American Language Reprint Series

Evolution

Evolution Publishing
PO Box 1333
Merchantville NJ 08109, USA
Email: info@arxbooks.com

The ALR Supplement Series

The American Language Reprint (ALR) series began in 1996 as a vehicle for publishing antique, obscure, and generally unavailable short linguistic records of individual Native American languages and dialects.

Now, with our ALR Supplement Series, Evolution is pleased to provide an arena for the publication of larger, more comprehensive works from the golden age of American Indian philology—many of which have already furnished material for the original ALR series. The ALR Supplement Series reprints valuable compendia that span several languages, time periods, or tribal groupings and that come from a time when linguistic data collection and analysis was regarded as an integral part of scientific exploration. From Benjamin Smith Barton's classic New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America (1798) to Albert Gallatin's scholarly masterpiece A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes (1836), each of these titles is a treasure trove of American Indian linguistic data, often featuring dozens of languages of dialects and drawing from both printed as well as manuscript and oral sources. Some of these titles have not been reprinted at all since their original appearance but are still cited even today as pioneering studies in the comparison and classification of American Indian languages.

Related Links:

The American Language Reprint homepage

Catalog of Titles in the ALR series

The Interactive ALR: A Searchable Database

The Complete ALR Series on CD-Rom

American Languages in New France

The Colonial & Frontier Bookshop

Volume 1

A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes
Within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British
and Russian Possessions in North America
Albert Gallatin, 1836

Originally published under the auspices of the American Antiquarian Society in 1836, A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States East of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions in North America is a monumental compendia of Native American language. Authored by statesman, politician, and scholar Albert Gallatin (1761–1849), it is among the finest systematic collections of Native American ethnology and linguistics of its day. Containing invaluable information on some 81 tribes, the volume commences with four sections of introductory matter giving an overview of the history of the various North American tribal groups divided by geography (Section 1: Indian Tribes North of the United States; Section 2: Algonkin-Lenape and the Iroquois; Section 3: Southern Indians; Section 4: Indians West of the Mississippi). Section 5 covers general observations on social and cultural practices and Section 6 begins an in-depth discussion of Indian languages.
Nearly half of this volume is made up of an Appendix dedicated to grammatical notices and vocabularies from dozens of tribes, including the Choctaw, Delaware, Micmac, Wyandot, Cherokee, Eskimo, Massachusett, Sioux, and the various nations of the Iroquois. Of particular note is the Comparative Vocabulary of Fifty-Three Nations which presents a 60-page table of Native words and terms from tribes such as the Ottawa, Nanticoke, Shawnee, Miami, Sauk, Osage, Omaha, Natchez, Pawnee, and dozens of others arranged for easy comparison. Also included is a further comparison of 16 Native languages including Penobscot, Minsi, Nootka, Souriquois, Huron, Woccon, and others. Finally, several short miscellaneous wordlists are included, such as vocabularies of Blackfoot, Powhatan, Cayuga, Iowa, Crow, Shoshonee, Cheyenne, Chinook, Caddo, Seneca, Mohawk, and many others.

2008 ~ 430 pp. ~ hardback ~ ISBN: 978-1-889758-80-0 ~ ~~$85.00~~ with website discount: $76.50

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Volume 2

Sagard’s Dictionary of Huron
Edited by Dr. John Steckley, Humber College

     Recollect Brother Gabriel Sagard's 144-page French-Huron dictionary, first published in 1632, is one of the earliest dictionaries of any Native American language and is the foundation of French missionary studies in Iroquoian. This exhaustive new edition by renowned Huron scholar John Steckley is a complete translation of this historic dictionary.
     It begins with a thorough introduction, including extensive notes on Huron linguistic variation and dialect differences, featuring comparisons with other Iroquoian languages. This introduction also breaks new ground in offering evidence of a trade language or pidgin with a St. Lawrence Iroquoian component—the first definitive evidence of the survival of that language since it was first encountered by Cartier in the 1530s. The dictionary section is a direct translation from Sagard's original text, featuring the original French entry, a newly-added English translation, and then the corresponding Huron phrase with added etymological and comparative analyses. Steckley also complements Sagard's phrase-based arrangement with a complete index to the over 230 Huron noun stems and 360 verb stems featured in the dictionary—the first such indexing since the work's original publication and an invaluable asset for detailed linguistic study of early Huron.
     This edition also includes a bibliography and general index.

2009 ~ 482 pp. ~ hardback ~ ISBN: 978-1-935228-02-8 ~ ~~$95.00~~ with website discount: $85.50

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Volume 3

Delaware Indian Language of 1824
By C. C. Trowbridge
Edited by James A. Rementer

In 1823, a man named Charles C. Trowbridge went to Indiana Territory on an assignment from Governor Lewis Cass of the Michigan Territory. His mission was to obtain the answers to a list of questions pertaining to the Lenape or Delaware language. After only two and a half months, Trowbridge collected over 280 pages of handwritten information, making the first full-fledged treatment of Southern Unami, the dialect spoken by the two groups still existing in Oklahoma today. This is the dialect of Lenape that was spoken in the southern half of New Jersey, southeastern Pennsylvania, and Delaware.
After almost two centuries, Delaware Indian language scholar James A. Rementer has now edited and published Trowbridge's extremely thorough study in full. With well over a hundred pages devoted to verb forms alone, and extended word-by-word analyses of texts such as the Lord's Prayer and common phrases, Trowbridge's work serves not only as a detailed grammar but also as an invaluable cultural record from a time when the Lenape community was on its journey from the Mid-Atlantic toward the west. Rementer's extensive introductory material puts in context the historical forces that went into producing this text, with a biography of Captain Pipe, one of Trowbridge's main Indian informants. Contributions by Lenape scholar Bruce Pearson and Timothy Crumrin round out the picture with biographies of Trowbridge himself and William Conner.

2011 ~ 314 pp. ~ hardback ~ ISBN: 978-1-935228-06-6 ~ ~~$80.00~~ with website discount: $72.00

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Volume 4

A Mission Delaware Vocabulary
By John Ettwein
Edited and translated by Raymond Whritenour

     Beginning in the mid eighteenth century, seven Moravian missionaries recorded extensive works in the Delaware or Lenape language. John Ettwein (1712-1802) was among the earliest. His most significant work is a long manuscript vocabulary of words and short phrases likely collected prior to the Revolutionary War. This manuscript, now kept in the Moravian Archives at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, preserves some rare lexical gems of the Lenape language that, absent Ettwein's endeavors, would have been lost to posterity. However, it was originally written in German and has never before been published.
     Raymond Whritenour has at last made this excellent resource accessible to a modern audience in English. This first ever published edition of A Mission Delaware Vocabulary is a translation of the original manuscript, featuring over 1,300 Lenape words and phrases in both Lenape-English and English-Lenape sections. Using the Lenape entries as a guide, Whritenour has also annotated and corrected Ettwein's translations and provided etymological explanations where appropriate, making this work useful not only to historical researchers but also modern-day students and those interested in language reconstruction.

2013 ~ 140 pp. ~ hardback ~ ISBN: 978-1-935228-12-7 ~ ~~$40.00~~ with website discount: $36.00

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*Prices are subject to change without notice. If you pre-order a forthcoming title on-line, and the tentative price increases upon publication, you will be charged the price as listed when your order was received, less the 10% discount. If the price decreases, you will be charged the lesser price, less the 10% discount.

Page last updated March 26, 2024.

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