The Cayuse language (''Cailloux, Willetpoos'') is an extinct

unclassified language An unclassified language is a language whose genetic affiliation to other languages has not been established. Languages can be unclassified for a variety of reasons, mostly due to a lack of reliable data but sometimes due to the confounding inf ...

formerly spoken by the Cayuse Native American tribe in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

. The Cayuse name for themselves was ''Liksiyu'' (see Aoki 1998).

Classification

Similarities to

Molala The Molala (also Molale, Molalla, Molele) are a people of the Plateau culture area in the Oregon Cascades and central Oregon, United States. They are one of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon, with 141 of the 882 member ...

, the language of people to the south of them in central Oregon, are thought to have been due to

contact Contact may refer to: Interaction Physical interaction * Contact (geology), a common geological feature * Contact lens or contact, a lens placed on the eye * Contact sport, a sport in which players make contact with other players or objects * C ...

(Rigsby 1969: 71).Rigsby, Bruce. 1969. The Waiilatpuan Problem: More on Cayuse-Molala Relatability. ''Northwest Anthropological Research Notes'' 3. 68-146.

Edward Sapir Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States. Sap ...

had originally grouped Cayuse with Molala as part of a ''Waiilatpuan'' branch with the

Plateau Penutian languages Plateau Penutian (also Shahapwailutan, Lepitan) is a family of languages spoken in northern California, reaching through central-western Oregon to northern Washington and central-northern Idaho. Family division Plateau Penutian consists of four ...

; the Waiilatpuan group had been originally proposed by

Horatio Hale Horatio Emmons Hale (May 3, 1817 – December 28, 1896) was an American-Canadian ethnologist, philologist and businessman. He is known for his study of languages as a key for classifying ancient peoples and being able to trace their migrations. ...

(1846), based on his 1841 field work with the Cayuse people at

Waiilatpu Whitman Mission National Historic Site is a United States National Historic Site located just west of Walla Walla, Washington, at the site of the former Whitman Mission at Waiilatpu. On November 29, 1847, Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa ...

Mission. However, Cayuse has little documentation, and that which is documented is inadequately recorded.

Pronouns

Cayuse pronouns listed by

(1846): : Cayuse pronouns listed by McBean: :

Verbs

Cayuse verb paradigms documented by Henry W. Henshaw: ;'hungry' : ;'thirsty' :

Vocabulary

In 1910 or 1911, Stephens Savage, a

speaker, had told Leo Frachtenberg that the following five words were identical in both Cayuse and Molala (considered by Rigsby (1969) to be loanwords). : Limited lexical items in Cayuse had also been collected by Bruce Rigsby, Melville Jacobs, Verne Ray, and Theodore Stern. Their Cayuse informants had highly limited knowledge of Cayuse and were more fluent in

Sahaptin The Sahaptin are a number of Native American tribes who speak dialects of the Sahaptin language. The Sahaptin tribes inhabited territory along the Columbia River and its tributaries in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Sahaptin-s ...

or Nez Perce.

Hale (1846)

A word list of Cayuse with nearby 200 lexical items was documented by

(1846: 570-629). The word list has been reproduced below.Hale, Horatio (1846).
Ethnography and Philology
'. Philadelphia: C. Sherman.

Nouns

Adjectives

Pronouns

Adverbs and others

Numerals

Verbs

References

* Aoki, Haruo. (1998). ''A Cayuse Dictionary based on the 1829 records of Samuel Black, the 1888 records of Henry W. Henshaw and others'', Manuscript. The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. * Rigsby, Bruce. (1965). ''Linguistic Relations in the Southern Plateau,'' PhD dissertation, University of Oregon.

External links

OLAC resources in and about the Cayuse language
{{North American languages Unclassified languages of North America Indigenous languages of the North American Plateau Indigenous languages of Oregon Extinct languages Languages extinct in the 1930s 1930s disestablishments in Oregon Cayuse