discovery of America, Europeans,
Africans, and Indians have inhabited all regions of this vast continent,
without undergoing the slightest characteristic change from the
descendants of the original stock, who have remained in their primitive
locations. The Power that induces the existence of plants and lower
animals indigenous to the different sections of the earth, seems also to
induce the existence of a race of men peculiar to the regions in which
they are found.

The languages of America are radically different from those of the old
world; and no similitude can be traced between the tongues of the red
men, and those of any other people hitherto known. Jarvis, in his Paper on
the Religion of the Indian Tribes of North America, says, "The best
informed writers agree, that there are, exclusive of the Karalit or
Esquimaux, three radical languages spoken by the Indians of North America.
Mr. Heckwelder denominates them the Iroquois, the Lenape, and the
Floridian. The Iroquois is spoken by the Six Nations, the Wyandots, or
Hurons, the Nandowessies, the Assiniboils, and other tribes beyond the St.
Lawrence. The Lenape, which is the most widely extended language on this
side the Mississippi, was spoken by the tribes now extinct, who formerly
inhabited Nova Scotia and the present state of Maine, the Abenakis,
Micmacs, Canibas, Openangos, Soccokis, Etchemins, and Souriquois; dialects
of it are now spoken by the Miamis, the Potawatomies, Missisangoes, and
Kickapoos; the Eonestogas, Nanticokes, Shawanese, and Mohicans; the
Algonquins, Knisteneaux, and Chippeways. The Floridian includes the
languages of the Creeks, or Muskohgees, Chickesaws, Choctaws, Pascagoulas,
Cherokees, Seminolese, and several other tribes in the southern states and
Florida. These three languages are primitive; that is to say, are so
distinct as to have no perceivable affinity. All, therefore, cannot be
derived from the Hebrew; for it is a contradiction in terms to speak of
three languages radically different, as derived from a common source.
Which, then, we may well ask, is to be selected as the posterity of the
Israelites: the Iroquois, the Lenape, or the southern Indians?

"Besides, there is one striking peculiarity in the construction of
American languages, which has no counterpart in the Hebrew. Instead of the
ordinary division of genders, they divide into animate and inanimate. It
is impossible to conceive that any nation, in whatever circumstances the