8 BUREAU OF AMEEICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 40 



The author's material was gathered at the Siletz reservation of 

 Oregon during a stay of a month and a half in the summer of 1906, 

 also under the direction of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 

 My informant was Mrs. Frances Johnson, an elderly full-blood 

 Takelma woman. Her native place was the village of DaVtslasin or 

 Daldani'V , on Jump-off- Joe creek (Dipldlts.'i'lda), a northern affluent 

 of Rogue river, her mother having come from a village on the upper 

 course of Cow creek (Hagwal). Despite her imperfect command of 

 the English language, she was found an exceptionally intelligent 

 and good-humored informant, without which qualities the following 

 study would have been far more imperfect than it necessarily must 

 be under even the very best of circumstances. 



In conclusion I must thank Prof. Franz Boas for his valuable 

 advice in regard to several points of method and for his active 

 interest in the progress of the work. It is due largely to him that I 

 was encouraged to depart from the ordinary rut of grammatical 

 description and to arrange and interpret the facts in a maimer that 

 seemed most in accordance with the spirit of the Takelma language 

 itself.^ 



PHONOLOGY (§§2-24) 



§ 2. Introductory 



In its general phonetic character, at least as regards relative harsh- 

 ness or smoothness of acoustic effect, Takelma will probably be found 

 to occupy a position about midway between the characteristically 

 rough languages of the Columbia valley and the North Californian 

 and Oregon coast (Chinookan, Salish, Alsea, Coos, Athapascan, Yurok) 

 on the one hand, and the relatively euphonious languages of the 

 Sacramento valley (Maidu, Yana, Wintim) on the other, inclining 

 rather to the latter than to the former. 



From the former group it differs chiefly in the absence of voice- 

 less Z-sounds (l, l,^ l!) and of velar stops {q, g, q!); from the latter, 



1 What little has been learned of the ethnology of the Takelma Indians will be found incorporated In 

 two articles written by the author and entitled Notes on the Takelma Indians of Southwestern Oregon, in 

 American Anthropologist, n. s., ix, 251-275; and Religious Ideas of the Takelma Indians of Southwestern 

 Oregon, in Journal of American Folk-Lore, xx, 33-49. 



2 In the myths, I is freely prefixed to any word spoken by the bear. Its uneuphonious character is evi- 

 dently intended to match the coarseness of the bear, and for this quasi-rhetorical purpose it was doubtless 

 derisively borrowed from the neighboring Athapascan languages, in which it occurs with great frequency. 

 The prefixed sibilant «• serves in a similar way as a sort of sneezing adjunct to Indicate the speech of 

 the coyote. Owi'di where? says the ordinary mortal; Igwi'di, the bear; s-gwi'di, the coyote. 



§ 2 



