Shoshonean languages

“ Some of the branches of the Aryan family of which no mention has been made, as for instance Russian, may present much closer analogies than any which have been adduced, and no reference has been made to resemblances in points of grammar, which are not entirely wanting and deserve to be investigated. Nor has the subject of the Turanian languages cognate to Japanese been taken up. Such languages might be expected to aid the inquiry by furnishing intermediate forms which would assist in identifying roots apparently different and in many other ways. ”

“ In this chapter I include all the languages of the Shoshone family, the Wihinasht or western Shoshone of Idaho and Oregon, the Utah with its many dialects, the Comanche or Yetan of Texas and New Mexico, the Moqui of Arizona, the Kizh, Netela, and Kechi of the San Fernando Mission, and their dialects, and the Cahuillo and Chemehuevi of south-eastern California. The six last mentioned do not properly belong to the Shoshone family, but on account of certain faint traces of Aztec, found alike in them and in all Shoshone idioms, I cannot do better than to speak of them in this connection. ”

“ No race deserves to be closer studied in these matters than the Japanese. Indeed, I am of opinion that it is impossible to arrive at any clear or correct opinion concerning it without having, however slightly, investigated its racial descent and the language which, among Eastern dialects, has so long been as great a puzzle to the philologist as has Basque among the European languages. Respecting the origin of the Japanese we know practically nothing—at any rate nothing authentic. The native legends and histories afford us neither guide nor clue in the matter. ”

“ At present it is enough to state that the Shoshoni and Sahaptin languages are as remarkable for the apparent ease and simplicity of their phonesis as the Jakon, Kalapuya, and Tshinúk are for the opposite qualities. It may also be added that the Shoshoni tongues will often be called by the more general name of Paduca. ”

“ On the contrary, however, we find that tens of thousands of Japanese students have acquired a fairly good reading knowledge of English, French, and German. Those few who have had good and sufficient teaching, or who have been abroad and lived in Occidental lands, have in addition secured ready conversational use of the various languages. Indeed, some have contended that since the Japanese learn foreign languages more easily than foreigners learn Japanese, they have greater linguistic powers than the foreigner. ”

“ It is also conterminous with the Wihinast Shoshoni, or Paduca, as is the Palaik. Both Palaik and Lutuami (along with the Shasti) have Shoshoni affinities.
The chief language in contact with the Shasti is the intrusive Athabaskan of the Umkwa and Tlatskanai tribes. Hence the nearest languages with which it should be compared are the Jakon and Kalapuya, from which it is geographically separated. For this reason we do not expect any great amount of coincidence. ”

“ Allusions to Chinese literature and history, although not wholly absent, are unfrequent, and the use of Chinese words is strictly tabooed in all poetry of the classical type. There was a substantial reason for this prohibition. The phonetic character of the two languages is quite different. Chinese is monosyllabic; Japanese as polysyllabic as English. A Chinese syllable has far more complication and variety than those of Japanese words. ”

“ N is the negative sound in Japanese as well as in European languages. It appears in ina, no, inamu, to refuse naki, not, the na of the neg. imperative etc. The use of n for negatives in European languages is too well known to require illustration.
There is no more essential part of a language than its system of pronouns, and it is therefore important to see if any resemblances can be traced in these parts of speech in Japanese and the Aryan languages. ”

“ Aston for the attempt to throw some light upon the linguistic affinities of the mysterious Japanese language, professed himself unconvinced that a relation had been shown between it and the languages of the Aryan family. The fact of apparently identical roots existing in different languages was not sufficient to prove a close connexion. Probably all the languages in the world could be shown on examination to have some common roots. If this proved anything it would only be that all the nations of the earth were parts of one great family. ”

“ Young Shoshones are like young quail, knowing without teaching about feeding and hiding, and learning what civilized children never learn, to be still and to keep on being still, at the first hint of danger or strangeness. ”

“ The reason why the languages of the different races differ is not because the brain-types of the races are different, but only because of the isolated social evolution which the races have experienced. Had it been possible for Japan to maintain throughout the ages perfect and continuous social intercourse with the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon race, while still maintaining biological isolation, i.e., perfect freedom from intermarriage, there is no reason to think that two distinct languages so different as English and Japanese would have arisen. ”

“ That such was the case with the Shoshones, and that they are descendants from the earliest emigrants, and that they have never quitted the settlement made by their ancestors, I have no doubt, for all their traditions confirm it.
We must be cautious how we put faith in the remarks of missionaries and travellers, upon a race of people little known. They seldom come into contact with the better and higher classes, who have all the information and knowledge ”

“ The Shoshones have a clear and lucid recollection of the far countries whence they have emigrated. They do not allude to any particular period, but they must have been among the first comers, for they relate with great topographical accuracy all the bloody struggles they had to sustain against newer emigrants. Often beaten, they were never conquered, and have always occupied the ground which they had selected from the beginning. ”

“ So insensible are they, however, to these calamities, that the Shoshonees are not only cheerful, but even gay; and their character, which is more interesting than that of any Indians we have seen, has in it much of the dignity of misfortune. In their intercourse with strangers they are frank and communicative; in their dealings they are perfectly fair ”

“ Each has many dialects. The Shoshone language may be divided into eastern, or Shoshone proper, and western Shoshone, or Wihinasht. Of the former the Bannack, and the Digger, or Shoshokee, are the chief variations. The Utah dialects, more numerous, are the Goshute, Washoe, Paiulee, Piute, Sampitche, Mono, and a few others, which latter vary so little from some one of the others, that it is unnecessary to trace them as separate dialects. ”

