Archie Lange, age 15, of Longview, Wash., for his question:
DID THE AMERICAN INDIANS HAVE ONE MAIN LANGUAGE?
At the time Europeans arrived in the New World, the Indians of North and South America spoke more than 2,000 different languages. At least 200 separate languages were spoken north of Mexico. Some had similar words and grammar, but others differed a great deal.
Many of the Indian languages are lost forever because so many people who spoke them died before their languages could be recorded.
Scholars classify the Indian languages into 10 large groups: Andean Equator ial, Aztec Tanoan, Ge Pano Carib, Hokan, Marco Algonkian, Marco Chilbchan, Marco Otomanguean, Marco Siouan, Na Dene and Penutian.
Actually, the American Indian languages were difficult to classify because of the great differences among them.
At times, one language became a trading language for many tribes. An example of this was found at the Dalles on the Columbia River. An important trading center grew at this site. The Chinook Indians of the area acted as spokesmen for the various tribes that came there to trade. As a result, the Chinook language became a trade language.
After European contact, mixtures of European and Indian languages began to be used as trading languages.
Not too many of the Indian tribes were able to write. But the most highly developed Indian writing systems included those of the Maya, the Aztec and some of their neighbors in Middle America.
Maya writing was made up of carvings which were carved in stone. The Maya also may have written on bark paper and deer hide. Scholars have been able to translate about half of their carvings, which are called glyphs.
The Maya also had a number system based on 20, and a symbol for zero.
The Maya used their numbers to create a calendar system that may have been more accurate than those of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks or Romans.,
Aztec writing consisted of pictographs, most of which were pictures of objects. The pictographs provided only limited expression of ideas and the Aztec used them mainly to keep records. The Spanish learned to read Aztec writing, which was still in use when they arrived. But Maya writing had not been used for several hundred years before the Europeans came.
The Inca kept records by tying knots on a string called a quipu. The quipu used the decimal system. The knots at the end each stood for 1, those farther up each counted for 10 and those still higher up stood for 100. The Inca recorded crop records and population information by this method.
Some tribes used pictures or wampum to keep records. Pictures drawn on animal skins or bark showed events in a person's life or a tribe's history. The passage of time was also recorded in the drawings. Belts of wampum, which were beads made from shells, kept account of treaties.