into
making false analogies and drawing erroneous
conclusions. Neither coincidences nor borrowed material,
however, can be properly regarded as evidence of
cognation.
While occupying the same plane of genetic dissimilarity,
the families are by no means alike as regards either the
extent of territory occupied, the number of tribes
grouped under them respectively, or the number of
languages and dialects of which they are composed. Some
of them cover wide areas, whose dimensions are stated in
terms of latitude and longitude rather than by miles.
Others occupy so little space that the colors
representing them are hardly discernible upon the map.
Some of them contain but a single tribe; others are
represented by scores of tribes. In the case of a few,
the term “family” is commensurate with language, since
there is but one 28 language and no dialects. In the
case of others, their tribes spoke several languages, so
distinct from one another as to be for the most part
mutually unintelligible, and the languages shade into
many dialects more or less diverse.
The map, designed primarily for the use of students who
are engaged in investigating the Indians of the United
States, was at first limited to this area; subsequently
its scope was extended to include the whole of North
America north of Mexico. Such an extension of its plan
was, indeed, almost necessary, since a number of
important families, largely represented in the United
States, are yet more largely represented in the
territory to the north, and no adequate conception of
the size and relative importance of such families as the
Algonquian, Siouan, Salishan, Athapascan, and others can
be had without including extralimital territory.
To the south, also, it happens that several linguistic
stocks extend beyond the boundaries of the United
States. Three families are, indeed, mainly extralimital
in their position, viz: Yuman, the great body of the
tribes of which family inhabited the peninsula of Lower
California; Piman, which has only a small representation
in southern Arizona; and the Coahuiltecan, which
intrudes into southwestern Texas. The Athapascan family
is represented in Arizona and New Mexico by the well
known Apache and Navajo, the former of whom have gained
a strong foothold in northern Mexico, while the Tañoan,
a Pueblo family of the upper Rio Grande, has established
a few pueblos lower down the river in Mexico. For the
purpose of necessary comparison, therefore, the map is
made to include all of North America north of Mexico,
the entire peninsula of Lower California, and so much of
Mexico as is necessary to show the range of families
common to that country and to the United States. It is
left to a future occasion to attempt to indicate the
linguistic relations of Mexico and Central America, for
which, it may be remarked in passing, much material has
been accumulated.
It is apparent that a single map can not be made to show
the locations of the several linguistic families at
different epochs; nor can a single map be made to
represent the migrations of the tribes composing the
linguistic families. In order to make a clear
presentation of the latter subject, it would be
necessary to prepare a series of maps showing the areas
successively occupied by the several tribes as they were
disrupted and driven from section to section under the
pressure of other tribes or the vastly more potent force
of European encroachment. Although the data necessary
for a complete representation of tribal migration, even
for the period subsequent to the advent of the European,
does not exist, still a very large body of material
bearing upon the subject is at hand, and exceedingly
valuable results in this direction could be presented
did not the amount 29 of time and labor and the large
expense attendant upon such a project forbid the attempt
for the present.
The map undertakes to show the habitat of the linguistic
families only, and this is for but a single period in
their history, viz, at the time when the tribes
composing them first became known to the European, or
when they first appear on recorded history. As the dates
when the different tribes became known vary, it follows
as a matter of course that the periods represented by
the colors in one portion of the map are not synchronous
with those in other portions. Thus the data for the
Columbia River tribes is derived chiefly from the
account of the journey of Lewis and Clarke in 1803-’05,
long before which period radical changes of location had
taken place among the tribes of the eastern United
States. Again, not only are the periods represented by
the different sections of the map not synchronous, but
only in the case of a few of the linguistic families,
and these usually the smaller ones, is it possible to
make the coloring synchronous for different sections of
the same family. Thus our data for the location of some
of the northern members of the Shoshonean family goes
back to 1804, a date at which absolutely no knowledge
had been gained of most of the southern members of the
group, our first accounts of whom began about 1850.
Again, our knowledge of the eastern Algonquian tribes
dates back to about 1600, while no information was had
concerning the Atsina, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, and the
Arapaho, the westernmost members of the family, until
two centuries later.
Notwithstanding these facts, an attempt to fix upon the
areas formerly occupied by the several linguistic
families, and of the pristine homes of many of the
tribes composing them, is by no means hopeless. For
instance, concerning the position of the western tribes
during the period of early contact of our colonies and
its agreement with their position later when they appear
in history, it may be inferred that as a rule it was
stationary, though positive evidence is lacking. When
changes of tribal habitat actually took place they were
rarely in the nature of extensive migration, by which a
portion of a linguistic family was severed from the main
body, but usually in the form of encroachment by a tribe
or tribes upon neighboring territory, which resulted
simply in the extension of the limits of one linguistic
family at the expense of another, the defeated tribes
being incorporated or confined within narrower limits.
If the above inference be correct, the fact that
different chronologic periods are represented upon the
map is of comparatively little importance, since, if the
Indian tribes were in the main sedentary, and not
nomadic, the changes resulting in the course of one or
two centuries would not make material differences.
Exactly the opposite opinion, however, has been
expressed by many writers, viz, that the North 30
American Indian tribes were nomadic. The picture
presented by these writers is of a medley of
ever-shifting tribes, to-day here, to-morrow there,
occupying new territory and founding new homes—if nomads
can be said to have homes—only to abandon them. Such a
picture, however, is believed to convey an erroneous
idea of the former condition of our Indian tribes. As
the question has significance in the present connection
it must be considered somewhat at length.
Indian Linguistic Families of America North of
Mexico, 1891 |
