6. ABORIGINES OF AMERICA, Languages.—
A knowledge of their several languages
would be the most certain evidence of
their derivation which could be produced. In
fact, it is the best proof of the affinity of nations
which ever can be referred to. How many ages
have elapsed since the English, the Dutch, the
Germans, the Swiss, the Norwegians, Danes and
Swedes have separated from their common
stock? Yet how many more must elapse before
the proofs of their common origin, which exist
in their several languages will disappear? It is
to be lamented, then, very much to be lamented,
that we have suffered so many of the Indian
tribes already to extinguish without our having
previously collected and deposited in the records
of literature, the general rudiments at most of
the languages they spoke. Were vocabularies
formed of all the languages spoken in North
and South America, preserving their appellations
of the most common objects in nature, of
those which must be present to every nation
barbarous or civilized, with the inflections of
their nouns and verbs, their principles of regimen
and concord, and these deposited in all the
public libraries, it would furnish opportunities
to those skilled in the languages of the old
world to compare them with those, now, or at
any future time, and hence to construct the best
evidence of the derivation of their part of the
human race.—
Notes on Virginia.
Washington ed. viii, 344.
Ford ed., iii, 206.
(1782)
