6 INTRODUCTION. [e^-h' 



REAU OF 

 HNOLOGY 



I went to search for this remnant of the Clatsop and Chinook peoples, 

 and found them located at Bay Center, Pacific county, Washington. 

 They i)roved to be the last survivors of the Chinook, who at one 

 time occupied the greater part of Shoalwater bay and the northern 

 bank of Columbia river as far as Greys Harbor. The tribe has adopted 

 the Chehalis language in the same way in which the Clatsop have 

 adopted tbe Nehelim. The only individuals who spoke Chinook were 

 Charles Cultee and Catherine. While I Avas unable to obtain anything 

 from the latter, Cultee (or more i)roperly Q;Elte') proved to be a veri- 

 table storehouse of information. His mother's mother was a Katlamat, 

 and his mother's father a Quila'pax; his father's mother was a Clatsop, 

 and his father's father a Tinneh of the interior. His wife is a Chehalis, 

 and at j)resent he speaks Chehalis almost exclusively, this being also 

 the language of his children. He has lived for a long time in Katla- 

 mat, on the southern bank of Columbia river, his mother's town, and 

 for this reason speaks the Katlamat dialect as well as the "Chinook dia- 

 lect. He uses the former dialect in conversing with Samson, a Katla- 

 mg,t Indian, who is also located at Bay Center. Until a few years ago 

 he spoke Chinook with one of his relatives, while he uses it now only 

 rarely when conversing with Catherine, who lives a few miles from 

 Bay Center. Possibly this Chinook is to a certain extent mixed with 

 Katlamat expressions, but from a close study of the material I conclude 

 that it is on the whole pure and trustworthy. 



I have obtained from Cultee a series of Katlamat texts also, which 

 appear to me not quite so good as the Chinook texts, but nevertheless 

 give a good insight into the differences of the two dialects. It may be 

 possible to obtain material in this dialect from other sources. 



My work of translating and explaining the texts was greatly facili- 

 tated by Cultee's remarkable intelligence. After he had once grasped 

 what I wanted, he explained to me the grammatical structure of the 

 sentences hy means of examples, and elucidated the sense of difficult 

 periods. This work was the more difficult as we conversed only by 

 means of the Chinook jargon. 



The following pages contain nothing but the texts and transla- 

 tions. The grammar and dictionary of the language will contain a 

 comparison of all the dialects of the Chinookan stock. I have trans- 

 lated the first text almost verbatim, while in the later texts I endeav- 

 ored only to render the sense accurately, for which reason short 

 sentences have been inserted, others omitted. Still, the form of the 

 Chinook sentences has been preserved as nearly as possible. 



