Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or, Trade Language of Oregon

Produced by David Starner, Richard Prairie and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team.
1863.
Some years ago the Smithsonian Institution printed a small vocabulary of the Chinook Jargon, furnished by Dr. B.R. Mitchell, of the U.S. Navy, and prepared, as we afterwards learned, by Mr. Lionnet, a Catholic priest, for his own use while studying the language at Chinook Point. It was submitted by the Institution, for revision and preparation for the press, to the late Professor W.W. Turner. Although it received the critical examination of that distinguished philologist, and was of use in directing attention to the language, it was deficient in the number of words in use, contained many which did not properly belong to the Jargon, and did not give the sources from which the words were derived.
Mr. Hale had previously given a vocabulary and account of this Jargon in his Ethnography of the United States Exploring Expedition, which was noticed by Mr. Gallatin in the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, vol. ii. He, however, fell into some errors in his derivation of the words, chiefly from ignoring the Chihalis element of the Jargon, and the number of words given by him amounted only to about two hundred and fifty.
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.