Vocabularies of the Oregon or Chinook jargon have been repeatedly published since 1838, when the Rev. Samuel Parker made the first attempt to reduce it to writing. But it is necessarily in an unstable condition, with local variations and a changing vocabulary. The latest Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or Trade Language of Oregon, is that of Mr. George Gibbs, published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1863, and includes nearly five hundred words. When studied in all its bearings, it is a singularly interesting example of the effort at the development of a means of intercommunication among such a strange gathering of heterogeneous races. In an analysis of the various sources of its vocabulary, Mr. Gibbs assigns about two-fifths of the words to the Chinook and Clatsop languages. But in this he includes one of the most characteristic elements of the jargon. The representatives of so many widely dissimilar peoples, in their efforts at mutual communication, naturally resorted to diverse forms of imitation; foremost among which was onomatopœia. There are such mimetic words as he-he, “laughter”; hoh-hoh, “to cough”; tish-tish, “to drive”; lip-lip, “to boil”; poh, “to blow out”; tik-tik, “a watch”; tin-lin or ting-ling, “a bell”; tum-tum, “the heart,” from its pulsation; and hence a number of modifications in which the heart is used as equivalent to mind or will, etc. Again, varying intonations are resorted to in order to express different shades of meaning, as sey-yaw, “far off,” in which the first syllable is lengthened out according to the idea of greater or less distance indicated. Many of their words, as in all interjectional utterances, depend for their specific meaning on the intonations of the speaker. Such utterances play so small a part in our own speech, that we are apt to overlook the force of the interrogative, affirmative, and negative tones, and even the change of meaning that is often produced by the transfer of emphasis from one to another word.[[99]] But with such an imperfect means of intercommunication as the trade jargon, there is a constant motive not only to help out the meaning by expressive intonation, but also by signs or gesture-language. “A horse” for example, is kuatan; but “riding” or “on horseback” is expressed by accompanying the word with the gesture of two fingers placed astride over the other hand. Tenas is “little” or “a child,”—in the latter case, accompanied by the gesture suggestive of its size,—or it may mean “an infant,” by the first syllable being prolonged to indicate that it is very small. In addition to all this, words are borrowed from all sources; and the miscellaneous vocabulary is completed from English, French, Cree, Ojibway, Nootka, Chihalis, Nisqually, Kalapuy, and other tongues.
The late Paul Kane is my authority for some of the details of intonation and gesture-language. He brought back with him a valuable collection of studies of the different races in British North America; and, by means of the jargon, he learned in a short time to converse without difficulty with the chiefs of most of the tribes around Fort Vancouver. But as an artist he was in constant use of his pencil; and, as he told me, he frequently appealed to it, sketching himself, or at times putting his pencil and note-book into their hands, with considerable success in thus supplementing less definite signs. The gesture-language furnishes Cheyenne, Dakota, Apache, and other signs for “paint, colour, draw,” and “write”; the act of writing or drawing being expressed by holding up the palm of one hand and moving the forefinger of the other over it, as if drawing. The jargon has also its word pent, “paint,” transformed to a verb by prefixing the word mamook, “to do, to make”; and its tzum, “painting,” or “mixed colours”; mamooktzum, “to paint.” In the gesture-language of the Dakotas and Apaches the equivalent sign is primarily indicative of daubing the face with colour; but the tribes of the Pacific coast paint their masks, boats, and houses in diverse coloured devices, with some degree of taste. There is, therefore, reason to look for terms expressive of the art in any language in use among them; though the habitual employment of signs may in some cases check the evolution of phonetic equivalents. But among many tribes gesture-language has been systematised into universally recognised pictographs, and so developed into a native system of hieroglyphics.
Among the Algonkin, Lenape, Iroquois, and other northern tribes, and in the region comprising New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and other south-western territory, rock-carvings and pictographs abound. Wherever large surfaces of rock, or slabs of stone, offer a favourable opportunity for such records, they are found, at times executed with great elaboration of detail. But less durable records are in use, dependent on the materials most available to the scribe. The Algonkins and Iroquois ordinarily resort to birch-bark; the Crees, Blackfeet, and other prairie Indians, substitute the dressed skins of the buffalo; while, as already noted, the tribes on the Pacific coast, as well as the Innuit and Eskimo, employ deerhorn and ivory. In the South-West, in the Sierra Nevada and Southern California, the sculptured pictograph, after being incised on the surface of a rock, or the wall of a cave, is frequently finished by colouring in much the same way as was the custom with the ancient Egyptian chroniclers.
