THE TAKELMA LANGUAGE OF SOUTHWESTERN 



OREGON 



By Edward Sapir 



§ 1. INTRODUCTION 



The language treated in the following pages was spoken in the 

 southwestern part of what is now the state of Oregon, along the 

 middle portion of Rogue river and certain of its tributaries. It, 

 together with an upland dialect of which but a few words were 

 obtained, forms the Takilman stock of Powell. The form "Takelma" 

 of the word is practically identical with the native name of the tribe, 

 Da^gelma'^n those dwelling along the river (see below, § 87, 4) ; 

 there seems to be no good reason for departing from it in favor of 

 Powell's variant form. 



The linguistic material on which this account of the Takelma 

 language is based consists of a series of myth and other texts, pub- 

 lished by the University of Pennsylvania (Sapir, Takelma Texts, 

 Anthropological Publications of the University Museum, vol. ii, no. 1, 

 Philadelphia, 1909), together with a mass of grammatical material 

 (forms and sentences) obtained in connection with the texts. A 

 series of eleven short medicine formulas or charms have been pub- 

 lished with interlinear and free translation in the Journal of Ameri- 

 can FoTk-Lore (xx, 35-40) . A vocabulary of Takelma verb, noun, 

 and adjective stems, together with a certain number of derivatives, 

 will be found at the end of the "Takelma Texts." Some manu- 

 script notes on Takelma, collected in the summer of 1904 by Mr. 

 H. H. St. Clair, 2d, for the Bureau of American Ethnology, have 

 been kindly put at my disposal by the Bureau; though these consist 

 mainly of lexical material, they have been found useful on one or 

 two points. References like 125.3 refer to page and line of my 

 Takelma Texts. Those in parentheses refer to forms analogous to 

 'the ones discussed. 



