VI PREFACE. 



affairs, however; for Dr. Franz Boas, the latest and most thorough 

 worker in the Chinookan field, has his grammar, dictionary, and texts 

 ill an advanced state of preparation for publication by the Bureau of 

 Ethnology. His material, collected during 1890 and 1891, was gathered 

 none too soon, for, as will be seen by the extract from the introduction 

 to his legends, which he has kindly permitted me to make and Avhich 

 is given on page 7 of this paper, the opportunity for so doing would 

 soon have passed. 



It needs bat a glance through the accompanying pages to show the 

 preponderance of material, both i)ublished and in manuscript, relating 

 to the Jargon over that of the Chinookan languages proper, a prepon- 

 derance so great that, were it proper to speak of the Jargon as an 

 American language, a change of title to this bibliography would be 

 necessary. Made up as it is from several Indian tongues, the Chinookan, 

 Salishan, Wakashan, and Shahaptian principally, and from at least 

 two others, the English and the French, the Chinook Jargon might 

 wath almost equal propriety have been included in a bibliography of 

 any one of the other native languages entering into its composition. It 

 is made a part of the Chinookan primarily because of its name and 

 secondarily from the fact th at that family has contributed a much greater 

 number of words to its vocabulary than has any one of the others. 



Under various authors herein — Blanchet, Demers, Gibbs, Hale, 

 Le Jeune, and others — will be found brief notes relating to the Jargon, 

 trade language, or international idiom, as it is variously called; and 

 the following succinct account of its origin from Dr. George Gibbs,' 

 the first to attempt its comprehensive study, completes its history: 



The origin of this Jargon, a conventional language similar to the Lingua Franca 

 of the Mediterranean, the Negro-English-Dutch of Surinam, the Pigeon English of 

 China, and several other mixed tongues, dates back to the fur droguers of the last 

 century. Those mariners, whose enterprise in the fifteen years preceding 1800 

 explored the intricacies of the northwest coast of America, picked up at their gen- 

 eral rendezvous, Nootka Sound, various native words useful in barter, and thence 

 transplanted them, with additions from the P^uglish, to the shores of Oregon. Even 

 bef oretheirday, the coasting trade and warlike expeditious of the northern tribes, 

 themselves a seafaring race, had opened up a partial understanding of each other's 

 speech; for when, in 1792, Vancouver's officers visited Gray's Harbor they found that 

 the natives, though speaking a different language, understood many words of the 

 Nootka. 



On the arrival of Lewis and Clarke at the month of the Columbia, in 1806, the 

 new language, from the sentences given by them, had evidently attained some form. 

 It was with the arrival of Astor's party, however, that the Jargon received its prin- 

 cipal impulse. Many more words of English were then brought in, and for the lirst 

 time the French, or rather the Canadian and Missouri patois of the French, was 

 introduced. The principal seat of the company being at Astoria, not only a large 

 addition of Chinook words was made, but a considerable number was taken from 

 the Chihalis, who immediately bordered that tribe on the north, each owning a 

 portion of Shoalwater Bay. The words adopted from the several languages were, 



' Dictionary of the Chiuook Jargon. Washington, 1863. 



