complete grammar of any language of the Huron-Iroquois stock has ever
been published. Many learned and zealous missionaries, Catholic and
Protestant, have labored among the tribes of this stock for more than
two centuries. Portions of the Scriptures, as well as some other works,
have been translated into several of these languages. Some small books,
including biographies and hymn-books, have been composed and printed in
two of them; and the late devoted and indefatigable missionary among the
Senecas, the Rev. Asher Wright, conducted for several years a
periodical, the "Mental Elevator" (_Ne Jaguhnigoageswatha_), in
their language. Several grammars are known to have been composed, but
none have as yet been printed in a complete form. One reason of this
unwillingness to publish was, undoubtedly, the sense which the compilers
felt of the insufficiency of their work; Such is the extraordinary
complexity of the language, such the multiplicity of its forms and the
subtlety of its distinctions, that years of study are required to master
it; and indeed it may be said that the abler the investigator and the
more careful his study, the more likely he is to be dissatisfied with
his success. This dissatisfaction was frankly expressed and practically
exhibited by Mr. Wright himself, certainly one of the best endowed and
most industrious of these inquirers. After residing for several years
among the Senecas, forming an alphabet remarkable for its precise
discrimination of sounds, and even publishing several translations in
their language, he undertook to give some account of its grammatical
forms. A little work printed in 1842, with the modest title of "_A
Spelling-book of the Seneca Language_," comprises the variations of
nouns, adjectives and pronouns, given with much minuteness. Those of the
verbs are promised, but the book closes abruptly without them, for the
reason--as the author afterwards explained to a correspondent--that he
had not as yet been able to obtain such a complete knowledge of them as
he desired. This difficulty is further exemplified by a work purporting