Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Dictionary of American Indians, North of Mexico: Descriptive List of Indian Stocks, Confederacies, Tribes, Sub-Tribes, Clans, Gentes, and Geographical Names
Congress may find here in brief what is most important of every thing that interests a legislator: an article, for example, on Treaties, giving all that the succinctness of the Dictionary admits about treaties, with a reference to the original information in the annual. Volumes, where it will be found at greater length.
Again, among the first considerations of the ethnologist is the one as to the different stocks or families to which different or related tribes belong, and these families, it is found, are far better definable by their languages than by any other single consideration. It is a most nota ble fact that there is a greater distinction among the languages of many of our Indian tribes than among the different nations of Europe. They are not dialects of a common language, but they differ from each other as Latin and Greek, or Russian and Spanish, and these languages represent as many radical differences of habit, religion, etc. The lingu istics of the tribes, then, form a starting-point of any classification which distinguishes the different physical and geographical conditions, manners, customs, laws, and religions.
An unfortunate delay, connected with the late Major Powell's failing health, has occurred in the preparation of this proposed Dictionary, but the accompanying advance pages are intended to show the scope and kind of work which is now being carried on and which it is expected will be published during the present calendar year. Incidentally I hope this work may serve as an added memorial to one who gave his life to a great work and earned by his devotion to it the trust of Congress.
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