Vocabularies of the Oregon or Chinook jargon have been repeatedly published since 1838, when the Rev. Samuel Parker made the first attempt to reduce it to writing. But it is necessarily in an unstable condition, with local variations and a changing vocabulary. The latest _Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or Trade Language of Oregon_, is that of Mr. George Gibbs, published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1863, and includes nearly five hundred words. When studied in all its bearings, it is a singularly interesting example of the effort at the development of a means of intercommunication among such a strange gathering of heterogeneous races. In an analysis of the various sources of its vocabulary, Mr. Gibbs assigns about two-fifths of the words to the Chinook and Clatsop languages. But in this he includes one of the most characteristic elements of the jargon. The representatives of so many widely dissimilar peoples, in their efforts at mutual communication, naturally resorted to diverse forms of imitation; foremost among which was onomatopœia. There are such mimetic words as _he-he_, “laughter”; _hoh-hoh_, “to cough”; _tish-tish_, “to drive”; _lip-lip_, “to boil”; _poh_, “to blow out”; _tik-tik_, “a watch”; _tin-lin_ or _ting-ling_, “a bell”; _tum-tum_, “the heart,” from its pulsation; and hence a number of modifications in which the heart is used as equivalent to mind or will, etc. Again, varying intonations are resorted to in order to express different shades of meaning, as _sey-yaw_, “far off,” in which the first syllable is lengthened out according to the idea of greater or less distance indicated. Many of their words, as in all interjectional utterances, depend for their specific meaning on the intonations of the speaker. Such utterances play so small a part in our own speech, that we are apt to overlook the force of the interrogative, affirmative, and negative tones, and even the change of meaning that is often produced by the transfer of emphasis from one to another word.[99] But with such an imperfect means of intercommunication as the trade jargon, there is a constant motive not only to help out the meaning by expressive intonation, but also by signs or gesture-language. “A horse” for example, is _kuatan_; but “riding” or “on horseback” is expressed by accompanying the word with the gesture of two fingers placed astride over the other hand. _Tenas_ is “little” or “a child,”—in the latter case, accompanied by the gesture suggestive of its size,—or it may mean “an infant,” by the first syllable being prolonged to indicate that it is very small. In addition to all this, words are borrowed from all sources; and the miscellaneous vocabulary is completed from English, French, Cree, Ojibway, Nootka, Chihalis, Nisqually, Kalapuy, and other tongues.