“ Ages again passed: the Shoshones could bear no more; they ran away to the woods, to the mountains, and to the borders of the sea; and, lo! the great Father of Life smiled again upon them; the evil genii were all destroyed, and the monsters buried in the sands.
“They soon became strong, and great warriors; they attacked the strangers, destroyed their cities, and drove them like buffaloes, far in the south, where the sun is always burning, and from whence they did never return.
“Since that time, the Shoshones have been a great people. Many, many times strangers arrived again ”

“ It was too late! the Shoshones had been crushed and their heart had become small; they were poor, and had no dwellings; they were like the deer of the prairies, hunted by the hungry panther.
“And a strange and numerous people landed on the shores of the sea; they were rich and strong; they made the Shoshones their slaves, and built large cities, where they passed all their time. Ages passed: the Shoshones were squaws; they hunted for the mighty strangers; they were beasts, for they dragged wood and water to their great wigwams ”

“ The Shoshone legends people certain parts of the mountains of Montana with little imps or demons called ninumbees, who are about two feet long, perfectly naked, and provided each with a tail. These limbs of the evil one are accustomed to eat up any unguarded infant they may find, leaving in its stead one of their own baneful race. When the mother comes to suckle what she supposes to be her child, the fiendish changeling seizes her breast and begins to devour it ”

“ Worst of all he must learn English,—a language of which the difficulty to the Japanese cannot be even faintly imagined by any one unfamiliar with the construction of the native tongue,—a language so different from his own that the very simplest Japanese phrase cannot be intelligibly rendered into English by a literal translation of the words or even the form of the thought. ”

“ The Shoshones would then have more than 30,000 warriors; they would sweep the country, from the sea to the mountains; from the river of the north (Columbia) to the towns of the Watchinangoes. When the white men would come in their big canoes as traders and friends, we would receive them well—if the come as foes, we will laugh at them, and whip them like dogs. These are the thoughts which I wanted to make known to the Shoshones.
“During my absence, I have seen the Apaches and the Comanches. They are both great nations. Let us send some wise men to invite them to return to their fathers ”

“ The Shoshonees are a small tribe of the nation called Snake Indians, a vague denomination, which embraces at once the inhabitants of the southern parts of the Rocky mountains and of the plains on each side. The Shoshonees with whom we now are, amount to about one hundred warriors, and three times that number of women and children. ”

“ They are more graceful in their forms, and have more personal beauty. I cannot better describe them than by saying that they have more similitude to the Arabian women than any other race. They are very clean in their persons and in their lodges; and all their tribes having both male and female slaves, the Shoshone wife is not broken down by hard labour, as are the squaws of the eastern tribes ”

“ All the other nations were jealous of their strength and resources, and this jealousy being now worked up to its climax, they determined to unite and strike a great blow, not only to destroy the ascendancy which the Shoshones had attained, but also to possess themselves of the immense wealth which they foolishly supposed the Europeans had brought with them to the settlement. ”

“ Just as we go to Latin and Greek to coin new words when we want them, so to Chinese the Japanese have always gone on the same quest; and for the better part of a century they have been busily engaged in coining new words for all the new things that have come to them in the train of Western learning. Thus the language which served to introduce Chinese institutions and culture many centuries ago is performing the same duty to-day for institutions and culture of quite another order. In this Japan seems to have been the sport of fate. She started with Chinese as the chief factor in her culture. ”

“ They speak the Shoshone language and probably are offsets from that tribe, though they have peculiarities of their own, which distinguish them from all other Indians. They are miserably poor, own no horses, and are destitute of every convenience to be derived from an intercourse with the whites. ”

“ The senior chief of the Shoshonies was a thinking man, and a man of observation. He had been among the Nez Perces, listened to their new code of morality and religion received from the white men, and attended their devotional exercises. ”

“ Just as the human body harmonizes within itself such vastly differing organized functions as the osseous, digestive, respiratory, etc., so, embedded in what is called the Japanese language, there are, also, a Chinese vocabulary, a polite vernacular, one system of expression for superiors, another for inferiors, etc. Last of all, there is, besides a peculiar system of pronunciation taught by the priests, a Buddhist language, which suggests a firmament of starry and a prairie of flowery metaphors, with intermediate deeps of space full of figurative expressions. ”

“ As it is now, our linguistic learning is with most of us limited to a knowledge of Aryan tongues, and in consequence we not only fall into the mistake of thinking our way the only way, which is bad enough, but, what is far worse, by not perceiving the other possible paths we quite fail to appreciate the advantages or disadvantages of following our own. We are the blind votaries of a species of ancestral language-worship, which, with all its erudition, tends to narrow our linguistic scope. A study of Japanese would free us from the fetters of any such family infatuation. ”

“ To this day the spoken language of Japanese women is appreciably simpler and softer than that of the men, and to this day while the educated woman uses the hiragana syllabary in writing, eschews Chinese words and rarely pens an ideograph, the educated man employs the ideograph entirely, and translates his thoughts as far as possible into the mispronounced Chinese words without recourse to which it would be impossible for him to discuss any scientific subject, or even to refer to the details of his daily business. ”

“ Chinese; and Mayas, are about as different as exist. The Sumerian type of civilization was taken over bodily and successfully by the Semitic Babylonians. The bulk of Japanese culture is Chinese; yet Japanese speech is built on wholly different principles.
Then, it is impossible to rate one speech trait or type as inherently or objectively superior to another on any basis like that which justifies the placing of a metal culture above a stone culture. If wealth of grammatical apparatus is a criterion of superiority, Latin is a higher language than French, and Anglo-Saxon than English. ”