Inhabiting the North- West Coast of America. 183 



was attached to them that they found their way to Oonalaska 

 and the Columbia River. This shell money, both from its 

 limited supply, its durability, and facility with which its value 

 could be expressed in numbers, and its portability, was far 

 superior to the coccoa money of the Mexicans. This com- 

 mercial intercourse must have have tended to produce some 

 assimilation among the idioms ; and, accordingly, we find 

 that most exchangeable articles have the same name in Ko- 

 luschian and Haidah, although the languages are, in other re- 

 spects, very different. The practice of kidnapping and sel- 

 ling slaves must have had a similar tendency. 



Another cause of variation is the dialectic differences which 

 grow up in distant tribes speaking the same language, lead- 

 ing to differences of pronunciation which the stranger can- 

 not detect. 



In the Wallawalla and Shahaptan vocabularies, appended 

 to this paper, we see that, even in Indian languages, such 

 variations follow certain rules. According to the excellent re- 

 marks of Mr Rogers, one form of the subjunctive ends in tah 

 and nah, in "Wallawalla it is always tahna ; the Wallawalla 

 substitute sh for the Shahaptan k, as in tshusk for scush ; the 

 Wallawalla substitutes n for Shahaptan /, as wanaka for wa~ 

 lasa. Mr Rogers also adds, that the same word often varies 

 considerably in signification ; and hence another cause of 

 difficulty in judging of affinities from imperfect vocabularies. 

 Another observation by Mr Rogers, points out another cause 

 of variation, of which I know of no other instance among In- 

 dian tribes. He informs us that the Cayoose Indians have an 

 entirely distinct language of their own ; but they have long 

 since adopted the Nez Percee as their national tongue, and 

 only a few of the old people retain a knowledge of their original 

 language. If this circumstance be fully established, it throws 

 much light on the causes of variation in the Oregon languages, 

 and indicates a much more flexible disposition than is usually 

 found among Indians. The smallest tribe, in the south of the 

 United States, retained its language with the most obstinate 

 tenacity ; and the barbarous Otomis retained their uncouth 

 language for centuries amidst the more polished languages 

 of Mexico. With our present imperfect knowledge of the 



