April 18

[In this letter, dated April 18, 1806, I am writing from Washington to Mr. Harris—an American merchant stationed abroad whose commerce allows for international acquisitions—to request his assistance in procuring a comparative linguistics text compiled by the scholar Pallas. Written during my presidency alongside my ongoing collection of native vocabularies, I explain that since the early periods of my life, I have believed that any ancient ancestral relationship between the indigenous peoples of America and the men in Asia would be traced through their respective languages. I observe that comparing my own two-hundred-and-fifty-word tribal lists with this global work will finally allow us to investigate the probability of a common continental origin. Today, this is using comparative linguistics as a tool for anthropology. Long before modern DNA testing or advanced archaeological digs established that Native Americans migrated across the Bering Land Bridge from Asia, I had already deduced this exact migratory theory using nothing but language tracking.]

At a very early period of my life, contemplating the history of the aboriginal inhabitants of America, I was led to believe that if there had ever been a relation between them and the men of color in Asia, traces of it would be found in their several languages. I have therefore availed myself of every opportunity which has offered, to obtain vocabularies of such tribes as have been within my reach, corresponding to a list then formed of about two hundred and fifty words. In this I have made such progress, that within a year or two more I think to give to the public what I then shall have acquired. I have lately seen a report of Mr. Volney's to the Celtic academy, on a work of Mr. Pallas, entitled "Vocabulaires compares des langues de toute la terre;" with a list of one hundred and thirty words, to which the vocabulary is limited. I find that seventy-three of these words are common to that and to my vocabulary, and therefore will enable us, by a comparison of language, to make the inquiry so long desired, as to the probability of a common origin between the people of color of the two continents. I have to ask the favor of you to procure me a copy of the above work of Pallas, to inform me of the cost, and permit me to pay it here to your use; for I presume you have some mercantile correspondent here, to whom a payment can be made for you. A want of knowledge what the book may cost, as well as of the means of making so small a remittance, obliges me to make this proposition, and to restrain it to the sole condition that I be permitted to reimburse it here.