of all the existing tribes, and at the same time, at his instance,
the War Department circulated through its posts a vocabulary containing
six hundred words of verbal forms and of selected sentences, and a
series of grammatical queries, to which answers were invited. He also
opened an elaborate correspondence with such persons as were best
acquainted with the Indian tribes in different sections of the
country.[23] The replies to these various queries were few in number,
but the practical plan, adhered to in substance, has resulted in the
collection by the Smithsonian Institution of a very large number of
Indian vocabularies.[24]

This class of investigation, in its ample scope for original research
and the ascertainment of principles by analysis and analogic expression,
was peculiarly agreeable to Mr. Gallatin. His friend, du Ponceau,[25]
who served in the American war as the secretary of Steuben, and was now
established in Philadelphia, was likewise deeply engaged in philologic
studies; in 1819 he had published a memoir of the construction of the
languages of the North American Indians, which he followed later with
other papers of a similar nature, among which were a "Grammar of the
Languages of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians," and a memoir on the
grammatical system of the languages of the Indian tribes of North
America, a learned and highly instructive paper, which took the Volney
prize at Paris.

In 1836 Mr. Gallatin's original paper, contributed to Balbi, amplified
by subsequent acquisitions, was published by the American Antiquarian
Society of Worcester, in the first volume of its Transactions. It was
entitled "A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes, within the United States east
of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in
North America." This elaborate inquiry, the foundation of the science in
America, was intended originally to embrace all the tribes north of the
Mexican semi-civilized nations. From the want of material, however, it
was confined at the southward to the territory of the United States, and
eastward of the Rocky Mountains. It included eighty-one tribes, divided
into twenty-eight families, and was accompanied by a colored map, with
tribal indications. The result of the investigation Mr. Gallatin held to
be proof that all the languages, not only of our own Indian tribes, but
of the nations inhabiting America from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn,
have a distinct character common