Evening star., 1895-10-25
ENGLISH OF THE INDIANS,
They, If Nobody Else, Have Succeeded
In Simplifying Our Mother Tongue.

They, If Nobody Else, Have Succeeded
In Simplifying Our Mother Tongue.
From the Council Bluffs Daily Noupareil.
Lieut.. Grote Hutcheson, aid-de-camp to
Gen. Coppinger, is in receipt of a highly
interesting letter from one of his brother
officers now in camp at Fort Hall agency in
Idaho, the home of the Indians who were
mixed up In the recent Jacksons Hole
trouble. The letter Is interesting because it
has nothing to say of Jackson's Hole which
is a relief. Instead, it deals largely with
conditions at Fort Hall from the stand
point of student Of ethnology.
Il am taken." says the writer, whose
name Lieut.. Hutcheson does not feel at
liberty to mention, with the speech of the
Indians in their communications with the
whites. Having little to occupy time,
have bothered to look into the origin of the
kind of language which hear used by In
dians and traders in their talk with one an
other. 1t suggests the slang of the Bowery
being purely an artificial adjunct to both
the Indian and the English language. 1t
suggests. too. the baby talk of young
mothers. who insist on placing verbs where
nouns should be, and who prefer mixing up
their first, second and third persons to tax
ing them straight. For instance, there is
the word 'mebbe.' At first I thought this
to be sort of corruption of may be, mean-
iEg perhaps, or used in a doubling way
This is not true. The Indian and the white
in conversation use 'mebbe' an aftirma-
tive. 'Mebbe get wagon is the strongest
way of declaring that you will get wagon
You eat mebbe' brings delight to the In
dian. for that is a promise of giving him
food, promise which may by no means
be evaded. A white man, tco in convers-
ing with an Indian, when the Indian will
converse. and when he knows even this
patois, injects mebbe' into his talk at
every fourth word, or If lie gets excited he
puts 1t in at the third.
g ~ in, fhn iva
cabulary of the reservation. The words
white man and 1njun' will fill in for all
the persons and all the cases, too, by the
way. Somebody will write an Indian Eng
comprised In less tfan a hundred words
Simplicity takes the place of explicitness
!! am bound to say. and sometimes you
Rave to use a carefully trained ear to
know whether 1t is threat, a command, a
promise. or request that is being flung at
you. Mood Is unknown In the grammar of
the Bannack
II discover that the English language of
Fenimore Cooper and OIL Coomes are NON
existent. have dug profoundly into the
Ugh and the three-word sentences of the
novei1st, and L find they are out of fashion
II you succeed in getting an Indian to
talk to you at all ne will not shut off with
three words ending in an exclamat tion point
Neither will he use the expression pale
face now.
Altogether the language is study worth
attention. Seriously, 1 imagine text book
could be compiled which would really result
in great good for the government in
bringing the Indians to something like civ
| ilzed habits AS it is the instruction is
based on the same conditions as prevail in
the English language and with English
speaking persons. This does not fit the In
dian. His language is simplicity itself, and
there are no twists of case, tense, or the
like. AS to tense, one illustration will show
Take the word go We have it go went,
gone. going, will &C. while the Indian puts
in two cases, go and was go If he
wishes to make it future tense he simply
puts in the specific time, as he go tomor-
row. mebbe,' which to my mind is quite ex-
pressive of the idea. I seriously believe at
tention might be called to this situation
among scholastic men and. perhaps, we
would be able to get along without rascally
and incompetent interpreters. One hundred
words would be good vocabulary" =