The Kalapuyan Languages

Long ago (among) our tribe of Indians, we were not poor, contrasted with now. Long ago only Indians lived in this country. They did not labor so as to find their food.

From Kalapuy Texts, Melville Jacobs, 1945

While linguists refer to the “Kalapooian linguistic stock,” Indians in the Willamette Valley comprised three different language groupings; the Tualatin-Yakhills in the north, the Santiam-McKenzie in the central region, and the Yoncalls in the far south. Within each of these language groups people spoke in a variety of dialects, prompting Dr. W.W. Oglesby of Cottage Grove to recall in 1884:

The language of some ten or thirteen tribes or families of Indians in Oregon is all different — they all speak a different language. There are not two tribes or families of Indians that speak the same language. . . . Even those who lived very near each other — within a day’s ride of each other — their town would have a different language. . . . They made themselves understood as we do, they would have their interpreters.