Page:Wishram by Henry J. Biddle.djvu/15

124 some of which the writer has already cited, will help to solve the problem.

Edward Sapir has collected the myths of the Wishram Indians, and compiled them in a book called "Wishram Texts." This eminent authority on Indian languages explains much that has heretofore been obsucre He collected his information from Wishram Indians living on the Yakima Reservation, to which many of them had moved. In the introduction to his work, speaking of these Indians of the Yakima Reservation, he says:

"The greater part.....are speakers of Sahaptin dialects, the minority (Wishram, more properly Wi'cxam Indians, their own name for themselves is Ila'xluit) speak that dialect of Upper Chinookan-they occupied the northern bank of the Columbia about the Dalles."

P. 36. footnote. "At!at!a's furnace...was located on a small island.....near the Falls and only a short distance up from the main village of Wishram or Nixluidix. It was reckoned as the extreme eastern point on the river of the Wishram (hence also Chinookan) country."

(The map of the U. S. engineers, opposite page shows no island more than about one and a half miles above the head of the Long Narrows, or closer than about the same distance to the foot of the Little Narrows.) P. 38. footnote. "Nixlu'idix, across and up about five miles from the present town of The Dalles, was the chief village of the Wishram........itcxlu'it ('I am a Wishram') is probably the 'Echeloot' of Lewis and Clarke."

The question now begins to clarify itself. Without reference to the sites of these villages, it becomes clear that Nixlu'idix, the Niculuita of Wilkes, was the village of the E-che-lute Nation of Lewis and Clark. It also be-