31st. “Totem” is a word frequently heard in this quarter.  In tracing its origin, it is found to be a corruption of the Indian “dodaim,” signifying family mark, or armorial bearing.  The word appears to be a derivative from odanah, a town or village.  Hence neen dodaim, my townsman, or kindred-mark.  Affinity in families is thus kept up, as in the feudal system, and the institution seems to be of some importance to the several bands.  They often appeal to their “totem,” as if it were a surname.

At three o’clock I went to dine at Col.  Lawrence’s.  The party consisted of Capts.  Thompson and Beal, Lieuts.  Barnum, Smith, Waite, and Griswold, Mr. Johnston, Mr. Ermatinger and son, Dr. Foot and Mr. Siveright of the H.B.  House.  In the evening the party adjourned to Mr. Johnston’s.

February 1st.  Transpositive languages, like the Indian, do not appear to be well adapted to convey familiar, easy, flowing conversation.  There seems to be something cumbrous and stately in the utterance of their long polysyllabic words, as if they could not readily be brought down to the minute distinctions of every day family conversation.  This may arise, however, from a principle adverted to by Dr. Johnson, in speaking of the ancient languages, in which he says “nothing is familiar,” and by the use of which “the writer conceals penury of thought and want of novelty, often from the reader, and often from himself.”  The Indian certainly has a very pompous way of expressing a common thought.  He sets about it with an array of prefix and suffix, and polysyllabic strength, as if he were about to crush a cob-house with a crowbar.

2d.  The languages of New Zealand, Tonga, and Malay have no declension of nouns, nor conjugation of verbs.  The purposes of declension are answered by particles and prepositions.  The distinctions of person, tense, and mode are expressed by adverbs, pronouns, and other parts of speech.  This rigidity of the verb and noun is absolute, under every order of arrangement, in which their words can be placed, and their meaning is not helped out, by either prefixes or suffixes.

I read Plutarch’s “Life of Marcellus,” to observe whether it bore the points of resemblance to Washington’s military character, suggested by Marshall.

3d.  Abad signifies abode, in Persian. Abid denotes where he is, or dwells, in Chippewa.

I refused, on an invitation of Mr. Ermatinger, to alter the resolution formed on the seventh ultimo, as to one mode of evening’s amusement.

4th.  A loud meteoric report, as if from the explosion of some aerial body, was heard about noon this day.  The sound seemed to proceed from the south-west.  It was attended with a prolonged, or rumbling sound, and was generally heard.  Popular surmise, which attempts to account for everything, has been very busy in assigning the cause of this phenomenon.