^. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) ^ if 1.0 I.I 1.25 1^ 22 1^ liU ^ liS 1 2.0 ~ 6' 1.8 1-4 IIIIII.6 ^ pm. X# /a % 7 M 'T Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STIIE6T WEBSTER, NY. I4S80 (716) 872-4503 V ^q\ ^S ^^ o A^^ N> O^ <> |^ >■ -»'* ^3^; v^^ .'■V.-'^'-l '-»-' «5 ' ■;*^^ ms '^. '-^f i«''- ^j,V '♦^H.-** ' ' Mi i,*/*. »■' '> i i- 4: *\_ -a: 't ■ :'-fl^w.. >'ii£ -.A;.-^:S;' *v. ■ ^a** -i' ■■i;jti?^s» -»^ m ■•" ',V' I LANGUAGE AND RELIGION. Laiifjuaj^e is the hHiidmaid of relij^ion. As the outward expression of religion is defiendent upon language, we may by the study of the words and forms of expression obtain some conception of the religious ideas and ceremonies of a tribe or nation. As ancient religion was dependent for its expression «»n language, vve can best understand it by understand- ing the ancient tongue, and without this knowledge we are compelled t(» accept the interpretations of scholars who are conversant with the form of speech. .Archa-ology comes to our aid in understanding Jincient religious beliefs and practices, but the chief place must be given to lan- guage. .As there are various dialects of language, so there are dialects of religion of numerous kinds, whereby the learned and ignorant, the clergy and laity, men. women and children express their religious thoughts and feelings. As language changes from the period of child- hood to that of manhood, so does religion. So closely are the)' related that language is influenced by religion, and deeply imbedded in the words spoken are the thoughts and forms of religion practised b)' the |)riests and people. Religion lies at the foundation of national unity and when a tribe or nation becomes definite, the language becomes definite, and we are able to see the relationship existing between language and religion. During the childhood of the human race the various tribes of men had no doubt religious rites as an expression of their thoughts about God and his relationship to his creatures, and .some form of verbal communication had been used for handing down from father to son the creed which became a tie to bind them together. The stud)- of lan- guage has enabled us to trace the objects of worship to their root-torms, thus revealing the meaning and thought that lay at the root of the wor- .ship, and the identity of the gods of different nations, though having ap- parently different names, has been proved by resolving them into the same root-word. Language expresses the inner life of a people, and by its help we may obtain with considerable accuracy a knowledge of their modes of life and thought, and religious beliefs and forms of worship. The seal of truth has been impressed upon langUi'i},fe, and men are utter- ing deeper tilings than the}' know, and sometimes asserting great prin- ciples against themselves. Language has influenced opinions and beliefs and religion has influenced language. The stream of language has revealed in worcis, and roots of words, the arts, habits, life and religion of the prehistoric .\r\an race. As some ethnologists as.sert that there are no atheistic peoples, may "we not also sa\- that there are no atheistic languages? In the languageN \)f numerous tribes there exist words for spirit, sin, sacrifice and Ciod, the latter word not having the same meaning in all. Among the Cree Indians the word u.sed for God is KltcemimTto= Hig S|>irit, and amcjng the Hlackfeet Omuqkat«)s = The Great Sun, and AplstotokT = the Creator. Kinoii = our Father as a term for God is the apparent result of missionar>' teaching. Mi.ssionaries are a|)t to believe that the languages are athe- istic, becau.se they do not find a word for God, having the same definite meaning as it conveys to the Christian mind and heart, just as they might say that the tribes have no religion because it is different from the Christian religion. Hut there are tribes such as are found in .Austra- lia which have no word for tree, fish or bird, yet they are not ignorant of these thing.s. Worship is given by some of our Canadian Indians to the sun, and there are gods of greater and le.s.ser degree. The languages reveal the names ofthe.se .several deities, one of which .seems to occup\- the chief place, and though the chief deity difft "s from the su|)reme being of the Jews and Christians, we may call these people and Ian- guages theistic in the sense of having a chief deity. .As there are no tribes without some kind of religion, so there are no agnostic languages. The religious ideas may be crude and the .system verj- imperfect, jet there is .some form of religion ofwho.se meaning we learn by a study of the n.itive tongues. The polytheistic languages