NOTES ON THE TAKELMA INDIANS OF SOUTHWESTERN OREGON 1

Abstract

Few regions in this country are so slightly known, bo ically and linguistically, as the section of Washington lying east of the strip of coast land, and in this large a tion occupied by the Takelma Indians, generally r referred to as Rogue or Upper Rogue River Indians, remained quite undefined. The scattered and, I fear, al notes that were obtained in the summer of 19o6, in working out the language of these practically extinct the direction of the Bureau of American Ethnology, a a contribution toward defining this position. It may the outset that many things point to the Takelma as h formed an integral part of the distinct Californian area made better known by the work of Drs Dixon, Go Kroeber.2 HABITAT -LINGUISTIC POSITION ---The determination of the exact location of the Takelma is a matter of some difficulty. In all probability the revised linguistic map recently issued in Bulletin 30 of the Bureau of American Ethnology is incorrect in that it gives the stock too little space to the north and east. To the north the Takelma certainly occupied the northern bank of Rogue river I Read before the American Anthropological Association, New York, December, 19o6. Published by permission of the Bureau of American Ethnology. 2See Dr A. B. Lewis: Tribes of the Columbia Valley and the Coast of Washington and Oregon, Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, vol. I, pt. 2, pp. 175-178, for a summary of the little that is known of the general culture of southwestern Oregon (Athabascan, Takelma, and Kusan tribes).