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Show \ [ 23] 10 h . lets of brass and bracefets of brass, and the broad out IS arm ' . · d h' t . h k masses o f b e a u.l s that garn•i shed hts leggms adn h IS 1 oma aw , with its helve studded wnh brass tacks, an t e . o~g qu~ue eked out with braided horse hatr. He ask~d my permission to In· ·traduce his wife and children, a.ncl one Indian after another added himself to the spectators, so that I soon had a room full.. . These Indians, like those of. all the tribe.s ! have I_Uet With, pn~e themselves upon the antiquity of their ortgm. Ltk,~ the Arcadt· ans of old, who boasted that they were " PpoaE?..'lvo~, born before th moon was created and like people of modern days, ~ho trace th:ir origin back until' the~ become .mistified . . These Indtans .talk of their having descended from natiOns that hved long., long a~o, and who came a long, long way to the n~rth; endeavormg .to gm force to the idea, of the length of the tune, and ?f the dtstance, by placing their hands clo'Se together, and then movmg them slowly asunder; so slowly that they seem as if they would never complete the gesture. In the afternoon Mr. McGoffin arrived; he had been 35 days on the road since leaving Independence, Missouri, and has a train of 25 wagons. . Septe:nber. 3.-Added two mor~ p~ants to. m.y ,~o1lect10n-the "Veroma fastculata," and the "dietna coropifoha. In the eve· ning, Mr. Marcellus St. Vrain arrived from Captain W alker's·camp above us. He · said that the ~ntelope were abundant, and there were also some deer; but the sant!-flies so annoyed the people up there, that, notwithstanding the abundance of the game; they had enjoyed but little pleasure in hunting. . 'September 4.-This morning I obtained a fine specimen of the Arkansas shad. They are often caught of a large size; this one measured 17 inches in length. Ahout noon, Mr. Nourse broug?t me some specimens of "selenite;" the people of the fort burn tt, and use it to whitewash walls. · I .also ob~p.inecl some crystals of quartz. Our Indian friends are yet loitering about the fort? impo· sing upon the traders the obligation of feeding them, which the latter are under the necessity of doing, or else lose the furs that the Indians may obtain in the fall. In the evening another volunteer died, and was buried. They were obliged to cover the graves with prickly pear, or rocks, to prevent the wolves from tea1 ing the bodies out of the ground. ~t some places along the Arkansas, the Indians place their corpses In trees, out of the reach of the wolf, and the whites w:ould do well to adopt the same plan. The weather is now becoming extremely cold. Last night we had a very severe frost, and this morning the thermometer was as low as 25°. Saturday, September 5.-As my room was full of Cheyennes, I took the opportunity to obtain some knowledge of the genius .and structure of their language. I found the English alphabet sufficient to represent all the sounds they utter, and at once set myself to ":ork to construct a vocabulary of their language. I had the as· Slstance of one of the best interpreters in the country. ' I • 11 [ 23] Their language is considered one of the most difficult of any of those spoken by our Indian tribes, hut the diffi.culty is chiefly due to the habit the Indians have of swallowing the last syllable of every word, so that many ·persons would hardly . notice the last syllable, and therefore omit it when attempting to speak the Cheyenne language, and are not unders tood by the Inuians. They have no articles; their substantives are nearly as numerous as ours. Plurality and unity are gPnerally denoted by prefixing numbers, and sometimes by terminations; as, vo-vote, an egg; vovo- tuts, eggs. Their pronouns have only one number, or rather they are of both num hers. Their numerical terms are beautifully arranged, each one of the digits is expressed by a diffe.rent name, and the ~ens are expressed by affixing certain terminations to the digits. · The numbers are thus expressed: Nast, one. Nah-to-te-ot e-nah, thirteen . Nish, two. do do Nab, three. N e-so, Knave, four. N e-so-ote-nast, None, five. do Nah-so·to, six. Na-vo, Ne-so-to, seven. N e-vo, Nab-no-to, e~ght. No-no, , So-to, . nme. Na-so-to-no, Mab-to-te, ten. N e-so-to-no, Mah-to-te-ote-nast, eleven. N a-no-to-no, Mah-to-te-ote-nish, twelve. So-to-no, Mah-to-to-no, one hundred. twenty. twenty-one. do thirty. forty. fifty. sixty. seventy. eighty. ninety. They express thousands by .so many hundreds; as 10, 20, or 30 hundreds for 1,000, 2,000, or 3,000, &c., &c. !heir degrees of comparison of adj.ectives ~r~ exi?ressed by J,>refi. xmg words significant of augmentatiOn or dtmmutiOn; the. adJer.hve itself remains unchanged. The verbs have all the principal times, but are only used in one nu.m?er,.as the subject or su?jects to which the verb belongs render (hstmchon of number sufficiently .exact without varying the number of the verb. They h~v.e. all the. other parts of speech belonging to the _languages of CIVIhz~d nations; but their nouns are the only spe cies of word~ that will bear a comparison in a numerical view. The Cheyenne Is far from being deficient in its capability of expressin&' abstract ideas. Some persons think that it would be incomplete Without gesture, because _the Indians use gesture constantly. .Bu~ I have bee~ assured t~at the language is in itself capable of bodymg forth any Idea to wh1eh one may wish to give utterance. . . From this day forth I spent several hours m the daily study of this language, and had succeeded in forming a~ e~ementary grammar; but on my winter journey back to St. LoUis, m December and February', these papers were los!. In fact it was with great diffi .. culty I managed to save anythmg tha~ I had collectetl. I have, however, been able to form the followmg vocabulary from letters |