reveal a worship of single spirits as sun, storms and lightning, mountains and rivers ; and ancestral spirits, who retain some cognizance of human affairs and e.xercise power for good or evil over men and things, are also worshipped. Max Miiller assures us that the Semitic races had a number of names for Deity, as shown in the Ph(Lnicians and Carthaginians, and in the monotheistic creeds of Jews, Mohammedans and Christians. The worship of the .Semitic nations was .' worship of God in history, as God affecting the destinies of in- dividuals, races and nations. The names of Semitic deities expre.s.sed moral qualities generall}', as the Strong, the Kxalted, the Lord, the King, and seldom grew into divine personalities, definite in tlieir out- ward appearance. Many ancient Semitic gods had a tendency to flow 7sc: together and the transition to the worship of one ^'od was easy. When we study the American Indian languajjes we find that the different stocks give different rcUgious Ixilicfs. The principal divinity amonj; the Algonkin tribes is known under various siames, as Glooscaf> among tlie Pcnobscots and Micmacs, Nauahuxh and Maunhosho among the Dela- wares and Ojibwas, and Nti/iio among the HIackfeet. The idea of a Supreme Being among these tribes is somewhat indefinite, whereb)- the term theistic as applied to them must be iiualified as already mentioned. The definite deity is a m\tiiical person- age, good and bad. The grave I luron-lroquois people have a diflTerent |)rincipal divinity, known as '/'nron/iidwn^ou, the Holder of the Heavens, or AV/ri'<7//)v), our (ireat .Master, "a deit>' nobler in char- acter and attributes than any of the .\rjan divinities." Horatio Hale has shown by a study of the Siouan languages that the intensely re- ligious Dakotas have a remarkable set of deities, the Oouktixyhc or gods of vital energy, the Tnkooslikiiuslihaii or moving god, who is "tod subtle to be perceived by the senses," who "is ever)where present," who "exerts a controlling influence over instinct, intellect and passion," and the Hayokti or anti-natural god, with whom all things work b)' the rule of contrary, to whom joy seems grief, and misery brings joj-, who shivers in summer and swelters in winter, to whoin good is evil and evil good. The medicine men who are the physicians and priests of tin- native tribes of Canada, the iiealers of diseases and spiritual advisers and inter- cessors, have a sacred dialect of speech, epithets raised from material meaning to a spiritual significance, words expressing religious ideas, and a style of phraseology peculiar to themselves. In the sacred dialect there is revealed a worship of God in nature, s)-mbolical expressions and names of deities hiflden behind the veil of nature, Heside their worship of the Great Sun, there exists an earth-worshi|). the Karth being called Our Motlwr. .As the Chinese say that heaven and earth are the father and mother of all things, and the Greek Demeter (Ceres), which is of distinctly Ar\-an origin, being none other than (iemeter, motlhi-cdrtli. so the HIackfeet associating the idea of masculine godhead with the sun, place the fruitful, all-nourishing earth, as a goddess. The Sun is addressed as Kinoii our father, and the earth as l\il's1sto>ion, our mother. The faculty of speech is a mysterious thing belonging to man as a supernatural being. We may assume that primitive man began his earthly career with vocal organs and the power of expression. A theory has been propounded that men or rather the precursors of men were at first incapable of speech, and that they ac(]uircd this capacitv at different places. Professor Hovclaajue, the clistint^uislied representative of lin- j^niistic science in France, after describing the impassable ^iilf which sejiarates the Semitic and Indo-lCiiropean lan^ua^es, adds that tlie case of these languafjes is the case of a considerable number of linj^uistic systems and then says : "The consequence of this fact is important. If, as we have shown, the faculty of articulate speech is the proper and sole characteristic of man, and if the different linguistic systems which we know are irreducible, they must have come into existence separately, in regions entirely distinct. It follows that the precursor of man, the first to act|uire the faculty of articulate language, has gained this faculty in different places at tiie same time, and has thus given birth to many hu- man races originally distinct." The divisions of race into which the speechless descendants of the.se precursors of primitive man had .separ- ated before they acquired the faculty of language arc laid down by Dr. Frederick Miiller. The theory of a speechless race of human