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10 BUBEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bmx. 99
Linguistic Notes
The Cherokee language (Iroqiioian stock) has often been studied,
but through various vicissitudes only very few of the results have
been published. But two attempts to pubhsh a grammar of it have
been made—one by J. Pickering (cf. p. 1), another by Von der
Gabelentz. (See BibUography.)
Pickering's attempt was not any better than could be expected at a
time when so little of American Indian linguistics was known, and
Von der Gabelentz's sketch, though interesting, is based on material
gleaned from very inadequate sources. Neither of the two have
found, for example, the typical Iroquoian system of pronominal
prefixes in the Cherokee verbal series, nor the difference between the
static and active verbs.
There are still two Cherokee dialects extant^the Yv^estern (often
called "Upper") dialect, spoken by the majority of the Cherokee
in Oklahoma and by a few families in Graham County, N. C, and the
Central (often called "Middle") dialect, spoken by the Cherokee on
the Qualla Reservation, where these investigations were made. There
is historic evidence of a tliird dialect, which may be called the Eastern
(it has sometimes been referred to as the "Lower") dialect; the last
Indian, as far as we know, who spoke this dialect died in the begiuning
of this century.
There is a possibility that one (or two?) more dialects existed in the
past, but there is veiy scant and inadequate evidence of this.
The differences existing between the two dialects that are still
spoken are small indeed, nor does the extinct dialect seem to have
diverged much from the two others. Allowing for such phonetic
shifts as West. Dial, -tl-> Cent. D. -ts-; W. D, aGi-> C. D. e-;
C. D, -W. D. -1-^ East. D. -r-, the vocabulary is practically the
same; in the morphology there do not seem to be other differences
than can be explained by these phonetic shifts; the syntaxis can not
yet be compared as our knowledge of the Eastern dialect is so scanty;
nor has the Western dialect been adequately studied.
The formulas as written in the Ay. manuscript and in the majority
of the other manuscripts that have since been collected are mostly
written in the Central dialect. Still, a lot of Western dialect forms are
to be found in them and there are also a great many archaic, ritualistic
expressions the meaning of which is rapidly disappearing. (Cf.
Ritual Language, p. 160 et seq.)
I have given in the interlinear analysis a translation as correct and
conveying the Cherokee meaning as faithfully as was found possible.
Rather than speculate on probabilities or advance conjectures that
can not be proved, I have indicated by a query mark those elements
that can not be satisfactorily analyzed. If query marks are met with