Daniel Brinton - The Lenâpé and their Legends

After the English occupation very little attention was given to the tongue beyond what was indispensable to trading. William Penn, indeed, professed to have acquired a mastery of it. He writes: "I have made it my business to understand it, that I might not want an interpreter on any occasion." [152] Footnote_152_152 Penn, Letter to the Free Society of Traders, 1683, Sec. xii. But it is evident, from the specimens he gives, that all he studied was the trader's jargon, which scorned etymology, syntax and prosody, and was about as near pure Lenape as pigeon English is to the periods of Macaulay.

An ample specimen of this jargon is furnished us by Gabriel Thomas, in his "Historical and Geographical Account of the Province and Country of Pensilvania; and of West-New-Jersey in America," London, 1698, dedicated to Penn. Thomas tells us that he lived in the country fifteen years, and supplies, for the convenience of those who propose visiting the province, some forms of conversation, Indian and English. I subjoin a short specimen, with a brief commentary: —

1. Hitah for n'ischu (Mohegan, nitap ), my friend; takoman , Zeis. takomun , from ta , where, k , 2d pers. sing.

2. Andogowa , similar to undachwe , he comes, Heck.; nee , pron. possess. 1st person; weekin = wikwam , or wigwam. "I come from my house."

3. Tony , = Zeis. tani , where? kee , pron. possess. 2d person.

4. Arwaymouse was the name of an Indian village, near Burlington, N. J.

5. Keco , Zeis. koecu , what? hatah , Zeis. hattin , to have.

6. Huska , Zeis. husca , "very, truly;" wees , Zeis. wisu , fatty flesh, youse , R. W. jous , deer meat; og , Camp. ock , Zeis. woak and; chetena , Zeis. tschitani , strong; chase , Z. chessak , deerskin; orit , Zeis. wulit , good; chekenip , Z. tschekenum , turkey.

7. Chingo , Zeis. tschingatsch , when; beto , Z. peten , to bring; etka , R. W., ka , and.

8. Halapa , Z. alappa , to-morrow; nisha , two; kishquicka , Z. gischgu , day, gischguik , by day.

The principal authority on the Delaware language is the Rev. David Zeisberger, the eminent Moravian missionary, whose long and devoted labors may be accepted as fixing the standard of the tongue.

Before him, no one had seriously set to work to master the structure of the language, and reduce it to a uniform orthography. With him, it was almost a lifelong study, as for more than sixty years it engaged his attention. To his devotion to the cause in which he was engaged, he added considerable natural talent for languages, and learned to speak, with almost equal fluency, English, German, Delaware and the Onondaga and Mohawk dialects of the Iroquois.

The first work he gave to the press was a "Delaware Indian and English Spelling Book for the Schools of the Mission of the United Brethren," printed in Philadelphia, 1776. As he did not himself see the proofs, he complained that both in its arrangement and typographical accuracy it was disappointing. Shortly before his death, in 1806, the second edition appeared, amended in these respects. A "Hymn Book," in Delaware, which he finished in 1802, was printed the following year, and the last work of his life, a translation into Delaware of Lieberkuhn's "History of Christ," was published at New York in 1821.

These, however, formed but a small part of the manuscript materials he had prepared on and in the language. The most important of these were his Delaware Grammar, and his Dictionary in four languages, English, German, Onondaga and Delaware.

The MS. of the Grammar was deposited in the Archives of the Moravian Society at Bethlehem, Pa. A translation of it was prepared by Mr. Peter Stephen Duponceau, and published in the "Transactions of the American Philosophical Society," in 1827.

The quadrilingual dictionary has never been printed. The MS. was presented, along with others, in 1850, to the library of Harvard College, where it now is. The volume is an oblong octavo of 362 pages, containing about 9000 words in the English and German columns, but not more than half that number in the Delaware.

A number of other MSS. of Zeisberger are also in that library, received from the same source. Among these are a German-Delaware Glossary, containing 51 pages and about 600 words; a Delaware-German Phrase Book of about 200 pages; Sermons in Delaware, etc., mostly incomplete studies, but of considerable value to the student of the tongue. [153] Footnote_153_153 On the literary works of Zeisberger, see Rev. E. de Schweinitz, Life of Zeisberger , chap. xlviii, who gives a full account of all the printed works, but does not describe the MSS.

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Lewis H. Morgan, Indian Migrations , in Beach's Indian Miscellany , p. 218.

H. Hale, Indian Migrations as Evidenced by Language , p. 24. (Chicago, 1883.)

See the R. P. A. Lacombe Dictionnaire de la Langue des Cris. Introd. , p. xi. (Montreal, 1874.)

See Joseph Howse, A grammar of the Cree Language , p. 13, et al. (London, 1842)

In a note to Mr. Gowan's edition of George Alsop's Province of Maryland , pp. 117-121 (New York, 1869); also, in 1858, in an article "On the Identity of the Adastas, Minquas, Susquehannocks, and Conestogas," in the Amer. Hist. Mag. , Vol. II, p. 294

Early Indian History on the Susquehanna , p. 31. (Harrisburg, 1883)

Megnwe is the Onondaga yenkwe , males, or men, viri , and was borrowed from that dialect by the Delawares, as a general term. Bishop Ettwein states that the Iroquois called the Delawares, Mohegans, and all the New England Indians Agozhagduta .

Bozman, History of Maryland , Vol. I, p. 167.

Heckewelder, History of the Indian Nations , p. 80.

Peter Jones, History of the Ojibway Nation , p. 32.

Relation da Jesuites , 1637, p. 154. The Hurons, at that time, are stated to have had reliable traditions running back more than two hundred years. Relation de 1639 , p. 50.