Besides the gesture language, tribes not understanding each other’s speech had recourse to a medley of corrupted words from each language, from other languages, and from no language at all but springing into being through misunderstandings and necessities. When white men came upon the scene they often thought they were talking “Indian,” while the Amerinds thought it was the white man’s tongue, and neither was talking the language of the other at all or of any other people in existence. It was a jargon. If the whites had previously learned something of another Amerind tongue, for example Algonquin, and they were trying to talk to Dakotas, they would use Algonquin terms, supposing them to be intelligible to the Dakotas, and the latter would suppose them to be English words. These would gradually accumulate through usage, together with nondescript terms, until a working jargon was formed. In this may perhaps be discovered one of the causes that led to the former belief that Amerind languages were loose and changeable. [Illustration: POLISHED BLACK WARE, SANTA CLARA, NEW MEXICO] One of the most important and most interesting of the jargon languages is that known as the Chinook,[26] in the north-western United States, along the Columbia River, which grew into such proportions that it formed at length the principal language in a wide district. It is made up of words from Chinook, Chehali, Selish, Nootka, English, French, and other languages, with a large number of words that belong nowhere else. This same process in earlier times going on between several different tribes doubtless gave birth to permanent languages, which in their turn were again modified. Even in our own every-day English we use hundreds of borrowed words and also some that, like “skedaddle,” “mugwump,” etc., were coined for special occasions. We hardly give a thought to the origin of these words which are seen side by side with others that have come to us through a thousand years and still others that were only yesterday the gift of the Amerind. How few realise when they say chocolate, squash, mush, hominy, pone, succotash, or other terms equally familiar from Amerind sources, that they are talking “Indian”! Tobacco, of course, all understand came from the native language, but it is generally supposed to have been the name of the plant, when in reality it was the name of the roll of leaves from the plant, which was called “a tobacco,” as we now call it a cigar.