Among a series of reports to the Topographical Bureau, issued from the War Department at Washington, in 1850, is the journal of a military reconnaissance from Santa Fé, New Mexico, to the Navajo Country, by Lieutenant James K. Simpson of the Corps of Topographical Engineers. His narrative is accompanied with a map and illustrations of a remarkable series of inscriptions, engraved on the smooth surface of a rock called the Moro. They are of two classes, the native pictographs, and also numerous Spanish inscriptions and devices; one of which records the hasty visit of an old Spanish explorer to the Moro Rock in 1606. The route of Lieutenant Simpson lay up the valley of the Rio de Zuñi, where he met an old trader among the Navajos, who was waiting to offer his services as guide to a rock, upon the face of which were, according to his repeated assertions, “half an acre of inscriptions.” After travelling about eight miles, through a country diversified by cliffs of basalt and red and white sandstone, in every variety of bold and fantastic form, they came in sight of a quadrangular mass of white sandstone rock, from 200 feet to 250 feet in height. This was the Moro, or Inscription Rock, on ascending a low mound at the base of which, the journalist states, “sure enough here were inscriptions, and some of them very beautiful; and although, with those we afterwards examined on the south face of the rock, there could not be said to be half an acre of them, yet the hyperbole was not near so extravagant as I was prepared to find it.” The inscriptions, some in Spanish, and others in, Latin, apparently include examples nearly coeval with the conquest of this region, by Juan de Onate, in 1595; and from their historical interest they naturally received greater attention from the Topographical Corps than the Indian hieroglyphics. But the same locality was visited at a later date by surveyors appointed to ascertain the most practicable route for a railroad to the Pacific coast; and in a Report of explorations and surveys, published by the Senate of the United States in 1856, Lieutenant Whipple furnishes an interesting series of Indian hieroglyphics or pictographs seen on his route. “The first of the Indian hieroglyphics,” he remarks, “were at Rocky Dell Creek, between the edge of the Llano Estacado and the Canadian. The stream flows through a gorge, upon one side of which a shelving sandstone rock forms a sort of cave. The roof is covered with paintings, some evidently ancient; and beneath are innumerable carvings of footprints, animals, and symmetrical lines.”[[100]] Examples of these are given; but of one series, the sketches of which had been lost, Lieutenant Whipple remarks: “This series, more than the others, seems to represent a chain of historical events, being embraced by serpentine lines. First is a rude sketch, resembling a ship with sails; then comes a horse with gay trappings, a man with a long speaking-trumpet being mounted upon him, while a little bare-legged Indian stands in wonder behind. Below this group are several singular-looking figures: men with the horns of an ox, with arms, hands, and fingers extended as if in astonishment, and with clawed feet. Following the curved line we come to the circle, enclosing a Spanish caballero, who extends his hands in amity to the naked Indian standing without. Next appears a group with an officer, and a priest bearing the emblem of Christianity.” The Pueblo Indians, who still worship the sun, recognised in those picturings records of the thoughts and deeds of their ancestors. They pointed to representations of Montezuma, whom they still expect to return, and who is regarded as a divine power; and recognised in the horned men a representation of the buffalo-dance, from time immemorial a national festival, at which they crowned themselves with horns and corn-shucks. The drawing is in all probability an historical record executed at a date not long subsequent to the first intrusion of the Spaniards.
Lieutenant Whipple next describes the carvings found at El Moro inscription rock where, he says, “Spanish adventurers and explorers, from as early a period as the first settlement of Plymouth, have been in the habit of recording their expeditions to and from Zuñi.” He refers for those to Captain Simpson’s report upon the Navajo expedition; but specimens of the Indian drawings are given, which, he says, “are evidently more ancient than the oldest of the Spanish inscriptions.”[[101]] The latter are, for the most part, regular literal records in the Spanish or Latin language, with names, and, in a few instances, the date of their engraving. But the European epigraphists appear at times to have borrowed the ideographic art of their Indian guides, from the way several of their inscriptions are accompanied with pictorial devices, or rebuses, somewhat after the native fashion of writing. One, for example, which reads Pito Vaca ye Jarde, has also the symbol of the Vaca, or “cow.” Another group, consisting of certain initials interwoven into a monogram, accompanied by an open hand with a double thumb, all enclosed in cartouche-fashion, is supposed by the transcriber to be, even more than the previous bit of pictorial symbolism, a pictured pun. “The characters,” he remarks, “in the double rectangle seem to be literally a sign-manual, and may possibly be symbolical of Francisco Manuel, though the double thumb would seem to indicate something more.” The Provincial Secretary, Donaciano Vigil, after noting for Lieutenant Simpson some data relative to the Spanish inscriptions, adds: “The other signs or characters are traditional remembrances, by means of which the Indians transmit historical accounts of all their remarkable successes. To discover (or interpret) these sets by themselves, is very difficult. Some of the Indians make trifling indications, which divulge, with a great deal of reserve, something of the history, to persons in whom they have entire confidence.”
