George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 3, 15th edition.

[237] ceptible. Their manners and institutions, as well as

Chap. XXII.}

their organization, had a common physiognomy; and, before their languages began to be known, there was no safe method of grouping the nations into families. But when the vast variety of dialects came to be com-

Albert Gallatin's Synopsis.

pared, there were found east of the Mississippi not more than eight radically distinct languages, of which five still constitute the speech of powerful communities, and three are known only as memorials of tribes that have almost disappeared from the earth.

I. The primitive language which was the most widely diffused, and the most fertile in dialects, received from the French the name of Algonquin. It was the mother tongue of those who greeted the colonists of Raleigh at Roanoke, of those who welcomed the Pilgrims to Plymouth. It was heard from the Bay of Gaspe to the valley of the Des Moines; from Cape Fear, and, it may be, from the Savannah, to the land of the Esquimaux; from the Cumberland River of Kentucky to the southern bank of the Missinipi. It was spoken, though not exclusively, in a territory that extended through sixty degrees of longitude, and more than twenty degrees of latitude.

The Micmacs, who occupied the east of the continent, south of the little tribe that dwelt round the Bay of Gaspe, holding possession of Nova Scotia and the

Mass Hist. Coll. x. 115

adjacent isles, and probably never much exceeding three thousand in number, were known to our fathers only as the active allies of the French. They often invaded, but never inhabited, New England.

The Etchemins, or Canoemen, dwelt not only on the St. John's River, the Ouygondy of the natives,

Champlain i. 74.

but on the St. Croix, which Champlain always called from their name, and extended as far west, at least, as Mount Desert.