Kaskaskia Illinois-To-French Dictionary (French and English SIGNED FIRST EDITION)

St. Louis, Missouri: Carl Masthay, 2002. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Very Good. 4to - over 9¾ - 12" tall. Minor edge and corner wear; no dj; lightly scuffed and scratched; corners are gently bumped and rubbed; some light shelf wear; spine is a little faded; overall a very crisp and clean SIGNED FIRST EDITION! Signed and dated by the author on the title page! Very rare and hard-to-find title! Green boards with red lettering and a full-color illustration on the front and red lettering on the spine. 757 very clean unmarked and uncreased historical and informative pages! Extremely scarce and out-of-print SIGNED FIRST EDITION! "In the Watkinson Library of Trinity College in Hartford of my native state Connecticut sits the original manuscript dictionary to the Kaskaskia Illinois language. I express my abiding appreciation to the curator of the library Dr. Jeffrey H. Kaimowitz for his enthusiastic support of my editing of that manuscript over the years. In this major work on the Central Algonquian language called 'Kaskaskia Illinois,' pages 14 and 15 present the many sources of my motivation for causing this book to come into being. Perhaps 30 or more persons may wish to use this work actively, but for all others the hard-won words will be mere wisps of sounds to be contemplated for some seconds in the expected long centuries ahead when needful globalization will level our speech and produce more specialized complicated sets of word understandable to the newly rising population who will have different needs then. Dictionaries such as these are to provide a look-back at ancient times --- a means to contemplate but not a means to restore or recover a time when there was great difficulty in interethnic communication with many languages......." ------ from the Preface. (SIGNED FIRST EDITION).