and I have taken pains to carefully compare their data with the linguistic material available. For obvious reasons, I have found myself frequently constrained to dissent from them, and I claim the decision of men of undoubted competency concerning the correctness of my classifications.
Shóshoni.—The Shóshoni family borders and encircles all the other stocks of the Pacific Slope of the United States, on the eastern side, and my enumeration, therefore, commences with the dialects of this populous and widely-scattered inland nation. The natives belonging to this race occupy almost the whole surface of the great American Inland Basin, extending from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevada. To the northeast, and all along the western border, they have crossed these towering land-marks, constructed by nature itself, but do not appear to have interfered considerably with the original distribution of the tribes in the Californian valleys and mountain recesses. The dispositions evinced by them are more of a passive and indolent than of an aggressive, offending or implacable nature, though they are savages in the truest sense of the word; some bands of Utahs, for instance, really seem too low-gifted ever to become a cause for dread to peaceful neighbors. We do not yet understand any of their numerous dialects thoroughly, but as far as the southern dialects are concerned, a preponderance of surd and nasalized a, o, and u vowels over others is undoubted. They all possess a form for the plural of the noun; the Comanche, even one for the dual. Their dialects are, sketched in the rough, as follows:
Snake.——This dialect received its name from the Shóshoni, Lewis or Snake river, on whose shores one of the principal bands of Snake Indians was first seen. Granville Stuart, in his "Montana as it is" (New York, 1865), gives the following ethnological division: Washakeeks, or Green River Snakes, in Wyoming; Took-arikkah, or Salmon River Snakes (literally, "Mountain-sheep Eaters"), in Idaho. These two bands he calls genuine Snakes. Smaller bands are those of the Salt Lake Diggers in Utah, the Salmon Eaters on Snake river, the root-digging Bannocks or Pa-nasht, on Boisé, Malheur and Owyhee rivers, and a few others, all of whom differ somewhat in their mode of speech. Snakes of the Yahooshkin and Walpahpe bands were settled recently on Klamath reserve in Oregon, together with a few Piutes.
Utah (Yatah, Eutaw, Ute; Spanish, Ayote,) is spoken in various dialects in parts of Utah, Wyoming and Arizona Territories, and in the western, desert regions of Colorado, where a reservation of "Confederated Utes" has been established, with an area of twelve mililons of acres.
