Indian Linguistic Families of America, North of Mexico

Shared vocabulary and borrowed words complicate John Wesley Powell's effort to classify the languages of North America north of Mexico. He begins by explaining why names for linguistic families need consistent rules. Grammars, dictionaries, collected vocabularies and translations supply material for comparison, but speech used between communities can obscure the relationships he wants to establish. Powell also distinguishes the evidence of language from customs and other features of community life.

A linguistic map accompanies entries on individual families, their geographic distribution, principal tribes and population figures. The section on Iroquoian peoples considers land claims and settlement patterns before giving detailed counts drawn from reports of 1888 and 1890. For readers interested in the history of language research, the book offers a close view of classification methods and the records used to support them. Its period terminology and population tables place that work within a particular historical setting.