precursors or of human beings like ourselves without the faculty of speech raises difficulties greater than tho.se which it is intended to remove. So far as we have been able to learn, primitive man began life with a voice. His vocal fjrgans may not have been very flexible, but we may assume that they were sufficient to enable him to articulate words expressing his needs. Oral utterance ^vas the form (jf expression used by primitive man, based upon his pliNsical structure, intellectual endowments and .social instincts. If he had been without a voice some other method of expression would have been found as in the case of deaf-mutes, suffici- ently illustrated in the persons of Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller. There was a time when man was destitute of language, but pos.ses.sed the facult)' of speech, and were man again to be so situated that he had no language, he would recreate language, society and arts, and develop religion. Gesture-language was one of the forms of speech of early man, coex- istent with spoken language. It is a very expressive method of com- munication between persons who speak the same language, aiding them in emjihasizing and inaking clear their words and phrases, and is a u.se- fui form of speech for those who speak different languages. Primitive man would naturally and unconsciously u.se this as an aid to the simple language which he spoke. Drummond in his Ascent of Man suggested that this was the earliest form of speech, preceding spoken language, and sound-speecharo.se from a necessity of communication at a distance, the sound reaching further than the sign, and being independent of light. Again it is said that speech is the product of a social state al- ready considerably advanced, and the sounds being at first simply utter- 1 t i J ances accompanying j^cstures, finally became the signs of the gestures. Gesture-language is u.ied extensively at the present time by the Canadian Indians and numerous tribes throughout the world. The e.vcellent monograph on this subject by Garrick Mallory has revealed it-, signifi- cance and universal use. Its present use by our native tribes reveals the fact that gesture language will reach farther than spoken language. Having occasion to speak to a white man on the Hlood Indian Reserve. I found that the distance between us was so great that I couM not make him hear, though shouting loudly, and to add to the difficult)' he w.is travelling from me at a rapid pace. There was an Indian standing close to me, and another be>-ond m)- friend, and coming toward him. M)- red companion with a few gestures secured the attention of the other Indian, and the two natives carried on a conversation in the sign-language, with the result that when the Indian met the white man and he delivered t(. him his message, my white friend returned to the place where I stood waiting for him. Sound-speech preceded gesture-si)eech and the latter remained as an aid to fuller and more emphatic expression. We can never know what the first sound-signs were like, but their choice and currency would depend on the success with which the) conveyed the meaning intended. Some of these gestures ina>- have .served as effective germs of speech, but would finally give place to the highest form of speech, language in the form of s)inbols and abstract terms. The distinctive human faculty is the power of speech and thought Man is distinguished from the lower animals by the facult\- of thinkiuLi by .symbols. Every kind of animal po.s.ses.ses some sort of language which is expressive of animal sensations, and sense-impressions and rea- sonings. Pos.sessing different .sorts of minds, they are able to express their needs and feelings to their kind by vocal intonations, gestures, touch and perhaps smell. The study of the speech of monkeys has revealed the fact that they have three or four inflections of the same sound, each with a meaning of its own. They are able to speak in syllables, the word for food having five or six syllables. There is however a wide gulf between animal and human intelligence and language. Animals have not the human larynx, and the power of human thought; man can learn the language of some animals.and nnitate others, but animals are unable to learn the speech of men. There must have been .something in man which caused him first t(* use his mouth to give expression to the thought of his heart. To sa) that this was natural in the sen.se that speech was of human origin, is to (leal with the bej,'innin^ of things shrouded in impenetrable mystery in an easy way. If man alone of all animal creation pcjsscsses the godlike attitude, and a hand which distinguishes hiin as a superior