dred and
fifty.

A copy of Mr. Lionnet's vocabulary having been sent to me, with a request
to make such corrections as it might require, I concluded not merely to
collate the words contained in this and other printed and manuscript
vocabularies, but to ascertain, so far as possible, the languages which
had contributed to it, with the original Indian words. This had become the
more important, as its extended use by different tribes had led to
ethnological errors in the classing together of essentially distinct
families. Dr. Scouler, whose vocabularies were among the earliest bases of
comparison of the languages of the northwest coast, assumed a number of
words, which he found indiscriminately employed by the Nootkans of
Vancouver Island, the Chinooks of the Columbia, and the intermediate
tribes, to belong alike to their several languages, and exhibit analogies
between them accordingly.[A] On this idea, among other points of fancied
resemblance, he founded his family of Nootka-Columbians,--one which has
been adopted by Drs. Pritchard and Latham, and has caused very great
misconception. Not only are those languages entirely distinct, but the
Nootkans differ greatly in physical and mental characteristics from the
latter. The analogies between the Chinook and the other native
contributors to the Jargon are given hereafter.

[Footnote A: Journal Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. xi.,
1841.]

The origin of this Jargon, a conventional language similar to the Lingua
Franca of the Mediterranean, the Negro-English-Dutch of Surinam, the
Pigeon English of China, and several other mixed tongues, dates back to
the fur droguers of the last century. Those mariners whose enterprise in
the fifteen years preceding 1800, explored the intricacies of the
northwest coast of America, picked up at their general rendezvous, Nootka
Sound, various native words useful in barter, and thence transplanted
them, with additions from the English, to the shores of Oregon. Even
before their day, the coasting trade and warlike expeditions of the
northern tribes, themselves a sea-faring race, had opened up a partial
understanding of each other's speech; for when, in 1792, Vancouver's
officers visited Gray's Harbor, they found that the natives, though
speaking a different language, understood many words of the Nootka.

On the arrival of Lewis and Clarke at the mouth of the Columbia, in 1806,
the new language, from the sentences given by them, had