INTRODUCTION 



In 1884 J. Owen Dorsey spent a month at the Siletz reservation, 

 Orej^on, collecting short vocabularies of the Siuslaw and Lower Ump- 

 qua, as well as of other languages. Prior to Dorsey's investigations 

 the linguistic position of Siuslaw and Lower Umpqua was a debated 

 question. Some investigators believed that these two dialects belonged 

 to the Yakonan family; while others, notably Latham and Gatschet, 

 held them to form a distinct stock, although they observed marked agree- 

 ment with some features of the Yakonan. After a superficial inves- 

 tigation, lasting less than a month, Dorsej' came to the conclusion 

 that Siuslaw and Lower Umpqua were dialects belonging to the 

 Yakonan stock. This assertion was repeated by J. W. Powell in his 

 "Indian Linguistic Families" {Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau 

 of American Ethnology^ p. 134), and was held to be correct by all 

 subsequent students of American Indian languages. This view, how- 

 ever, is not in harmony with my own investigations. A closer study 

 of Alsea (one of the Yakonan dialects) on the one hand, and of Lower 

 Umpqua on the other, proves conclusively that Siuslaw and Lower 

 Umpqua form a distinct familj^, which I propose to call the Siuslawan 

 linguistic stock. ^ The term "Siuslaw" was given preference over 

 "Umpqua "or "Lower Umpqua," in order to avoid the ambiguity of 

 meaning which might arise from the fact that we have become accus- 

 tomed to call the Athapascan dialect, spoken on the upper course of the 

 Umpqua river, the " Upper Umpqua." 



The material on which the following sketch is based was collected, 

 under the joint auspices of the Bureau of American Ethnology and of 

 Columbia University, on the Siletz reservation, Oregon, during the 

 months of March, April, and May, 1911. 



My principal informant was Louisa Smith, a Lower Umpqua 

 Indian over 70 years of age. Her advanced years, her absolute 

 lack of knowledge of the English language, her ill health, and, above 

 all, the fact that prior to my arrival on the reservation she had 



'It is not at all impossible that this stock, the Yakonan, Kusan, and perhaps the Kalapuyan, may 

 eventually prove to be genetically related. Their affinities are so remote, however, that I prefer to 

 take a conservative position, and to treat them for the time being as independent stocks. 



437 



