Chinook

Chinook
Author: Franz Boas
Publisher:
Total Pages: 130
Release: 1910
Genre: Chinook language
ISBN:

The Chinook Indians

The Chinook Indians
Author: Robert H. Ruby
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 1976
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780806121079

The Chinook Indians, who originally lived at the mouth of the Columbia River in present-day Oregon and Washington, were experienced traders long before the arrival of white men to that area. When Captain Robert Gray in the ship Columbia Rediviva, for which the river was named, entered the Columbia in 1792, he found the Chinooks in an important position in the trade system between inland Indians and those of the Northwest Coast. The system was based on a small seashell, the dentalium, as the principal medium of exchange. The Chinooks traded in such items as sea otter furs, elkskin armor which could withstand arrows, seagoing canoes hollowed from the trunks of giant trees, and slaves captured from other tribes. Chinook women held equal status with the men in the trade, and in fact the women were preferred as traders by many later ships' captains, who often feared and distrusted the Indian men. The Chinooks welcomed white men not only for the new trade goods they brought, but also for the new outlets they provided Chinook goods, which reached Vancouver Island and as far north as Alaska. The trade was advantageous for the white men, too, for British and American ships that carried sea otter furs from the Northwest Coast to China often realized enormous profits. Although the first white men in the trade were seamen, land-based traders set up posts on the Columbia not long after American explorers Lewis and Clark blazed the trail from the United States to the Pacific Northwest in 1805. John Jacob Astor's men founded the first successful white trading post at Fort Astoria, the site of today's Astoria, Oregon, and the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company soon followed into the territory. As more white men moved into the area, the Chinooks began to lose their favored position as middlemen in the trade. Alcohol; new diseases such as smallpox, influenza, and venereal disease; intertribal warfare; and the growing number of white settlers soon led to the near extinction of the Chinooks. By 1&51, when the first treaty was made between them and the United States government, they were living in small, fragmented bands scattered throughout the territory. Today the Chinook Indians are working to revive their tribal traditions and history and to establish a new tribal economy within the white man's system.

Wishram Texts and Ethnography

Wishram Texts and Ethnography
Author: William Bright
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 521
Release: 2010-12-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110871645

The works of Edward Sapir (1884 - 1939) continue to provide inspiration to all interested in the study of human language. Since most of his published works are relatively inaccessible, and valuable unpublished material has been found, the preparation of a complete edition of all his published and unpublished works was long overdue. The wide range of Sapir's scholarship as well as the amount of work necessary to put the unpublished manuscripts into publishable form pose unique challenges for the editors. Many scholars from a variety of fields as well as American Indian language specialists are providing significant assistance in the making of this multi-volume series.

The Languages of Native North America

The Languages of Native North America
Author: Marianne Mithun
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 800
Release: 2001-06-07
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780521298759

This book provides an authoritative survey of the several hundred languages indigenous to North America. These languages show tremendous genetic and typological diversity, and offer numerous challenges to current linguistic theory. Part I of the book provides an overview of structural features of particular interest, concentrating on those that are cross-linguistically unusual or unusually well developed. These include syllable structure, vowel and consonant harmony, tone, and sound symbolism; polysynthesis, the nature of roots and affixes, incorporation, and morpheme order; case; grammatical distinctions of number, gender, shape, control, location, means, manner, time, empathy, and evidence; and distinctions between nouns and verbs, predicates and arguments, and simple and complex sentences; and special speech styles. Part II catalogues the languages by family, listing the location of each language, its genetic affiliation, number of speakers, major published literature, and structural highlights. Finally, there is a catalogue of languages that have evolved in contact situations.

Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico Volume 1/4 A-Z

Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico Volume 1/4 A-Z
Author: Frederick Webb Hodge
Publisher: Digital Scanning Inc
Total Pages: 534
Release: 2003-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1582187487

This Comprehensive listing of tribal names, confederacies, settlements,and archeology was originally begun in 1873 as a list of tribal names. It grew to include biographies of Indians of note, arts, manners, customs and aboriginal words. Included are illustrations, photographs and sketches of people, places and everyday articles used by the Native Americans. The Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Handbook of American Indians. Reprint of 1912 edition. Volume 1 A-G. Included are illustrations, manners, customs, places and aboriginal words. In 4 Volumes. Volume 1 - A to G........ISBN 9781582187488 Volume 2 - H to M........ISBN 9781582187495 Volume 3 - N to S.........ISBN 9781582187509 Volume 4 - T to Z.........ISBN 9781582187518