Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 23.djvu/51



The early impression of the first American missionaries to the Nez Perces tribe of Indians was that it would be unnecessary ever to reduce their language to writing, but instead that they might be instructed in English and so at once introduced to the Gospel.

In a letter to the A. B. C. F. M. dated Nez-Perces Mission House, February 16, 1837, Rev. H. H. Spalding, the missionary in charge of the station at Clear Water or Lapwai says:

""Judging from the present, this people will probably acquire the English, before we do the Nez-Perces language, though we flatter ourselves, that we are making good progress. If so, by the time we are ready to reduce theirs to writing, it will not be deemed expedient For why should years be spent in reducing their language to a written state, which when done, must necessarily be increased one-third, or one-half, with new words, in order to embrace the scriptures. And if it is necessary for them to learn so many English words, of course the most difficult, by reason of having nothing in their language to explain them, why not learn the other half, easy to be learned, because they have corresponding words in their own language that will explain them, & then they are introduced at once into an inexhausible fountain of religious & scientific reading. This is my present opinion, but what our duty will be, when we have acquired their language & are prepared to write and teach it, or to teach the English to better advantage than we are now, we wait the future leadings of providence & the better wisdom than ours, of yourself & coadjutors.""

This course was soon found to be not only impracticable, but absolutely impossible, and at the general meeting of the Oregon Mission in 1838 it was formally voted:

""That we apply ourselves to the study of the Native Language & reduce it to writing.""

The Rev. H. H. Spalding as a preliminary step had devised an artificial alphabet, in which the English consonants not needed in the Nez Perces language were used to designate the