There does not appear to be any definite article in the Chippewa language. Pazhik means one, or an.  It may be doubtful whether the former sense is not the exclusive one. Ahow is this person in the animate form. Ihiw is the corresponding inanimate form.  More care than I have devoted may, however, be required to determine this matter.

Verbs, in the Chippewa, must agree in number and tense with the noun.  They must also agree in gender, that is, verbs animate must have nouns animate.  They must also have animate pronouns and animate adjectives.  Vitality, or the want of vitality, seems to be the distinction which the inventors of the language, seized upon, to set up the great rules of its syntax.

Verbs, in the Chippewa language, are converted into nouns by adding the particle win.

Kegido, to speak. Kegido-win, speech.  This appears to be a general rule.  The only doubt I have felt is, whether the noun formed is so purely elementary as not to partake of a participial character.

There are two plurals to express the word “we,” one of which includes, and the other excludes, the person addressed.  Neither of these forms is a dual.

Os signifies father; nos is my father; kos, thy father; osun, his or her father.  The vowel in this word is sounded like the o, in note.

The language has two relative pronouns, which are much used—­awanan, who; and wagonan, what.  The vowel a, in these words, is the sound of a in fate.

There are two classes of adjectives, one of which applies to animate, the other to inanimate objects.

The Chippewa word for Sabbath is animea geezhig, and indicates prayer-day.  There is no evidence, from inquiry, that the Indians divided their days into weeks.  A moon was the measure of a month, but it is questionable whether they had acquired sufficient exactitude in the computation of time to have numbered the days comprehended in each moon.  The phases of the moon were accurately noted.

8th.  Professor S., of Yale College, writes to me under this date, enclosing opinions respecting my “Narrative Journal” of travels, contained in a familiar private letter from D. Wadsworth, Esq., of Hartford.  They terminate with this remark:  “All I regret about it (the work) is, that it was not consistent with his plans to tell us more of what might be considered the domestic part of the expedition—­the character and conduct of those who were of the party, their health, difficulties, opinions, and treatment of each other, &c.  As his book was a sort of official work, I suppose he thought it would not do, and I wish now, he would give his friends (and let us be amongst them) a manuscript of the particulars that are not for the public.”