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A view of the soil and climate of the United States of America: with supplementary remarks upon Florida; on the French colonies on the Mississippi and Ohio, and in Canada; and on the aboriginal tribes of America... Translated, with occasional remarks, by C.B. Brown.
Philadelphia: J. Conrad and Co., 1804
Physical Description: xxviii, 446, [2] p., [4] folded leaves of plates : ill., maps ; 23 cm. (4to)
Call number: E804/ V928v1
Accession number: 05036
Notes: “Supplement” includes “On the Indians or Savages of North America” (p. 352-427) and “Vocabulary of the Miami language” (p. [429]-437). The vocabulary, 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 “to show the confusion arising from the different powers assigned by different nations to the same letters” (p. [429]). Column 4, “Remarks”, contains scattered observatons on pronunciation, semantics, and comparative linguistics. The vocabulary is followed by several verb paradigms (p. 437-439).
Text comments on Native American verse as mnemonic device and on hieroglyphics (p. 421), and discusses (p. 423-425) B.S. Barton’s linguistic comparisons in his New views of the origin of the tribes and nations of America, 1798. Additional translator’s notes (p. [441]-446) include several on matters of language.
In spring of 1795 the author, “member of the conservative Senate” in France (t.p.), traveled to North America where his plans to remain indefinitely were interrupted amid accusations of espionage and conspiracy in the spring of 1798, when “there broke out so violent an animosity against France... that I was obliged to withdraw from the scene” (Preface, p. vi-vii).
Translation by C. B. Brown of the author’s Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis d’Amérique, first published Paris, 1803. Another English-language translation printed London, 1804.
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Languages: Miami
Genre:
Region: North America
