CHINOOK. This important American Indian people held Columbia river from the mouth to the Dalles, and adjacent terri tory. Their culture was a localized form of the North Pacific Coast type (q.v.), with plank houses, good canoes, trade, slavery, pot latch distributions of property, but without secret societies or totemic art. The language is distinctive, and a selection of words from it, much simplified phonetically and the grammar wholly done away with, forms the basis of the Chinook jargon. This trade language contains also French, English, Nutka and other Indian ingredients, and prevails from Oregon to Alaska. The Chinook were organized by settlements rather than tribes; some of their divisions are known as Clatsop, Wasco and Wishram. Estimated at 16,00o in 1805, they decreased (from disease) to a twentieth in the next 5o years, and now number perhaps 200-300, known under different names on several reservations containing ethnic mixtures.
See Lewis and Clark, Original Journals (19o4) ; F. Boas, Bur. Am. Ethn. Bull. 20 (1895) ; E. Sapir, Publ. Am. Ethn. Soc., vol. ii. (A. L. K.)