being, may we not mark his vocal organs and the faculty of speech as not only characteristic of his superiorit)-, but as the nearest of earthborn to his Maker? He carries about in his garment of flesh, intellectual and spirit- ual nature, evidences of his divine origin, and the faculty of speech is not the weakest argument that he is a son of God. His vocal organs, intellect and will enable him to learn any language. The faculty of s|x;cch is the work of God. As he made man capable (jf .seeing and hearing, he gave to him the faculty of speaking. ICach living beiiig was created with its special organs of voice and utterance and these have been per|)ctuatcd with other specialties of its peculiar organization. The social state of man required language as a means of communica- tion, siinple in structure for early man, and not a highly perfected lan- guage. Several theories have been propounded as to its origin as the imitation of sounds, the utterance of exclamations in moments of emo- tion re.solved into elements of language, and the spontaneous expression of each distinct conception of the mind. Was language fully matured bestowed upon man in a miraculous manner, or was there given to him by God the power of perfecting language from simple elements? The analysis of languages reveals the fact that they pass through stages of development, that a linguistic system cannot be manufactured and that in general they can be resolved into roots in their earliest stages. There is no necessity for accepting language as an attribute of man, a ready- made gift of God, nor a.scribing it to human origin. There lie as its foundation, roots, which form the secondary stage, succeeding the stage ' and die like individuals, institutions, nations, races and religions. Just as the Hebrew has passed through three distinct phases, other tongues have ileveloped and finally reached a period of decay, and some have become altoj^ctlier extinct. Modern German has extinguished Polabish and old Prussian. Latin has ab- sorbed Oscan and Umbrian, the Galatians, Normans and Lombards lost their tongue, Cornish is no longer spoken, the Hochclagan and other native tongues of Canada have become extinct, and many of tiie Ameri- can Indian forms of speech are doomed by the increasing power of English and the advance of a superior race. The beginnings of a tongue may arise from individuals in infancy possessed of a creati\-c facultv, who are .se[)arated in age and intelligence from others, and com|)elled b\- ■ :.ssociation to hold comtnunication w ith each other ; words are formed only intelligible to themselves, which by modifications serve all the pur- poses of their life. Children have posses.sed this language-forming faculty and have made a language of their own, sufficient for their neefls, which required on!y time, continued as.sociation, and such conditions as would preserve their speech from the dominant influence of a superii>r tongue, to give it a place in the world as a new language. The study of child-language reveals a faculty of sound-speech, vowel-sounds, expres- sions made up of consonants, meaningless in themselves, syllables which as nouns stand for several things, and by a change of accent become verbs, and finally an arrangement of the vobabulary into sentences. The growth of a tongue seems to depend upon individual who un- consciously, yet by an act of the will, introduce s\llables and various changes by their creative faculty, then b\- imitation and final!)- through habit. The origin and growth of languages by individuals seem to indicate a primitive stage of purity, strength and richness, which is not found in later stages, when the descendants of the first speakers are only imitators. There are eleven stocks of languages and great divisions of the Amer- ican race in Canada and Newfoundland as follows : Eskimo, Beothuk, .Algonkin, Iroquois, Sioux, Athapascan, Kootenay, Salish, Kwakiutl- Nootka, Tsimshian, and Haida. In British Columbia alone there are- six linguistic stocks having twenty-nine dialect.s. The mental diversities of the native races, influenced by their environment, have contributed to the origin and growth of the.sc languages. Political, social, literary and religious influences arrest languages in their growth, as .seen in the formation of the three great families of speech, Turanian, .Aryan, and Semitic, and in the Chinese, which is an example of a w ritten language, arrested in an early period of its development, before the aljjhabet was reached. There are progressive and retrogressive movements evidencing growth and decay. There are evidences of corruption by loss of words, and replenishing from cognate dialects. Phonetic