The present paper is a supplement to two well-known contributions to
America philology by the late A. Gallatin. The first was published
in the second volume of the Archæologia Americana, and gives a
systematic view of the languages spoken within the _then_ boundaries
of the United States; these being the River Sabine and the Rocky
Mountains, Texas being then Mexican, and, _à fortiori_, New Mexico and
California; Oregon, also, being common property between the Americans
and ourselves. The second is a commentary, in the second volume of
the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, upon the
multifarious mass of philological _data_ collected by Mr. Hale, during
the United States Exploring Expedition, to which he acted as official
and professional philologue; only, however, so far as they applied to
the American parts of Oregon. The groups of this latter paper--the
paper of the Transactions as opposed to that of the Archæologia--so far
as they are separate from those of the former, are--
1. The Kitunaha.
2. The Tsihaili-Selish.
3. The Sahaptin.
4. The Waiilatpu.
5. The Tsinuk or Chinook.
6. The Kalapuya.
7. The Jakon.
8. The Lutuami.
9. The Shasti.
10. The Palaik.
11. The Shoshoni or Snake Indians.
To which add the Arrapaho, a language of Kansas, concerning which
information had been obtained since 1828, the date of the first paper.
Of course, some of these families extended beyond the frontiers of the
United States, so that any notice of them as American carried with
it so much information respecting them to the investigators of the
philology of the Canadas, the Hudson's Bay Territory, or Mexico.
Again--three languages, the Eskimo, and Kenai, and Takulli, though
not spoken within the limits of the United States, were illustrated.
Hence, upon more than one of the groups of the papers in question there
still remains something to be said; however much the special and proper
subject of the present dissertation may be the languages that lay
beyond the pale of Gallatin's researches.