PREFACE. 



During the past ten years mucli of my time has been spent among the 

 Indians of the Rocky Mountain region. In the earher years I collected 

 many short vocabularies of the various tribes with whom I met. From 

 time to time, as opportunity afforded, many of these vocabularies were 

 enlarged. I soon learned to enlist Indians in my party, and to seize every 

 opportunity of conversing with them in their own language, in order that 

 I might acquii-e as nmch knowledge of their tongues as possible. A large 

 number of vocabularies were collected, some embracing but a few hundred 

 words, others two or three thousand each. These Indians, among whom I 

 traveled, belonged chiefly to one great family — the Numas, a stock embracing 

 many languages, and several of the languages having more than one dialect. 

 I also made notes on the grammatic characteristics of these languages to 

 the extent of my opportunity. 



In the mean time some of my assistants collected vocabularies furnish- 

 ing important additional material. Much of this related to families other 

 than the one in which I was making especial studies. 



In such a hasty review of the general literature of this subject as I 

 was able to make, my attention was attracted to some interesting publica- 

 tions in the Overland Monthly, from the pen of Mr. Stephen Powers, and 

 soon a correspondence was begun, which finally resulted in my receiving 

 from that gentleman a large amount of linguistic and other ethnographic 

 material, the results of his labors for many years among the Indians of 

 California. 



From time to time other vocabularies were sent me from various per- 

 sons throughout the Rocky Mountain region. 



Up to tliis time I had not expected to publish anything on this subject 

 in my reports, but it was my intention to turn over the whole of what I 

 had collected, through others and by my own labors, to the Smithsonian 



