PREFACE. 



Some years ago the Smithsonian Institution printed a small vocab- 

 ulary of the Chinook Jargon, furnished by Dr, B. R. Mitchell, of the 

 TJ. .S. Navy, and prepared, as I afterwards learned, by Mr. Lionnet, a 

 Catholic priest, for his own use while studying the language at Chi- 

 nook Point. It was submitted by the Institution, for revision and 

 preparation for the press, to the late Professor W. W. Turner. Al- 

 though 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 Expedi- 

 tion," which was noticed by Mr. Gallatin in the Transactions uf the 

 American Ethnological Society, vol. ii. He, however, fell into some 

 errors in his derivation of the words, chiefly from ignoring the Chiha- 

 lis 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 diff'erent 

 tribes had led to ethnological errors in the classing together of essen- 

 tially 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 



