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Record Details
View of the climate and soil of the United States of America: to which are annexed some accounts of Florida, the French colony on the Scioto, certain Canadian colonies, and the savages or natives.
: for J. Johnson by C. Mercier and Co., 1804
Physical Description:
Call number: E804 V928v2
Accession number: 05-133
Notes: Appendix includes “General observations on the Indians or savages of North America, to which is added a vocabulary of the language of the Miamis, a tribe settled on the Wabash” (p. 393-503). The vocabulary (p. [493]-501), printed in 4 parallel columns, contains nearly 200 terms in English (column 1), with equivalents in “Miami after the French orthography” (column 2). Column 3, “Miami after the English”, gives alternative orthography for a limited number of the native terms “in order to point out the confusion, that arises from the different powers we affix to the letters, and the necessity of a uniform alphabet” (p. [493]). Column 4, “Remarks”, contains scattered observations on phonetics, semantics, and comparative linguistics. The most extensive of these remarks, with comparisons to the Ojibwa language, is added by the translator and not found in the other 1804 English translation. The vocabulary is followed by several verb paradigms (p. 501-503).
Text comments on Native American verse as mnemonic device and on hieroglyphics (p. 484-485), and discusses (p. 487-489) B.S. Barton’s linguistic comparisons in his New views of the origin of the tribes and nations of America, 1798.
In spring of 1795 the author, “member of the Conservative Senate” in France (t.p.), travelled to North America, where his plans to remain indefinitely were interrupted in spring of 1798 by accusations of espionage and conspiracy amid “an epidemic animosity against the French” (Preface, p. v).
Translated from his Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis d’Amérique, first published Paris, 1803, in 2 volumes. Another English language translation printed Philadelphia, 1804.
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Languages: Miami / Ojibwa
Genre: Vocabulary
Region: North America
