Today the Salishan languages are found in a series of linguistic islands in the general English-speaking environment. Before the influx of English, they occupied an all but continuous territory from the Pacific Ocean as far east as the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, and from the region of Rivers Inlet in British Columbia to a point far south of the Columbia River on the Oregon Coast. The total area covered was probably greater than that of France, for it included practically all of the present state of Washington, much of Idaho, and large portions of British Columbia, Oregon, and Montana. The population was sparse by modern standards, especially in the inland plateau and mountain area. But the coastal Salish lived in an area of relatively heavy population in terms of the general distribution of people in pre-Columbian American. The total number of people speaking Salishan languages has been estimated at about 59,000 in 1780, over half of them (33,500) in the coastal areas.' At least twenty-six distinct and mutually unintelligible languages make up the Salishan stock. Some of them consist of two or more distinctive local dialects. The languages fall into four clearly separate divisions, two of which are internally ramified.2 Bella Coola of British Columbia and Tillamook of Oregon each constitute a separate main division. The Interior Division is made up of seven languages, falling into five groups. What we call the Coast Division, but excluding Bella Coola and Tillamook, is the most ramified of all, since it includes seventeen languages in five branches, some of which are themselves complicated by internal groupings. The following are the names of the languages referred to in this paper, given in an order that shows, as well as possible, their relationships to each other (semicolons separate the divisions and the main branches of Coast Salish; languages that are relatively close together are joined by 'and'): Bella Coola; Lillooet, Thompson and Shuswap, Columbia, Okanagon and Kalispel, Coeur d'Alene; Tillamook; Comox, Seshelt, Pentlatch; Squamish, Fraser and Nanaimo, Lummi and Lkungen and Clallam, Nootsack; Snoqualmie and Nisqualli; Twana; Cowlitz and Chehalis, Lower Chehalis, Quinault. The bulk of the Salish territory is occupied by the seven languages of the