Beschreibung:

Autograph letter signed to Benjamin Smith Barton, discussing his collection of Indian vocabularies.
Monticello: 21 September 1809. 2 pp., with integral address leaf (252 x 200 mm). Condition : lower portion of the address leaf clipped and small portion in the lower left margin of the first leaf clipped (both without loss to text). an oft-quoted letter discussing the loss of his famed collection of indian vocabularies, including ones gathered by meriwether lewis, written to the noted american botanist, physician and linguist . Barton (1766-1815) served as the Vice President of the American Philosophical Society and was author of important early works on American botany. In 1797 he dedicated his important philological work New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America to Thomas Jefferson which included a listing of 54 different words in numerous Indian languages to show similarities in their origins. A decade later, he apparently sought to renew his study and wrote to Jefferson, who had himself studied the origins of the languages of the Native American tribes, to request copies of the vocabularies that he had accumulated. Jefferson writes: “I received last night your favour of the 14th, and would with all possible pleasure have communicated to you any part, or the whole, of the Indian vocabularies which I had collected, but an irreparable misfortune has deprived me of them. I have now been thirty years availing myself of every possible opportunity of procuring Indian vocabularies to the same set of words: my opportunities were probably better than will ever occur again to any person having the same desire. I had collected about fifty, and had digested most of them in collateral columns, and meant to have printed them the last year of my stay in Washington. But not having yet digested Captain [Meriwether] Lewis’s collection, nor having leisure then to do it, I put it off till I should return home. The whole, as well digest as originals, were packed in a trunk of stationery, and sent round by water, with about thirty other packages of my effects, from Washington, and while ascending James river, this package, on account of its weight and presumed precious contents, was singled out and stolen. The thief being disappointed on opening it, threw into the river all its contents, of which he thought he could make no use. Among these were the whole of the vocabularies. Some leaves floated ashore, and were found in the mud; but these were very few, and so defaced by the mud and water that no general use can ever be made of them. On the receipt of your letter I turned to them, and was very happy to find, that the only morsel of an original vocabulary among them, was Captain Lewis's, of the Pani language, of which you say you have not one word. I therefore inclose it to you, as it is, and a little fragment of some other, which I see is in his hand writing, but no indication remains on it of what language it is. It is a specimen of the condition of the little which was recovered. I am the more concerned at this accident, as of the two hundred and fifty words of my vocabularies, and the one hundred and thirty words of the great Russian vocabularies of the languages of the other quarters of the globe, seventy-three were common to both, and would have furnished materials for a comparison from which something might have resulted. Although I believe no general use can ever be made of the wrecks of my loss, yet I will ask the return of the Pani vocabulary when you are done with it. Perhaps I may make another attempt to collect, although I am too old to expect to make much progress in it.” The letter concludes with a brief discussion of a pamphlet in Barton’s possession concerning the astronomy of the ancient Mexicans.