Wishram texts / by Edward Sapir ; together with Wasco tales and myths, collected by Jeremiah Curtin and edited by Edward Sapir.

  • Sapir, Edward, 1884-1939.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Wishram texts / by Edward Sapir ; together with Wasco tales and myths, collected by Jeremiah Curtin and edited by Edward Sapir. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTRODUCTION. The Wishram Texts, forming the bulk of the Upper Chinookan material presented in this volume, were ob- tained, for the most part, in Yakima Reservation, situated in southern Washington, in July and August of 1905* A portion of the material (last two episodes of I, i, i7i 18; II, II; IV, 3, 14) were sent to me after I had re- turned from the field by my half-breed interpreter, Pete McGuff. As I had taught Pete the phonetic method of taking down Indian text followed in my own work, the additional texts forwarded by him were all in strictly pho- netic shape, and are published here with such compara- tively slight revision as they seemed to demand. Besides the two short Wasco and Clackamas texts that were collected many years before by Dr. Boas, and are here published as an Appendix to the Wishram Texts, these texts of Pete’s are the only Indian linguistic material em- bodied in this volume not personally .obtained in the field. The work in Yakima Reservation was undertaken under the direction of the Bureau of American Ethnology. For permission to publish the Wishram texts in the present series I have to thank Professor W. H. Holmes, the Chief of the Bureau. The remainder of the Wishram material, together with ethnological specimens and infor- mation secured by correspondence with Pete McGuff, was obtained under a private grant from Mr. G. G. Heye of New York City. It is a pleasure to record his liberality in this place. The approximately 1500 Indians (according to the Census Report of 1890) who now make up the population of [IX]