its which a wise caution assigns to the
employment of linguistics in ethnology, and I am only too familiar with
the many foolish, unscientific attempts to employ it with reference to
the American race. But in spite of all this, I repeat that it is the
surest and almost our only means to trace the ancient connection and
migrations of nations in America.

Through its aid alone we have reached a positive knowledge that most of
the area of South America, including the whole of the West Indies, was
occupied by three great families of nations, not one of which had formed
any important settlement on the northern continent. By similar evidence
we know that the tribe which greeted Penn, when he landed on the site of
this city where I now speak, was a member of one vast family,--the great
Algonkin stock,--whose various clans extended from the palmetto swamps
of Carolina to the snow-clad hills of Labrador, and from the easternmost
cape of Newfoundland to the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, over 20 deg. of
latitude and 60 deg. of longitude. We also know that the general trend of
migration in the northern continent has been from north to south, and
that this is true not only of the more savage tribes, as the Algonkins,
Iroquois, and Athapascas, but also of those who, in the favored southern
lands, approached a form of civilization, the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the
Quiche. These and many minor ethnologic facts have already been obtained
by the study of American languages.

But such external information is only a small part of what they are
capable of disclosing. We can turn them, like the reflector of a
microscope, on the secret and hidden mysteries of the aboriginal man,
and discover his inmost motives, his impulses, his concealed hopes and
fears, those that gave rise to his customs and laws, his schemes of
social life, his superstitions and his religions.

The life-work of that eminent antiquary, the late Mr. Lewis H. Morgan,
was based entirely on linguistics. He attempted, by an exhaustive
analysis of the terms of relationship in American tribes, to reconstruct
their primitive theory of the social compact, and to extend this to the
framework of ancient society in general. If, like most students enamored
of an idea, he carried its application too far, the many correct results
he obtained will ever remain as prized possessions of American
ethnology.

Personal names, family names, titles, forms of salutation, methods of
address, term