QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. 177 B 



APPENDIX B. 



VOCABULARY OF THE HAIDA INDIANS 



QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. 



The following vocabulary, though by no means complete, may serve 

 to represent the Haida language for purposes of linguistic comparison. 

 Most of the words were obtained by myself from intelligent natives, 

 often through the medium of the Chinook jargon, aided by drawings 

 •or explanations, and in some cases by a slight knowledge of English 

 in my informant. While generally correct, it may therefore in some 

 ^ases be in error, and in occasional instances phrases or short sentences 

 ;seem pretty obviously to have been given in place of single words. 

 It is also to be observed that the Masset and Skidegate dialects are not 

 so diverse as they might appear to be on a slight examination of the 

 lists, for while in most cases the same word has been obtained in each 

 locality, but with some degree of modification, not infrequently a 

 different word with the same or similar meaning has been substituted, 

 though that set down in the other dialect may also be well understood. 

 It may further be remarked that the syllable tl or hi prefixed to many 

 words, probably in most cases represents the article, but where I have 

 not been sure of this I have hesitated to remove it. The words, 

 before being written down, were invariably repeated by myself till I 

 succeeded in pronouncing them to the satisfaction of my instructor. 



The indefinite character of the pronunciation of an unwritten 



language is so marked, in most of those with which I have had to do, 



that in the absence of personal familiarity with the language, the use 



of a complete and highly elaborated system of orthography is in 



practice almost impossible. I have therefore employed, with little 



alteration, that suggested in No. 160 of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous 



Collections, entitled Instructions for Research relative to the Ethnology 

 12 