convenience works T T i many chaii'fcs. The Normans found the French tongue a barbarous iar.t:^on, but they tjave it chtjnity and permanence by fixiiii; it in uritinLT, and em|*Ioyin<,f it in lej^islation, poetry, and romance. Sanskrit, Russian, Greek, Latin, Welsh, anil I'.nglish are acknowledged to be descendants of a single Ar)an form of s|)eech, spoken at some time by a single tribe or nation, yet the languages sprung from the original Ar_\-an tongue are muluaHy unintelligible. There are certain differences in words arising from changes to which the sounds of a language are liable, and from different names given to the .same thing. The Hlackfeet, liloods, and Piega^s speaking the same language, when separated gave different names to tlie same things introduced by the white settlers. The Cree dialects reveal phonetic changes by the introduction of letters expressive of sounds which run through the whole language. The ICastern Denes have lost i|uite a number of inflections still existing in the verbs of Car- rier, a dialect of the Dene. The Dene languages belonging to the .Atha- pascan stock have changed considerably. A. (i. Morice says : "Time, or some other cause, has greatly retiuced in the Chippewayan, Hare and Louchcux idioms, the number of the modificative forms of the objective, locomotive, and instrumentative verbs. The ordinal ad- jectives, which still exist in Carrier, have ecjually disappeared with the tribes' migrations eastward. It is also worthy of remark that the Chilxohtin — a Western dialect — which has man\- terminological affinities with the Hare (Kastern) dialect, has similarly lo.st these terms.' The organs of speech change so that there arises an in- ability to utter certain sounds, ;.s we find the l^lackfoot tongue has no sound of the letters b, d, 1, r. The physical characteristics of races change, while language is influ- enced very slightly by climate, food and labour. The flora and fauna of the territor\- inhabited, and the tribal customs introduce new words, yet affect little the internal structure. Political influences arrest language, so that wherever we find a mixed language, as the lilackfoot, there has invariably been a mixture of blood. Language is not merely the con- ventional instrument of thought, but it is to a great extent its creator, and the mould in which it is cast. The mould may be broken and races adopt the language of a conquering race, but there is no instance in which there is a comi)lete transformation, so as t(j pass into a different type. Kinship in speech develo])s national unity, and exercises a strong influence on politics, as seen in the change of attitude of the British towards the people of Ilindostan upon the discovery of Sanskrit. Civi- lization again begets an influence diffusing some forms of speech, and destro)ing others. Mythology likewise changes the modes of expres- lO sion, as already shown. Christianity lays hold of floating' terms and by reducint; the toiifrue to writing, and creatinLj a literature makes them permanent, and introduces changes in the social customs and characters of the tribe or people. The languages of the world are divided into three great classes : The monosyllabic, of which the Chinese is the best representative ; the agglutinative, represented by the peoples of Central Asia, the natives of Siberia, the Finns, the original inhabitants of Hindostan, and the Ameri- can Indian race — all of these tribes and peoples living in the nomadic stage ; and the flexible, belonging to the historic nations, which stand in the forefront of civilization. The structure and capabilities of a language depend entirely on the natural capacitv of the people with whom it originated, and not upon the degree of culture. Barbarous tongues rio not belong to savage races, as can be shewn b\' the structure of those spoken by the American Indian tribes. Constant warfare among native tribes, scarcity of food, internal troubles, and a nomadic life, have separ- ated portions of tribes and in a generation or two there are formed dialect.s. The adoption of prisoners of war has wrought changes, and made a mixed language, as in the case of the Hlackfoot. On the Ameri- can continent the great multiplication of languages and dialects arises from the breaking up and scattering of tribes. The configuration of a country begets dialects, as seen in Italy, and the English and Scotch shires. The dialects of theCree language show the internal changes aris- ing from separation. The letter / is incorporated in the dialect spoken at Moo.se Factory, while in other dialects the letters ;/, y. tli or r are substituted for it. As an illustration of the influence of this dialectic change