RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 247 erful of the Coast tribes. From the position near the mouth of the great river, they were in early communication with sea-faring men engaged in fur trade, and thus became the commercial middle men, and' their language the common medium for the tribes of the interior, living on the upper Columbia and its tributaries, a vast country extending clear to the Rocky Mountains and equal in area to the original thir- teen States. In the absence of special knowledge upon the subject, we may infer that Indian languages do not differ much as to copiousness, and that the Chinook people were fully up with other tribes in that respect. Commercial inter- course did for them what it does for all people, increased their knowledge and added to their stock of words. They came in contact with civilized men, saw and purchased many things which they did not make and for which, consequently, they had no names, and it was but natural that they should adopt the names in use among the vendors. Later, when the Hudson Bay Company occupied the country with its trading posts, their language was still further enriched by the addi- tion of names mainly of French derivation, contributed by the mountain men and trappers who were mostly French Canadians. When I arrived in the Oregon Territory in the year 1851, the Chinooks had become extinct, but their language was the vocal medium of communication between the whites and In- dians in the whole of Oregon, a survival not at all singular when we reflect as to the manner and need of its acquirement by the various tribes, and that its acquisition by the whites made it a common language for them all. The early Oregon immigrants spoke it, and some of them quite fluently. Some of its terms were so expressive and euphonious that they have been adopted as good enough to be considered English, though not included as yet in our dictionaries. Any one acquainted with the work of translating languages would know at once that the place of interpreter at an Indian agency is very im- portant, and one quite difficult to fill, so much depends upon a correct understanding between the two warring races thus
