> Wish-osk, Gibbs in Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, III, 422, 1853 (given
as the name of a dialect on Mad River and Humboldt Bay).
= Wish-osk, Powell in Cont. N.A. Eth., III, 478, 1877 (vocabularies of
Wish-osk, Wi-yot, and Ko-wilth). Gatschet in Mag. Am. Hist., 162, 1877
(indicates area occupied by family). Gatschet in Beach, Ind. Misc.,
437, 1877.
> Wee-yot, Gibbs in Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, III, 422, 1853 (given as
the name of a dialect on Eel River and Humboldt Bay).
X Weitspek, Latham in Trans. Philolog. Soc. Lond., 77, 1856 (includes
Weyot and Wishosk). Latham, Opuscula, 343, 1860.
< Klamath, Keane, App. Stanford’s Comp. (Cent. and So. Am.), 475, 1878
(cited as including Patawats, Weeyots, Wishosks).
Derivation: Wish-osk is the name given to the Bay and Mad River Indians
by those of Eel River.
This is a small and obscure linguistic family and little is known
concerning the dialects composing it or of the tribes which speak it.
Gibbs[110] mentions Wee-yot and Wish-osk as dialects of a general
language extending “from Cape Mendocino to Mad River and as far back
into the interior as the foot of the first range of mountains,” but does
not distinguish the language by a family name.
[Footnote 110: Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, 1853, vol. 3, p. 422.]
Latham considered Weyot and Wishosk to be mere dialects of the same
language, i.e., the Weitspek, from which, however, they appeared to him
to differ much more than they do from each other. Both Powell and
Gatschet have treated the language represented by these dialects as
quite distinct from any other, and both have employed the same name.