A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages. Daniel G. (Daniel Garrison) Brinton

Literature.” Each volume was to contain a work composed in a native tongue by a native; but those based upon foreign inspiration, such as sermons, etc., were to be excluded. Each was to be translated and edited with sufficient completeness to make it available for the general student.

      Of this “Library” eight volumes were issued, the first in 1882, the eighth in 1890, when I ceased the publication, not from lack of material, but because I had retired in 1887 from my connection with the publishing business and became more engaged in general anthropological pursuits.

      The “Library,” as issued, contains the following numbers:

      No. I. The Chronicles of the Mayas. Edited by Daniel G. Brinton, M. D. 279 pages. 1882.

      This volume contains five brief chronicles in the Maya language, written shortly after the conquest, and carrying the history of that people back many centuries. To these is added a history of the conquest, written in his native tongue, by a Maya chief, in 1562. This interesting account has been published separately, with an excellent grammatical and lexical analysis by the Count de Charencey, under the title Chrestomathie Maya, d’après la Chronique de Chac-Xulub-Chen (Paris, 1891). The texts are preceded by an introduction on the history of the Mayas, their language, calendar, numerical system, etc.; and a vocabulary is added at the close.

      No. II. The Iroquois Book of Rites. Edited by Horatio Hale. 222 pages. 1883.

      1

      Beiträge zur Lehre der Wortzusammensetzung. Leiden. 1896.

      2

      In this connection I would refer students to an instructive passage of Heinrich Wrinkler on “Die Hauptformen in den Amerikanischen S

1

Beiträge zur Lehre der Wortzusammensetzung. Leiden. 1896.

2

In this connection I would refer students to an instructive passage of Heinrich Wrinkler on “Die Hauptformen in den Amerikanischen Sprachen,” in his work Zur Sprachgeschichte (Berlin, 1887) and to his essay on the Pokonchi Language in his Weiteres zur Sprachgeschichte, (Berlin, 1889).

3

See my remarks on this tongue in the American Anthropologist, August, 1898, p. 251.

4

Interesting examples in the Preface to S. T. Rand’s Micmac Dictionary (Halifax, 1888).

5

Notably with Steinthal’s Charakteristik des hauptsächlichsten Typen des Sprachbaues.