The Myths of the New World. Brinton Daniel Garrison

1

Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvoelker, i. p. 256.

2

Carriere, Die Kunst im Zusammenhang der Culturentwickelung, i. p. 66.

3

It is said indeed that the Yebus, a people on the west coast of Africa, speak a polysynthetic language, and per contra, that the Otomis of Mexico have a monosyllabic one like the Chinese. Max Mueller goes further, and asserts that what is called the process of agglutination in the Turanian languages is the same as what has been named polysynthesis in America. This is not to be conceded. In the former the root is unchangeable, the formative elements follow it, and prefixes are not used; in the latter prefixes are common, and the formative elements are blended with the root, both undergoing changes of structure. Very important differences.

4

Grimm, Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, p. 571.

5

Peter Martyr, De Insulis nuper Repertis, p. 354: Colon. 1574.

6

They may be found in Waitz, Anthrop. der Naturvoelker, iv. p. 173.

7

The only authority is Diego de Landa, Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, ed. Brasseur, Paris, 1864, p. 318. The explanation is extremely obscure in the original. I have given it in the only sense in which the author’s words seem to have any meaning.

8

Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 72.

9

Desjardins, Le Pérou avant la Conquête Espagnole, p. 122: Paris, 1858.

10

An instance is given by Ximenes, Origen de los Indios de Guatemala, p. 186: Vienna, 1856.

11

George Copway, Traditional History of the Ojibway Nation, p. 130: London, 1850.

12

Morse, Report on the Indian Tribes, App. p. 352.

13

Gomara states that De Ayllon found tribes on the Atlantic shore not far from Cape Hatteras keeping flocks of deer (ciervos) and from their milk making cheese (Hist. de las Indias, cap. 43). I attach no importance to this statement, and only mention it to connect it with some other curious notices of the tribe now extinct who occupied that locality. Both De Ayllon and Lawson mention their very light complexions, and the latter saw many with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a fair skin; they cultivated when first visited the potato (or the groundnut), tobacco, and cotton (Humboldt); they reckoned time by disks of wood divided into sixty segments (Lederer); and just in this latitude the most careful determination fixes the mysterious White-man’s-land, or Great Ireland of the Icelandic Sagas (see the American Hist. Mag., ix. p. 364), where the Scandinavian sea rovers in the eleventh century found men of their own color, clothed in long woven garments, and not less civilized than themselves.

14

The name Eskimo is from the Algonkin word Eskimantick, eaters of raw flesh. There is reason to believe that at one time they possessed the Atlantic coast considerably to the south. The Northmen, in the year 1000, found the natives of Vinland, probably near Rhode Island, of the same race as they were familiar with in Labrador. They call them Skralingar, chips, and describe them as numerous and short of stature (Eric Rothens Saga, in Mueller, Sagænbibliothek, p. 214). It is curious that the traditions of the Tuscaroras, who placed their arrival on the Virginian coast about 1300, spoke of the race they found there as eaters of raw flesh and ignorant of maize (Lederer, Account of North America, in Harris, Voyages).

15

Richardson, Arctic Expedition, p. 374.

16

The late Professor W. W. Turner of Washington, and Professor Buschmann of Berlin, are the two scholars who have traced the boundaries of this widely dispersed family. The name is drawn from Lake Athapasca in British America.

17

The Cherokee tongue has a limited number of words in common with the Iroquois, and its structural similarity is close. The name is of unknown origin. It should doubtless be spelled Tsalakie, a plural form, almost the same as that of the river Tellico, properly Tsaliko (Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, p. 87), on the banks of which their principal towns were situated. Adair’s derivation from cheera, fire, is worthless, as no such word exists in their language.

18

The term Algonkin may be a corruption of agomeegwin, people of the other shore. Algic, often used synonymously, is an adjective manufactured by Mr. Schoolcraft “from the words Alleghany and Atlantic” (Algic Researches, ii. p. 12). There is no occasion to accept it, as there is no objection to employing Algonkin both as substantive and adjective. Iroquois is a French compound of the native words hiro, I have said, and kouè, an interjection of assent or applause, terms constantly heard in their councils.

19

Apalachian, which should be spelt with one p, is formed of two Creek words, apala, the great sea, the ocean, and the suffix chi, people, and means those dwelling by the ocean. That the Natchez were offshoots of the Mayas I was the first to surmise and to prove by a careful comparison of one hundred Natchez words with their equivalents in the Maya dialects. Of these, five have affinities more or less marked to words peculiar to the Huastecas of the river Panuco (a Maya colony), thirteen to words common to Huasteca and Maya, and thirty-nine to words of similar meaning in the latter language. This resemblance may be exemplified by the numerals, one, two, four, seven, eight, twenty. In Natchez they are hu, ah, gan, uk-woh, upku-tepish, oka-poo: in Maya, hu, ca, can, uk, uapxæ, hunkal. (See the Am. Hist. Mag., New Series, vol. i. p. 16, Jan. 1867.)

20

Dakota, a native word, means friends or allies.

21

Rep. of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1854, p. 209.

22

According to Professor Buschmann Aztec is probably from iztac, white, and Nahuatlacatl signifies those who speak the language Nahuatl, clear sounding, sonorous. The Abbé Brasseur (de Bourbourg), on the other hand,

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