Lower Umpqua Texts and Notes on the Kusan Dialects (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from Lower Umpqua Texts and Notes on the Kusan DialectsThe collection of these texts was accomplished under great difficulties, which will largely account for the meagre number of myths and tales contained in them. Louisa's advanced age rendered her practically useless as a narrator. Her memory of old traditions was almost entirely gone, and she had lost the faculty of relating facts coherently and in consecutive order. Besides, her narratives, such as could be obtained, were too much interspersed with Chinook jargon, so that, after having obtained from her part of story No. 18 and an account of her childhood (no. I was forced to resort to her husband's services as a narrator. Since he was not familiar with the traditions of the Lower Umpqua Indians, the following procedure had to be adopted. He was asked to obtain from his wife, through the medium of Chinook jargon, such stories, I - col. Univ. Contrib. Anthrop. Vol. Iv.and in such form, as she could remember, and to retell them to me in English. I then arranged the facts in what seemed to be the most likely consecutive order, whereupon William was instructed to dictate these facts in the Lower Umpqua language, a task which at times was too much for his limited intelligence. He too often lost the trend of the story, and wandered away from the subject-matter, leaving out the most important details, and failing to mention the subjects and objects involved in a certain myth. Whenever unable to continue a thought, he resorted to unnecessary repetitions, so that most of the texts that make up this collection seem to be lacking in vividness of description and continuity of thought. To be sure, in extenuation of W'illiam's shortcomings as a nar rator, it must be borne in mind that the Lower Umpqua language was not his native tongue.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.