It is a language that "has served as an inter-communicating medium between civilization and the mystery of the savage mind for more years than most people know." And before that it was serving as a linguistic clearing house for the savages of many dialects themselves. The first mention of it by a white man was in 1788 by Meares. It has accordingly been in use for 147 years, for to some extent it is a living language and is still in use. Interest in it is indicated by the fact that there have been more than fifty editions of vocabularies and dictionaries during the past hundred years.
The statement was made in Oregon Native Son in 1900 that "in pioneer days there were but few but what understood this language, and the children frequently could speak, it as well as they could English." Edward Harper Thomas, in Chinook: A History and Dictionary, the most recent study of the language, gives figures to show that in the total its syllables have been familiarly upon the tongues of a multitude:
At one time, some fifty years ago, fully one hundred thousand persons spoke the Jargon. Among all the generations since 1811, or thereabouts, it has been used by upwards of a quarter of a million, to many of whom it was an everyday necessity.
As a part of its literary use not formally considered here, Mr. Thomas points out that a half-dozen or so Chinook words, notably tillicum, cheechaco, tyee, skookum and cultus, are regularly employed "in the vocabularies of writers who cater to the supposedly western-type, pulp-paper magazines. Most of these
