Vocabulary of the Snake or Shoshone Dialect 1859

Joseph A. Gebow’s Vocabulary of the Snake or Shoshone Dialect (1859)

The second Indian vocabulary printed in Utah was Joseph A. Gebow’s Vocabulary of the Snake or Shoshone Dialect, published in 1859. As noted in the volume, the non-Mormon Gebow was an Indian interpreter under Superintendent of Indian Affairs Jacob Forney, as well as “an old mountaineer, having been among the Indians and in the mountains for fourteen years; and he resents this little offering as a sample of Rocky Mountain literature of the lone Indian, who is fast passing away, hoping that it will beguile a tedious hour to many, and prove of interest to the trader, the trapper and those who feel an interest in the tongue of the aborigines of the mountains.”