Alnambay uli awikhigan

lished in the first volume of the new series of the Memoirs of the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences), made by our Father Sebastian Rale. This dictionary is not complete, because, before being finished, it was taken away from the author, together with his chests and papers, by a party of English, from New England, who in 1722, under Col. Westbrook, pillaged the church and the village of the Abnakis, at Norridgewock, on the shores of the Kennebec. This manuscript has been always regarded as precious remains of Philology by all men of Science. The amateur of letters and

the antiquarian will lament for ever the cruel death of Father Rale, who, having spent about thirty-five years among the Abnakis, was the only man capable to give a perfect dictionary and grammar.

PREFACE.

THE Tribes of the Abnakis, or, more properly, Wanbanakki (people of the Aurora borealis, from Wanbànban), existing in the State of Maine, transmit the truths of the Catholic religion from parents to children, only by oral tradition. Rev. Edmund Demillier left a handwriting, containing a small prayer-book, which was a correction of the prayerbook printed by Rev. Mr. Romagnè, with other additions. I have made use of them both, and I have spared no labor to correct them. But I found that this com

pilation was
was not sufficient to leave
amongst the Indians a standing form of
prayers and instructions in their own
native language. They needed a book
to which they could have reference at
this time, in which the spirit of infidelity,
so widely prevailing among the white
men, is endeavoring to find an access
even to the red race. Many attempts
made in old times to pervert them, have
been renewed in these last years, even

in this very year, not only by white peo-
ple, but also by some Protestant Minis-
ters-apostates from the Catholic reli-
gion, belonging to the tribes of the
Iroquois. However, they had no success,
having not been able to make a single

convert.

The arrangement of this book is quite different from that made by Rev. E. De

but

new

Ord

por

millier; the prayers have been distributed under certain fixed heads, and new additions have been inserted, in order to render this volume more proportionate to the object.

But, taking under consideration the want of proper words and phraseology to express the revealed mysteries of the holy religion; the condition of the language destitute of grammar and dictionary-and the want of the substantive verb to be, by which (as Rev. John Eliot long ago observed in his grammar of the Massachusetts Indians), many words under a composition become substantive verbs; it is not to be expected that this book should be exempt from mistakes and inaccuracies.

There exists at Harvard College a manuscript dictionary of the Abnakis (pub

"14-for "Tanawi," read " Tanawa."