CHAPTER II. 
HINTS AND EXPLANATIONS. 
This chapter is arranged in sections, and the sections numbered; and 
the following chapter is composed of a series of numbered schedules. The 
sections in this chapter refer serially to the schedules in the following 
chapter, and are prepared for the purpose of explaining severally the 
materials called for in the schedules, and to explain the difficulties which 
the student may encounter. 
Care should be taken to obtain words from the Indians themselves. 
Indians speaking English can be found in almost every tribe within the 
United States. Words cannot be obtained accurately from white men who 
are supposed to speak the Indian tongue, unless such persons have been 
long with the Indians and are intelligent and scholarly, and have had some 
reason for studying Indian languages on account of their being mission- 
aries, teachers, or linguists. © 
_ The general method of communication between white men and Indians 
is by a conventional jargon, composed of corrupted Indian and English 
words, with many words from other European tongues. In this fact is 
found one of the reasons why words should not be collected from white 
men unless they have a scholarly knowledge, as indicated above. 
To collect words from an Indian requires great patience, as it is diffi- 
cult to hold his attention for any great length of time, and it requires a 
constant exercise of ingenuity to devise methods by which he may fully 
understand what is asked by the collector, and that the collector himself 
may fee] that he is working with certainty. 
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