[Edward Manning Ruttenber (1872)] he had simply failed to note the inflections which constituted an important principle of the language. But notwithstanding the publication of Eliot's grammar in 1666, and the observations of the Jesuit and Moravian priests, it was not until 1819 that Du Ponceau, after a thorough comparison of the Writings of his predecessors, was enabled to announce the proposition : " That the American languages in general use are rich in words and in grammatical forms, and that, in their complicated con struction, the greatest order, method, and regularity prevail." It remained, however, for subsequent writers, and especially for Gallatin x and Schoolcraft, to elucidate fully the grammatical \ A Synopis of the Indian Tribes 'within tains, etc., by Hon. Albert Gallatin, 1836. the United States east of the Rocky Moun-APPENDIX. 335 structure of the languages and define the characteristic features of the several dialects. According to these writers there were but two generic Indian languages, the Algonquin and the Iroquois; but these two were divided into tribal dialects and groups with distinctive charac teristics. While each Iroquois tribe had its dialect, the generic language, as spoken by the Five Nations of New York, differed in many respects from that spoken by the southern and western Iroquois families. The Algonquin was represented by equally distinct tribal and general types.