On the summit of the cliff the ruins of a pueblo of bold native masonry formed a rectangle of 206 feet by 307 feet, around which lay an immense accumulation of broken pottery of novel and curious patterns. At Los Ojos Calientes, Lieutenant Simpson visited the estuffas, buildings one story high, called the churches of Montezuma. “On the walls were representations of plants, birds, and animals; the turkey, the deer, the wolf, the fox, and the dog, being plainly depicted; none of them, however, approaching to exactness except the deer, the outline of which showed certainly a good eye for proportion.” These are the work of the Jemez Indians, who worshipped the sun, moon, and fire; representations of which in circular form, and with zigzag barbed lines for lightning, also occur on the walls.[[102]] Lieutenant Simpson remarks that he asked a Jemez Indian “Whether they still worshipped the Sun, as God, with contrition of heart.” His reply was: “Why not? He governs the World!”
Dr. Hoffman figures and interprets a curious rock-painting, copied by him from a granite boulder at Tulare river, California. It covers an area of about twelve feet by eight; and the largest figure is about six feet in length, and appears to be the work of an advanced party of native explorers, intended for the guidance of those who followed on their trail.[[103]] Dr. Hoffman also furnishes some interesting illustrations of the reproduction of gesture-language in native pictographs preserved in the Museum of San Francisco. Certain symbols are in very general use. But the description of an Innuit drawing on a slat of wood, as interpreted by a native, partly in his own dialect, but largely supplemented by gestures, will best illustrate this development of a system of picture-writing among a savage people. A human figure directs his right hand to his own side, while, with his left, he points away from him. This is the Ego, the personal pronoun I. Again, a simple tracing of the like figure, successively with a boat-paddle over his head; his right hand to the side of his head; one finger elevated; his hand stretched out in the direction indicated, with his harpoon, or his bow and arrow, expresses his various actions. A spot enclosed in a circle, and again a blank circle, mark the islands—inhabited or uninhabited,—to which he is bound. A canoe, with two persons in it, defines the number going and the mode of transport; a phoca, or other animal, indicates the prey; and the record closes with an outline of the house, or tent, towards which the canoe is directed. The whole is equivalent to a written memorandum left behind, to inform the members of his family that he has gone in his boat to a particular island, where he will pass the night,—the right hand to the side of the head being a symbol of sleep. From thence he will proceed to another island, where he purposes to catch a seal or sea-lion, and then he will return home. It is in no degree surprising to find that nearly the same symbols are in use by widely different tribes; for, alike in their pictographs and gestures, they naturally aim at the most familiar and literal representations. The Eskimo and Alaskans represent death, in their drawings and bone carvings, by the symbol of a headless body, in nearly the same way as the Iroquois, the Algonkins, and the Blackfeet. To this is added the spear, the bow and arrow, or the gun, to indicate the mode of death by violence. The ordinary symbol of sepulchral memorial is the reversing of the totem and other objects pictured on the grave-post. A succession of lines in rows or columns is the simplest mode of primitive numeration, perpetuated among the Egyptians even so late as the Ptolemaic dynasty. It appears to have been in use among the cave-men of the Vézère in palæolithic times, and is common to all such records. But in the Eskimo and Indian pictographs the elevated hand, with one or more fingers extended, serves for numeration; and where the extended fingers and thumbs of both hands are represented on an exaggerated scale, it signifies multitude. The native gestures, drawings, and spoken languages, have indeed to be studied together to understand fully the processes resorted to for the expression and interchange of ideas.
