The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-07-27


 effecting an entrance to the seml-un- derground habitation found nothing but a heap of mouldering bones, some of them doubtless having been inferred fifty or possibly one hundred years be- | fore.
 "The origin of the Innuits, who they are, and from whence came their an- cestors is subject which has puzzled every philologist who has ever given the matter any serious study. Some | have expressed their belief in their be- | ing descendants of the Japanese, which belief has to certain extent become common, but in my opinion, and have given the matter several years of | study, not vestige of proof can be l found to substantiate that belief. On 1 the contrary. everything tends to show that they have not ever had the remo- | test connection with each other. The | language of the Innuit being unwrit- ten, there is, of course, no history of the race, excepting such legends and | traditions as have been handed down from generation to generation. These all show that they originally were an | inland people. One of their old legends | is that ages and ages ago when their | forefathers first came to the country which they now occupy many thou sands died of starvation by reason of not knowing how to fish. They have also tradition of some mighty hunters | belonging to their race who travelled many, many. sleeps from their former habitation until they finally arrived at a. large body of water and could go no | further Here they encountered sea serpent which after desperate combat was slain, his eyes and fangs being | brought back, upon their return home, as trophies of their expedition. These with others of like nature would seem l to indicate that their ancestors were ct | one time strangers to the sea coast. 1 Another evidence of their antiquity is the fact that. they are still in the stone age, possibly the only race on earth which Is not learned in the use of metals All of their implements are of either stone or bone They use stone axes their lamps consist of a bowl | shaped stone filled with seal oil into which a wick is thrust, and their har- poons, fish hooks, spears, pipes, etc, are made from walrus tusks. In the ornamentation of their pipes they show | quite degree of skill in carving fig ures of men and such animals as they know upon the stem and bowl. A re- markable coincidence observed while east, and one perhaps worthy of note ct
 this time, was the exact similarity be-
 tween the stone implements used by our Innuit and those of the extinct race
 known as the mound builders of Ohio, which were found number of years ago and are being preserved at the Smithsonian Institute. They are appa- rently made from the same kind of
 rock, the axes are shaped alike, and | there are other characteristics so ] marked as to make one wonder if, at
 some time in the remote past, they 1 were not of kin. Taking all things into consideration, I do not think 1t at all 1 improbable that these people at one
 time were inhabitants of the middle l western part of the United States. | Continual tribal wars and constant in- ternecine strife may have separated 0 large body of them from the main | branch and they began a migration which may have taken many centuries to reach their present locality It Is 0 problem which will never receive solu- tion.
 "The language of the Innuit is dis
 tinctly sui generis, and have no hesi- tation in saying there is not the slight est degree of similarity between it and l any other known language in the
 world. In reducing 1t to written l tongue we have adopted the Latin all phabet as far as possible, but there are I certain sounds which are next to irn- possible to produce with any combina- tion of vowels and consonants either in
 Latin or English. One peculiarity of
 the language is the marvellous regular ity of it's verbs; there is but one form
 of them and an irregular verb is some
 thing we have yet to find. Their favor ite letter is k and the most useed syl- lable Is ok A glance over any of the
 books we have recently had printed in
 their tongue will show either one or the other, and frequently both, entering into the orthography of almost every word
 The formation of the negative in verbs is marked peculiarity of the lan- guage, consisting of the insertion of the l syllable nra between the verbal stem 1 and it's termination. There Is no gen der but the dual number exists and is strictly used. All nouns are infected and there are seven cases to bewilder the brain of the student. Relative pro-
 nouns are never used except in one or two instances. Instead of saying the person who went away we say i'll In-
 nuit the went person away The lan- guage Is very fgurative and fairly abounds in metaphorical expressions,
 making it extremely beautiful and ca pablo of expressing much sentiment.
 In their songs the subject Is invariably of nature, rather than of the chase.
 "1he tunes are weird sort of chant and possess peculiar melody I have never heard in any other country. The magnitude of mastering their language and compiling both dictionary and grammar may be better understood when it is known we have seven thou
 sand words in our vocabulary and a grammar covering two hundred and fifty pages of closely written foolscap paper, and have only made a begin ming. We can scarcely hope to finish the work for many years to come, but trust, when it is completed, it will rank alongside the other languages of the
 world, and be of use to- the generations as yet unborn"
 During his trip last winter through the eastern cities, Father Barnum. ex-
 hausted every available resource in l Jieoox,a,, o