With the increasing interest felt in the Science of Ethnology, muchattention has of late been given to the study of the languages of theaboriginal tribes of America, and it must be confessed that morephilosophical research, talent and investigation have been bestowed uponthem in Germany than in our own country. Yet the science is still in itsinfancy. Relying on crude or hastily taken vocabularies, which oftenconfound different languages, many have set on foot theories, andentered into criticisms, which fall to the ground on the examination ofa carefully prepared grammar or dictionary of the language. Fortunately,of very many American languages such works exist, often the labor ofearly missionaries, whom a long residence with a tribe, a knowledge oftheir habits, manners, and usages, enabled to write with accuracy andjudgment.
Very few of these works were printed. Most have remained in manuscript,and are liable to perish by accident. Every investigator knows that manywhich survived till a few years since are now irrecoverably lost.
The language of a tribe is its most important relic. The mechanical artswere rude, and the remains so scanty, that mound and bone pit, anddeserted village, have given us scarce a clue to the history of thepeoples to whom they belong. But language is the great key to theaffinities of the tribes, and often enables us to trace theirmigrations, and in all cases to determine their kindred.
We owe it to posterity to allow the work of destruction to go nofurther, and to put in a permanent form every work now in manuscript,giving the grammatical structure or a full vocabulary of an Indiandialect. Our national honor is interested, and the learned abroad evennow begin to wonder at our indifference.
Impelled by a desire to save these works, I began a series of them,printing a few copies of each, from the original manuscripts, my objectbeing to preserve them; and seven grammars or dictionaries, of differenttribes, have already been issued. So much, however, is yet to be done,that I appeal to the Public Libraries, the Historical Societies, andLiterary Institutions of the Country, as well as to Ethnologists, hereand abroad, to aid me, by subscribing to the series: as the greater thenumber of subscribers, the lower the works can be afforded, and thegreater the number of volumes that can be issued.
The works are handsomely printed on good paper, and carefully edited,forming a series of Royal 8vo. volumes creditable to any collection.
AMS PRESS, INCNEW YORK
A
FRENCH-ONONDAGA
DICTIONARY
FROM A MANUSCRIPT OF THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY
BY
JOHN GILMARY SHEA
MEMBER OF THE NEW YORK, MASSACHUSETTS, MARYLAND, WISCONSIN
MICHIGAN HISTORICAL AND NEW ENGLAND HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL
SOCIETIES.
NEW YORK
CRAMOISY PRESS
1860
The study of American Ethnology has always been fettered by the want ofanything like reliable grammars and dictionaries, and while compelled torely on scanty and erroneous vocabularies must ever remain in itsinfancy. Yet a vast number of tribes were the scenes of missionarylabors of zealous and educated men who carefully studied the language oftheir flocks and have left behind them grammatical treatises anddictionaries more or less complete, the value of which in a philologicalpoint of view over the random words taken down in a few hours by atraveller, must be too apparent to need any discussion or proof. It istime that ethnologists should