boas] handbook of AMERICAN INDIAN LANGUAGES 59 



IV. LINGUISTICS AND ETHNOLOGY 



It seems desirable to say a few words on the function of linguistic 

 researches in the study of the ethnography of the Indians. 



Practical Need of Linguistic Studies for Ethnological 



Purposes 



First of all, the purely practical aspect of this question may be 

 considered. Ordinarily, the investigator who visits an Indian tribe 

 is not able to converse with the natives themselves and to obtain his 

 information first-hand, but he is obliged to rely more or less on data 

 transmitted by interpreters, or at least by the help of interpreters. 

 He may ask Ms question through an interpreter, and receive again 

 through his mouth the answer given by the Indians. It is 

 obvious that this is an unsatisfactory method, even when the inter- 

 preters are good; but, as a rule, the available men are either not 

 sufficiently familiar with the English language, or they are so entirely 

 out of sympathy with the Indian point of view, and understand the 

 need of accuracy on the part of the investigator so little, that infor- 

 mation furnished by them can be used only with a considerable 

 degree of caution. At the present time it is possible to get along in 

 many parts of America without interpreters, by means of the trade- 

 jargons that have developed eve ry\N here in the intercourse between 

 the whites and the Indians. These, however, are also a very unsatis- 

 factory means of inquiring into the customs of the natives, because, 

 in some cases, the vocabulary of the trade-languages is extremely 

 limited, and it is almost impossible to convey information relating 

 to the religious and philosopliic ideas or to the higher aspects of 

 native art, all of wliich play so important a part in Inchan life. 

 Another difficulty which often develops whenever the investigator 

 works with a particularly intelligent interpreter is, that the inter- 

 preter imbibes too readily the views of the investigator, and that his 

 information, for this reason, is strongly biased, because he is not so 

 well able to withstand the influence of formative theories as the 

 trained investigator ought to be. Anyone who has carried on work 

 with intelligent Indians wdll recall instances of this kind, where the 

 interpreter may have formulated a theory based on the questions 

 that have been put through him, and has interpreted his answers 



