Although in this, its completest expression, we must seek examples solely between persons of opposite sex, it will be well to consider in an examination like the present the love between men, which is called friendship, that between parents and children, and that toward the gods, the givers of all good things. The words conveying such sentiments will illustrate many features of the religious and social life of the nations using them.
I begin with this group of dialects, once widely spread throughout the St. Lawrence valley and the regions adjoining; and among them I select especially the Cree and the Chipeway, partly because we know more about them, and partly because they probably represent the common tongue in its oldest and purest type. They are closely allied, the same roots appearing in both with slight phonetic variations.
In both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived from the same monosyllabic root, _sak_. On this, according to the inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up the terms for the love of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, friend, friendship, and the like. It is also occasionally used by the missionaries for the love of man to God and of God to man.[361]
In the Chipeway this root has but one form, _sagi_; but in Cree it has two, a weak and a strong form, _saki_ and _sakk_. The meaning of the latter is more particularly to fasten to, to attach to. From it are derived the words for string or cord, the verbs “to tie,” “to fasten,” etc.; and also some of the coarsest words to express the sexual relation.[362] Both these roots are traced back to the primary element of the Algonkin language expressed by the letters _sak_ or _s—k_. This conveys the generic notion of force or power exerted by one over another,[363] and is apparently precisely identical with the fundamental meaning of the Latin _afficio_, “to affect one in some manner by active agency,”[364] from which word, I need hardly add, were derived _affectus_ and _affectio_ and our “affection;” thus we at once meet with an absolute parallelism in the working of the Aryan Italic and the American Algonkin mind.
The Cree has several words which are confined to parental and filial love and that which the gods have for men. These are built up on the disyllabic radical _espi_ or _aspi_, which is an instrumental particle signifying “by means of, with the aid of.”[365] Toward the gods, such words refer to those who aid us; toward children those whom their parents aid; and from children toward parents, again, those from whom aid is received.