This extract illustrates the condition of womanhood. Lewis and Clark write of the production of wapato in this locality as though it grew nowhere else; but it grew—yet grows—on the margins of ponds and bayous of most of the streams flowing into the Columbia west of the Cascades. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INDIAN NAMES. Indian names and Indian words in general of the tribes of the region of the Columbia have many peculiarities, and amply repay time spent in trying to study them out. The following pretends to be only the merest beginning, and the writer has advanced only to the edges of the subject. It comprises only those names, and those meagerly and superficially, of the Lower Columbia and Willamette rivers, and these have been obtained from but two or three original sources. Those sources, however, are as reliable and intelligent as are to be found, being the recollections of Silas B. Smith, of Clatsop, and Louis Labonte, of Saint Paul, Oregon. That others may present anything they may have on the subject, and thus the stock of information be increased before those who have the original information shall have passed away, and the later investigators be left only to conjecture, is my idea in preparing this paper. In the first place we must bear in mind a remark of Mr. Smith’s, and that is that the most of the Indian names we have incorporated into our own nomenclature are more or less altered. He says that white men always like to change the original Indian somewhat. This is no doubt true. Such a disposition arises partly from the white man’s egotism, which rejoices in showing that he can make a thing wrong if he pleases, and especially that an Indian name has no rights which he is bound to respect; and it arises in part from the white man’s ignorance. This ignorance is shown partly in the lack of training of our ears in hearing, so that we frequently are unable to distinguish between allied letters, or sounds, such as “p” and “b,” or “m,” for the consonants, or between a simple vowel sound, or a compound, or diphthong. Moreover, our English language is almost hopelessly mixed up between the open, or broad continental pronunciation of the vowels, and the narrow, or closed sound; so that no one is sure that an “a” stands for “ay,” as in “day,” or for “ah,” as in “hurrah.” The Yankee peculiarity, also, of leaving off the sound of “r” where it belongs, and putting it on where it does not belong, like saying “wo’k” for “work,” or “Mariar” for “Mariah,” has very materially changed the original pronunciation. With us, too, the pronunciation of the vowels follows a fashion, and varies from time to time according to what particular “phobia” or “mania” we may happen to be cultivating. At present the prevailing Anglomania is probably affecting our speech as well as our fashions and politics. An Indian name, therefore, that might