Transcriber’s Note
The following less-common characters are used in this book:
AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED BEFORE THE PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
MARCH 9, 1885,
BY
DANIEL G. BRINTON, M.D.,
PROFESSOR OF ETHNOLOGY AND ARCHÆOLOGY AT THE ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES,
PHILADELPHIA.
REPRINTED FROM THE
PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.
PRINTED BY
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA.
1885.
Mr. President, etc.:
I appear before you to-night to enter a plea for one of the mostneglected branches of learning, for a study usually consideredhopelessly dry and unproductive,—that of American aboriginal languages.
It might be thought that such a topic, in America and among Americans,would attract a reasonably large number of students. The interest whichattaches to our native soil and to the homes of our ancestors—aninterest which it is the praiseworthy purpose of this Society toinculcate and cherish—this interest might be supposed to extend to thelanguages of those nations who for uncounted generations possessed theland which we have occupied relatively so short a time.
This supposition would seem the more reasonable in view of the fact thatin one sense these languages have not died out among us. True, they areno longer media of intercourse, but they survive in thousands ofgeographical names all over our land. In the State of Connecticut alonethere are over six hundred, and even more in Pennsylvania.
Certainly it would be a most legitimate anxiety which should directitself to the preservation of the correct forms and precise meanings ofthese numerous and peculiarly national designations. One would thinkthat this alone would not fail to excite something more than a languidcuriosity in American linguistics, at least in our institutions oflearning and societies for historical research.
Such a motive applies to the future as well as to the past. We have yetthousands of names to affix to localities, ships, [4]cars, country-seats,and the like. Why should we fall back on the dreary repetition of theOld World nomenclature? I turn to a Gazetteer of the United States, andI find the name Athens repeated 34 times to as many villages and townsin our land, Rome and Palmyra each 29 times, Troy 58 times, not to speakof Washington, which is entered for 331 different places in thisGazetteer!
What poverty of invention does this manifest!
Evidently the forefathers of our christened West were, like Sir JohnFalstaff, at a loss where a commodity of good names was to be had.
Yet it lay immediately at their hands. The native tongues supply aninexhaustible store of sonorous, appropriate, and unused names. As haswell been said by an earlier writer, “No class of terms cou