Inhabiting the North- West Coast of America. 179 



15. Kalapooiah, — We possess vocabularies of two dialects, 

 of this family, the Kalapooiah and Yamkallie. The language 

 is spoken beyond the sources of the Willamut River, in the 

 extensive plains in that quarter, and separated by the range 

 from the Cheenook and Umpquas. 



16. Shossoonies, — The Shossoonies, Snakes, or Diggers, who 

 reside in the mountains and deserts to the south of the sources 

 of the Columbia, are the only remaining family to be noticed, 

 as the tribes inhabiting California, from the sources of the 

 Rio Colorado southward, are too little known to afford mate- 

 rials for description. In the absence of complete vocabu- 

 laries, we only know that they form a family apart, having 

 no affinity with the Shabaptans or Kalapooiah. The Shos- 

 soonies are, perhaps, the most miserable Indians on the whole 

 continent, except the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego ; and in 

 their arid deserts their condition, as described by Captain 

 Fremont, is more like that of the Hottentots, or the natives 

 of New Holland, than of American Indians. Their chief 

 subsistence, when fish is not to be found, consists in a scanty 

 supply of game, lizards, and small mammifers, and such 

 roots as the country affords. 



Their chief vegetable food consists, according to Captain 

 Fremont, of the roots of a thistle, the Gircium turgenianum 

 oii\iQ Anethum graveolens. The Camas camassia esculenta, 

 and a species of Valerian, V. eduli. It is on such scanty fare 

 that the Shossoonies subsist amidst their rocks and deserts. 



In the preceding synopsis, it has been attempted to exhi- 

 bit as complete a view as possible of the various tribes in- 

 habiting the northern coast of America, from the Polar Seas 

 to the Columbia. The extreme difficulty of the task, and the 

 toil of collecting information scattered in minute portions 

 through a great variety of works, will, it is trusted, be taken 

 as an apology for any errors which may have been fallen into. 

 Were we to construct an ethnographical chart of the north- 

 west part of America, and compare it with the excellent one 

 which Mr Gallatin has given, illustrating the distribution of 

 the Indian tribes east of the Rocky Mountains, nothing would 

 appear more striking than the great variety of languages 

 spoken in the narrow district included between the Rocky 



