Title:  Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or, Trade Language of Oregon

Author:  George Gibbs

Release Date:  April 20, 2005 [EBook #15672]

Language:  English and Chinook

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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SHEA’S

Library of American linguistics.

XII.

Dictionary

Ofthe

Chinookjargon,

Or,

Tradelanguage of Oregon.

ByGeorge Gibbs.

NewYork: 

Cramoisypress.

1863.

PREFACE.

Some years ago the Smithsonian Institution printed a small vocabulary of the Chinook Jargon, furnished by Dr. B.R.  Mitchell, of the U.S.  Navy, and prepared, as we afterwards learned, by Mr. Lionnet, a Catholic priest, for his own use while studying the language at Chinook Point.  It was submitted by the Institution, for revision and preparation for the press, to the late Professor W.W.  Turner.  Although it received the critical examination of that distinguished philologist, and was of use in directing attention to the language, it was deficient in the number of words in use, contained many which did not properly belong to the Jargon, and did not give the sources from which the words were derived.

Mr. Hale had previously given a vocabulary and account of this Jargon in his “Ethnography of the United States Exploring Expedition,” which was noticed by Mr. Gallatin in the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, vol. ii.  He, however, fell into some errors in his derivation of the words, chiefly from ignoring the Chihalis element of the Jargon, and the number of words given by him amounted only to about two hundred and fifty.

A copy of Mr. Lionnet’s vocabulary having been sent to me, with a request to make such corrections as it might require, I concluded not merely to collate the words contained in this and other printed and manuscript vocabularies, but to ascertain, so far as possible, the languages which had contributed to it, with the original Indian words.  This had become the more important, as its extended use by different tribes had led to ethnological errors in the classing together of essentially distinct families.  Dr. Scouler, whose vocabularies were among the earliest bases of comparison of the languages of the northwest coast, assumed a number of words, which he found indiscriminately employed by the Nootkans of Vancouver Island, the Chinooks of the Columbia, and the intermediate tribes,