To the philologist, the efforts at supplying equivalent terms for objects and ideas common to the many diverse races furnish a study full of interest. A Chinook or Clatsop word modified to saghalie, signifying “above,” or “high,” is compounded with the Nootka tyee, as the name of the High Chief, or God. Elip, a Chihalis word, signifies “first,” or “before”; tilikum, Chinook, is “people, a tribe,” or “band”; but the two words conjoined, elip-tilikum, lit. “the first people,” is employed in reference to a race of beings who preceded the Indians as inhabitants of the world, just as we speak of the Antediluvians. Ipsoot is the Chinook word for “to hide,” ipsoot wau-wau is “to hide one’s speech,” i.e. “to whisper.” Or, again, opitsah is a modification of the Chinook for “a knife”; opitsah-yakka-sikha, literally, “the knife’s friend,” is “a fork.” The same word is also applied to a sweetheart. Such economic use of words is indeed by no means rare. But this branch of the subject lies apart from the aim of the present paper. It may be noted, however, in passing, that many of the jargon words, according to Mr. Gibbs, “have been adopted into ordinary conversation in Oregon, and threaten to become permanently incorporated as a local addition to the English.” Mr. Horatio Hale, long ago, stated as a result of his own observations, at an earlier date: “There are Canadians and half-breeds married to Chinook women, who can only converse with their wives in this speech; and it is the fact, strange as it may seem, that many young children are growing up to whom this factitious language is really the mother-tongue, and who speak it with more readiness and perfection than any other.”[[104]] As to grammar, the jargon has no more than the inevitable rudiments involved in the necessity for expressing in some way ideas relating to time and number; and in these directions there is frequent resort to signs. But this, which accords with the first stage of picture-writing, is true of the speech of many Indian tribes. Their gesture-language is being reduced to the equivalent of a vocabulary, and is much more copious than that of the Oregon jargon. In 1880 the United States Bureau of Ethnology issued “A Collection of the gesture-signs and signals of the North American Indians”; and although this was only designed as a preliminary step towards the complete elucidation of the subject, it suffices to show how important a part signs and gestures play in the dialogue of many rude tribes. The Arapahoes, for example, according to Burton, “possess a very scanty vocabulary, and can hardly converse with one another in the dark. To make a stranger understand them they must always repair to the camp-fire for pow-wow.”[[105]] We are not without some due appreciation, even now, of the eloquence of action, as well as of speech, in the effective orator; and Charles Lamb, in one of the Essays of Elia, aptly reminds us how much even ordinary dialogue owes to expression for its full effect. Candle-light, “our peculiar and household planet,” is the theme of the quaint humorist. “Wanting it,” he says, “what savage unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering in caves and unillumined fastnesses! . . . What repartees could have passed, when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbour’s cheek to be sure that he understood it?” And so the grave humorist goes on to picture the privations of a supper party in “those unlanterned nights.”
But the Indian, in many cases, resorts to the pencil, or its equivalent, for the elucidation of subjects in which language fails him. He will take a burnt stick and draw a map indicating the route that has to be taken, the portages on a river, or the trail through the forest, after he has failed by signs and gestures to convey his meaning; and he can interpret with ease the drawings of Indians of other tribes. When camping out on the Nepigon River in 1866, with Indian guides from the Saskatchewan, who were strangers to the locality, they interpreted the drawings or carvings on a soft metamorphic rock overlaid by the syenite of that district; and were able thereby to tell us who had preceded them, and to determine the route we should take. Lieutenant Whipple in the narration of his route near the thirty-fifth parallel, remarks: “Near the Llano Extacado were seen Pueblo Indians from San Domingo. After an introductory smoke they became quite communicative, furnishing curious information as to their traditions and peculiar faith. When questioned regarding the numbers and positions of the Pueblos in New Mexico, they rudely traced upon the ground a sketch from which a map of the country is reproduced in the Government Reports.”[[106]] The Rev. Dr. O’Meara, for many years a missionary among the Ojibway Indians of Lake Superior, thus writes to me: “The Indians were always pictorial, even in common conversation, i.e. they liked to explain what they meant by making figures; and always, if you asked one of them for information as to the route to any place, he would make a rough map of it, either on the sand or on a piece of birch-bark.” This fully accords with my own experience. I have repeatedly seen Indian guides take a piece of birch-bark and indicate on it some idea otherwise inexpressible from our ignorance of any common language. Their map-making must be familiar to all who have travelled much with Indian guides. They delineate with much accuracy the leading geographical features of any familiar locality. I have in my note-books sketches made by Indians, when I have placed the pencil in their hand, and indicated by signs some information I desired to obtain, about game, fishing, or other matters familiar to them; or about their own tribal relationships, which they generally express in totemic fashion by their symbolic bear, deer, beaver, eagle, turtle, or other animal. Such signs of the clan, tribe, or nation are familiar to every Indian, as well as the ideographs of his own and others’ names; and when represented on the roll of birch-bark, painted on the chiefs buffalo robe, or inverted on his grave-post, they can be interpreted with the same facility with which an heraldic student discerns the family history on the painted hatchment or the sculptured shields of some noble mausoleum.
By an alphabet, strictly so called, we understand a series of symbols which have become the conventional equivalents to the eye of the sounds which combine to form the speech of a people. But alpha, beta, etc., were undoubtedly, in their first stage, pictures, and not arbitrary signs; though they passed undesignedly into the demotic characters of the Egyptian current hand, and were then transformed, from ideographic and syllabic characters, into the true phonetics out of which have come the later alphabets of the civilised world. Egypt is justly credited with the origination of a system of writing which lies at the foundation of all our inherited knowledge, and which, as Bacon says, “makes ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations and inventions, the one of the other.” Yet the germ of all this lay in the graphic records of the palæolithic cave-men; and the very same process of evolution from pure pictorial representation to picture-writing or ideography, and so to arbitrary hieroglyphic signs, or word-writing, is seen in the graven records of Copan or Palenque, and on the ancient monuments of the Nile.