96                 ORIGIN OF THE

view which he offers of the Lenni-Leitape idiom, it
would rather appear to have been formed by philoso-
phers in their closets, than by savages in the wilder-
ness. If it should be asked how this can have happena
ed, I can only answer, that I have been ordered to colt
lect and ascertain facts, not to build theories. There
remains a great deal yet to be ascertained, before we
can venture to search into remote causes."
  With regard to the Polysynthetic form or construction,
the same author thus explains it.
  "1 The Polysynthetic construction is that in which the
greatest number of ideas are comprised in the least num-
ber of words. This is done principally in two ways.
1. By a mode of compounding locutions, which is not
confined to joining words together, as in the Greek, or
varying the inflection or termination of a radical word
as in most European languages, but by interweaving to.-
gether the most significant sounds or syllables of each
single word, so as to form a compound that will awaken
in the mind at once all the ideas singly expressed by
the words from which they are taken. 2. By an anal-
agous combination of the various parts of speech, partic-
ularly by means of the verb, so that its various forms
and inflections will express not only the principal ac-
tion, but the greatest possible number of the moral ideas
and physical objects connected with it, and will com-
hine itself to the greatest extent with those conceptions
which are the subject of other parts of speech, and in
other languages require to be expressed by separate and
distinct words. Such I take to be the general charac-
ter of the Indian lanutiages.
  These, then are the declarations of Mr. Du Ponceau
concerning the Indian languages. 1st. That the Ameri-
can languages, in general, are rich in words and in
grammatical forms, and that, in their complicated conm
struction, the greatest order, method, and regularity pre-
vail. 2nd. That these complicated forms called by him
Polysynthetic, appear to exist in all those languages from