CATER AMER Te TS 
Told by 
CHARLES CULTEE 
Recorded and translated by 
Franz Boas 
INTRODUCTION 
The following texts were collected in the summers of 1890 and 1891 
and in December, 1894. So far as I have been able to ascertain, the 
Kathlamet dialect is spoken by three persons only—Charles Cultee 
and Samson, both living at Bay Center, Washington, and Mrs Wilson, 
who lives at Nemah, on Shoalwater bay. Unfortunately neither Sam- 
son nor Mrs Wilson were able to give me any connected texts, so that 
Charles Cultee was my only informant. This is unfortunate, as he told 
me also Chinook texts, and is, therefore, the only source for two 
dialects of the Chinookan stock. In order to ascertain the accuracy 
of his mode of telling, I had two stories which he had told in the sum- 
mer of 1891 repeated three and a half years later, in December, 1894, 
These stories will be found on page 54 and page 182 of the following 
texts. They show great similarity and corroborate the opinion which 
I formed from internal evidence that the language of the texts is 
fairly good and represents the dialect in a comparatively pure state. 
Cultee lived for a considerable number of years at Cathlamet, on the 
south side of Columbia river, a few miles above Astoria, where he 
acquired this dialect. His mother’s mother was a Kathlamet, his 
mother’s father a Xuila’paX; his father’s mother was a Klatsop, and 
his father’s father a TkulXiyogoa'ike, which is the Chinook name of 
the Tinneh tribe on upper Willapa river. His wife is a Chehalis, and 
at present he speaks Chehalis almost exclusively, this being also the 
language of his children. 
Cultee (or more properly QjxElté’) has proved a veritable storehouse 
of information. I obtained from him the texts which were published 
in an earlier bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology,* as well 
1Chinook Texts; Washington, 18H. 
