that they are poor, guttural, and harsh. It seems perfectly idle to speculate upon languages, of which the grammatical construction has not yet been ascertained. We must know their parts of speech, and their rules of declension, conjugation, and syntax. The specimens, usually exhibited, appear to be mere strings of letters and syllables; and the progress, as yet made, in the analysis of these languages, is only enough to teach us, that they are still rude and irregular. They are encumbered with a multiplicity of consonants; and their modes of government and concord appear to be so few and imperfect, that the words lie together without much connection. In a civilized state, for example, gachtingetsch would lose four or five of its consonants;* and instead of saying 'God-I fear him,' as the Delawares do,† we omit the superfluous pronoun, and say 'I fear God. In the Lenape, again, there are no words to distinguish gender. The male of birds is called 'man bird; and the female, 'woman bird.' Pronouns are used in the conjugation of verbs; but there seems to be no distinction of person, case, or number.§ So, there appears to be forms of expression, which answer to our moods and tenses; but we can discover nothing like a principle, upon which they are constituted.

*HECK W. p. 382.

† Ibid. p. 380.

HECKEW. p. 368.

§ Ibid. pp. 378, 379.

Perhaps there is, among all nations, some one commodity, which will purchase every other; and wampum is said to be the money of the Indians.* The beads, of which it is composed, are of two sorts,-the white, and the purple. The former are manufactured from the inside of great conchs, and strung upon thongs of leather. The latter are worked from the interior coating of the muscle shell; and woven into belts, about three inches broad, and two feet long. Each bead has its particular value; and, when a belt does not contain the requisite number, the balance is attached by a string.t Wampum is said to be the Iroquois for a marine shell.'

The writers,§ who have hitherto speculated upon the decrease of the Indians, are prone to lay great stress upon the destructive operation of ardent spirits; attributing extravagant effects to what, in its immediate effects, is comparatively a trifling cause; and passing over those acknowledged principles, by which the population of every country must be regulated. The ravages of drunkenness must, we admit, be greater among the Indians than among ourselves; and for this extremely plain reason, that the practice is

* COLD. Introd. p. 3, note, HECKEW. pp. 378, 379.

HECKEW. p. 414.

§ The substance of the remarks, which follow, have been previously published, in an anonymous form; but we will settle the account of pla giarism with the author.

more universal. But, if their disappearance is not the effect of something more radical than an attachment to strong drink, why are they running in a continual stream to the west,-abandoning the land of their forefathers, to live in hopeless temperance, beyond the reach of civilization?

According to the writers on political economy, the two great causes of all depopulation, are, first, a diminution in the quantity of that kind of provision, which has been customarily used; and, secondly, an increase in the expensiveness of living, occasioned by the introduction of more costly food. The Chinese, (if it be necessary to take examples,) subsist chiefly upon fish; and the Persians upon melons: but, should the fish no longer continue to swim in the rivers of China, or the melon be no longer able to extract nourishment from the soil of Persia, it is obvious, that the inhabitants of each of these countries must suffer a very serious numerical diminution. As the commonalty are by far the most numerous class of population, and as they are barely able to support themselves, by the ordinary supply of that kind of provision, to which they have been accustomed, the moment that such a supply is unattainable, the prospect of marriage is removed from their view; for, with few exceptions, it may be laid down as a truth, that no man will burden himself with the weight of a family, until he knows. that he shall be able to sustain it.

The same observations may be applied to the other division of the subject. Should any revolution in the manners of the Chinese, or of the Persians, make animal food a necessary constituent of their diet, a decrease of population would be the inevitable effect: for, although the supply of ordinary food may still continue to be afforded, yet flesh has become an article of domestic necessity; and no man will be likely to marry, unless he has a prospect of being able to support a family, in the use of this new species of sustenation. It is in vain to allege, that the old kind of diet is sufficient for all the purposes of actual necessity. The laws of fashion, though mutable, are imperious. 'Men will not marry,' says a philosopher, 'to sink their place or condition in society, or to forego those indulgences, which their own habits, or what they observe among their equals, have rendered necessary to their satisfaction.** We have confined our view to the article of food; but it is evident, that the same reasoning is applicable to dress, to drink, to houses, to furniture, and, in short, to every thing connected with the economy of life.

If our present Indians are the same race with those described by the historian of De Soto, who is called 'a faithful recorder of facts,' they once derived their chief subsistence from vegetable food. Their planted

PALEY'S Mor. Philos. b. vi. ch. xi.

BART. New Views, p. xlix.

fields were numerous and extensive; and they sometimes stored up maize, in such quantities, that the old was discarded to admit the new. When the English first invaded their territory, they were frequently despoiled of their stores; and, in the wars, which, in many different ways, were soon provoked between them and the new-comers, the latter could depend so little upon the enjoyment of their own crops, that they betook themselves, for the most part, to fish and game.' Here was, not only an immense diminution of their ordinary food, but a great increase in the expensiveness of living. Perhaps the labour expended in running down a single deer, would, if employed in tillage, be able to support one man for two months.

But this was not the termination of the evil.

The

* A passage from the history of De Soto's expedition, will show how much they depended upon vegetable food, and what they probably suffered in the first stages of their change from agriculturalists to hunters. Indians of Minoya, during the time that they were there, came to serue them, (being driven therevnto by necessity) that of the maiz that they had taken from them, they would bestow some crummes vpon them. `And because the countrie was fertill, and the people vsed to feed of maiz, and the Christians had gotten all from them that they had, and the people were many, they were not able to sustain themselves. Those which came to the towne were so weake and feeble, that they had no flesh on their bones and many came and died neere the towne for pure hunger and weakenesse. The gouernor commanded, vpon grievous punishment, to giue them no maiz. Yet, when they saw that the hogges wanted it not, and that they had yielded themselues to serue them, and considering their miserie and wretchedness, having pity of them, they gaue them part of the maiz which they had.' Pp. 154-5.

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