98 DANIEL WILSON ON THE AETISTIC 



to be studied together to uuderstand fully the processes resorted to for the expression and 

 iuterchauge of ideas. 



To the philologist, the efforts at supplying equivalent terms for objects and ideas com- 

 mon to the many diverse races furnish a study full of interest. A Chinook or Clatsop 

 word modified to sftg-Zfrt/Ze, signifying "above," or "high," is compounded with the Nootka 

 lyee, as the name of the High Chief, or God. Elip, a Chihalis word, signifies " first," or 

 " before ;" tilikum^ Chinook, is " people, a tribe," or " band ;" but the two words conjoined, 

 elip-tilikum, lit. " the first people," is employed in reference to a race of beings who preceded 

 the Indians as inhabitants of the world, just as we speak of the Antidiluviaus. Ipsoot is 

 the Chinook word for " to hide," ipsoot icau-vau is " to hide one's speech," i.e., "to whisper." 

 Or, again, opilsah is a modification of the Chinook for " a knife ; " opitsah-yakka-sikha, literally, 

 ■' the knife's friend," is " a fork." The same word is also applied to a sweetheart. Such 

 economic use of words is indeed common by no means rare. But this branch of the sub- 

 ject lies apart from the aim of the present paper. It may be noted, however, in passing, 

 that many of the jargon words, according to Mr. Gibbs, " have been adopted into ordinary 

 conversation in Oregon, and threaten to become permanently incorporated as a local addi- 

 tion to the English." Mr. Horatio Hale, long ago, stated as the result of his own 

 observations, at an earlier date : " There are Canadians and half-breeds married to Chinook 

 women, who can only converse with their wives in this speech ; and it is the fact, strange 

 as it may seem, that many young children are growing up to whom this factitious language 

 is really the mother-tongue, and who speak it with more readiness and perfection than any 

 other." ' As to grammar, the jargon has no more than the inevitable rudiments involved in 

 the necessity for expressing in some way ideas relating to time and number ; and in these 

 directions there is frecjuent resort to signs. But this, which accords with the first stage of 

 picture-writing, is true of the speech of many Indian Tribes. Their gesture-language is 

 being reduced to the ec[uivalent of a vocabulary, and is much more copious than that of 

 the Oregon Jargon. In 1880 the United States Bureau of Ethnology issued " A Collection 

 of the gestvrre-signs and signals of the North American Indians ;" and although this was 

 only designed as a preliminary step towards the complete elucidation of the subject, it 

 suffices to show how important a i^art signs and gestures play in the dialogue of many 

 rude tribes. The Arapahoes, for example, according to Burton, " possess a very scanty 

 vocabulary, and can hardly converse with one another in the dark. To make a stranger 

 understand them they must always repair to the camp fire for pow-wow." " We 

 are not without some due appreciation, even now, of the eloc^uence of action, as well 

 as of speech, in the effective orator ; and Charles Lamb, in one of the " Essays of Elia," 

 aptly reminds us how much even ordinary dialogue owes to expression for its full effect. 

 Candle-light, "our peculiar and household planet, " is the theme of the quaint humourist. 

 " Wanting it," he says, " what savage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, win- 

 tering in caA'es and unillumined fastnesses ! . . . What repartees could have passed, when 

 yoiT must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbour's cheek to be sure that 

 he understood it ? " And so the grave humourist goes on to picture the privations of a 

 supper party in " those unlanterned nights." 



But the Indian, in many cases, resorts to the pencil, or its equivalent, for the elucida- 



' United States Exploring Expedition, vii. G44. '' Bnrton's City of tlie Saints, p. 157. 