take the personal pronoun; Nela, kela, wela=I, thou, he, she, is the form in use at Moose Factory ; nena, kena, wena. at Albany, .Severn, and York Factory ; neya, keya, weya, on the East Maine coast ; netha, ketha, wetha, at English River ; and nera, kera, wera, at Isle la Crosse. Although the Blackfeet, Bloods and Piegans have been separ- ated for a brief period on reservations, changes are taking place towards the formation of dialects. There is a continuity in language which nothing can destroy, and in the lowest languages there is seen order and wisdom. The main distinction between languages is to be found in the inner mechanism or s-rammar. Grammar is interesting in showing the modes by which the human mind proceeded at remote |)eriods, and by different races, in working out the great problem of articulate speech. Modifications are introduced for the purpose of conveying more clearly and briefly the ideas, and 1 1 these chaiifjcs in structure arc found in j^ender, plural, declensions, moods, and tenses of the verb anfl syntax. There does not exist a tribe without some kind of ^n-ammar, laws of structure, sometimes crude, yet sufficient to reveal re«,nilarit)-, beauty and strength. The most savage tribes with- out any literature possess languages of consistent grammatical structure sufficient for all the uses of effective native oratory. No matter how low in the scale of humanity a tribe has been found, it still possesses a complete and thoroughlj- organized language. Languages are not the result of mere chance, but are regulated bylaws. Some of our native Canadian tribes jjossess in their dialects vehicles for thought more expressive and richer than some of the tongues of civilized peoples. The Dene language ha.s no single term for " to be broken," but in lieu of the single Aryan term, this American tongue has no less than one hundred ijarticularising substitutes, not one of which could be indifferently used for the other. These are expressive of the object employed to operate the breakage, the manner in which the object was affected, and the form of the object. The.se more than one hundred dis- tinct verbs can be multiplied four or five times, according as the iter- ative, imitative, terminative, and other forms are used, whereby the signification is changed. The Sahaptin language spoken b)- the Nez Perce Indians, according to Hale, surpasses the Ar\-an and Semitic tongues in some of its forms. Its case-distinctions are much more pro- foundly rea.soned and accurately classified than the Aryan, the verb surpasses both the Aryan and Semitic in the variety of its forms, and the precision and nicety of its distinctions, its ten.ses are as completely inflectional as Sanskrit, Greek, or German, and it po,s.sesses great power of agglutination. The Cree language i.c a beautiful and symmetrical tongue, possessing many forms of expression not found in those spoken b>' civilized nations. The paradigms of the verb cover more than two hundred and fort>- closely printed folio pages. The Blackfoot tongue is a guttural form of speech, symmetrical and euphonious, ver\- expres- sive and abundant in grammatical forms. What has been said concern- ing these languages can be repeated for almost an)- dialect spoken by an American Indian tribe. Of the Mohawk tongue Max Miiller says : " To my mind, the structure of such a language as the Mohawk is cjuite sufficient evidence that those who worked out such a work of art were powerful reasoners and accurate classifiers," and of the .Algonkin speech, Professor Whitney remarks : " There are infinite possibilities and expressiveness in such a structure ; and it would only need that some native American Greek race should arise to fill it full of thought and fancy, and to put it to the uses of a noble literature, and it would be rightly admired as rich and flexible, perhaps beyond anything else that A 13 '"■i'v.:;-- the world knew." Indeed there is no shade of idea in respect t(» time, place, and manner of action which the verbs of these languages canimt express. The existence of the laws of languap;e by which order, beauty, strength and expressiveness are seen in the internal structure of every form of speech, the unknown operation of some of these laws, ard the mysteries of speech and language which lie hidden from the liuman mind, manifest supreme intelligence. The discoveries made ii^ this realm of knowledge corroborate the previous evidences of Divire wis- dom. The languages of the world are another revelation of Ilim who made all things for Himself, and in them we find another argument for the existence of a wise, beneficent and loving God J V JS-? ■ ■* t- t*^ ,^j,«^ » " * ' - » iittiiiiiii