Here the red race offers a striking phenomenon.

There is no other trait that binds together its scattered clans, and brands them as members of one great family, so unmistakably as this of language.

From the Frozen Ocean to the Land of Fire, without a single exception, the native dialects, though varying infinitely in words, are marked by a peculiarity in construction which is found nowhere else on the globe,[6-1] and which is so foreign to the genius of _our_ tongue that it is no easy matter to explain it.

It is called by philologists the _polysynthetic_ construction.

What it is will best appear by comparison.