PREFATORY LETTER. 3 federacy. West of the Mississippi, and on or south of the Red river, fragments remain, in Louisiana, of ten or twelve tribes, amounting to- gether to about fifteen hundred souls. The vocabularies of four of these have been obtained. Each speaks a distinct language ; and it is proba- ble, that this is the case with some of the others. We are unacquainted with the languages of three tribes, (the Kaskaias, Kiawas, and Bald Heads,) estimated at three thousand souls, who wander between the upper waters of the Red river of the Mississippi, and those of the river Platte of the Missouri; and we have as yet but specimens of the lan- guages of the Black Feet, oT the Fall or Rapid Indians, and of the Crows. In other respects, the Synopsis of the Indians within the United States, east of the Stony Mountains, is nearly as complete as could have been expected, and embraces some tribes altogether or nearly extinct. North of the United States, all or nearly all the families of languages are known; but the subdivision into languages or dialects of the same family is incomplete. The inland districts of Russian America have not been explored; and I must acknowledge some deficiency on my part, in not having investigated all the existing materials, respecting the various languages of the tribes which inhabit the seacoast and adjacent islands, from Nootka to Prince William's Sound. The eighty-one tribes (excluding the nine duplicates), embraced by the Synopsis, have been divided into twenty eight families.* A single glance at the annexed Map will show, that, excluding the country west of the Stony Mountains and south of the fifty-second degree of north latitude, almost the whole of the territory contained in the United States and in British and Russian America is or was occupied by only eight great families, each speaking a distinct language, subdivided, in most instances, into a number of languages or dialects belonging to the same stock. These are the Eskimaux, the Athapascas (or Cheppeyans), the Black Feet, the Sioux, the Algonkin-Lenape, the Iroquois, the Chero- kee, and the Mobilian or Chahta-Muskhog. I believe the Muskhogee, which is the prevailing language of the Creek confederacy, and the Chocta or Chicasa, to belong to the same family, although, in conform- ity with general usage, they have been arranged under two distinct heads. This would reduce the number of families to twenty-seven. Of
- The Woccons, an extinct tribe, distinguished in the vocabulary as the
XlXth family, have, since that was prepared for the press, been ascertained to have belonged to the Catawba family, No. VII. The eight great families embrace sixty-one of the distinct languages. Excluding the extinct Woe- cons, the nineteen other families have each but one ascertained language or dialect.
