The Cowlitz language is a member of the Tsamosan branch of the

Coast Salish The Coast Salish is a group of ethnically and linguistically related Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, living in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington and Oregon. They speak one of the Coa ...

family of

Salishan languages The Salishan (also Salish) languages are a family of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America (the Canadian province of British Columbia and the American states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana). They are characterised by a ...

Cowlitz people

The

Cowlitz people The term Cowlitz people covers two culturally and linguistically distinct indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest; the Lower Cowlitz or Cowlitz proper, and the Upper Cowlitz / Cowlitz Klickitat or Taitnapam. Lower Cowlitz refers to a southwe ...

were originally two distinct tribes: the Lower Cowlitz and the Upper Cowlitz. Only the Lower Cowlitz spoke Cowlitz; the Upper Cowlitz, a Sahaptin tribe, spoke a dialect of

Yakama The Yakama are a Native American tribe with nearly 10,851 members, based primarily in eastern Washington state. Yakama people today are enrolled in the federally recognized tribe, the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. Their ...

Phonology

Vocabulary

Cowlitz is most similar to Lower Chehalis, another Tsamosan language, although it contains some oddities, such as the word for one, ''utsus'' (in contrast to the Lower Chehalis ''paw'').

References

Native-Languages.org
* Kinkade, Dale. ''Cowlitz Dictionary And Grammatical Sketch''. Missoula: University of Montana Press, 2004.

Cowlitz people

Phonology

Vocabulary

References

See also