The class of animate beings is not in the Algonkin languages confined to animals. In the Massachusetts, it embraces certainly the stars and probably several other personified objects; but, according to Eliot, all vegetables belong to the inanimate, whilst forest trees, both in the Delaware and the Chippeway, are included in the animate class. Various other objects, not probably always the same in every dialect, are also considered as belonging to it, on account of peculiar properties belonging or ascribed to them. Such are, at least in the Chippeway, a stone, a bow, a kettle, a pipe, &c.[1] It was probably in reference to this, that the French Missionaries have designated the two classes by the names noble and ignoble.
It will be easily perceived, that, if this distinction constitutes an essential character of the Algonkin-Lenape languages, it is not on account of the principle itself, but of its extensive application, which pervades the whole language, and affects the termination of every part of speech without excepting the adverbs. The existence of the neuter gender, in the classical languages, renders it almost certain, that it had its origin in the same distinction. But, by a deviation, much more extensive than any found in the Indian tongues, the greater number of inanimate objects came to be designated by the masculine and feminine genders. In the French, the neuter has been altogether excluded; and the arbitrary distinction of masculine and feminine is one of the great difficulties of the language, one also, of which the application is very extensive, on account of the change of termination to which not only the pronouns but the adjectives are subject. In the English, the natural distinction between inanimate and animate, and the subdivision of the last class, according to sex, have been preserved or adopted: but adjectives are indeclinable; and the distinction appears only in the third person singular of the personal and possessive pronouns and in the relative; so that, if the words her, it, hers, its, who, whom, and whose were expunged from the language, it might be said of it, as of the Eskimau, that it had no genders. But the distinction has been preserved, in the English, in the case where it was most needed, for the purpose of correcting the ambiguity inherent in the third person of the pronoun; whilst, in the Algonkin, this is the very case which appears not to be provided for, the characteristic sign of the third person being
- ↑ Mr. Schoolcraft.
