Three principal languages and several sublanguages were spoken by the coastal tribes of Oregon and Washington. The three principal ones were Nootka, Coast Salish and Chinook. In the interior, east of the Cascades, Salish was the principal language, with several sublanguages.

Because there was no single language that all tribes spoke or understood, and because the trappers and traders found it impossible to learn all the various dialects, Chinook jargon developed. This was a mixture of Chinook, French, English and a few words of Russian and other European languages.

The tribes had no written language as we know it. This is one reason that so little is known of the native culture before the coming of the white men, who wrote about what they saw. Picture symbols have been found carved in rocks at various places indicating stories and important events in the lives of the tribes at that time. The totem poles of the Indians to the north tell stories of individuals or families. Many symbols were also found carved in wooden and stone household utensils and many of the woven baskets had designs of significance woven into them.

The first attempt to put Indian language into writing was made at Lapwai, Idaho, in the 1830s by early missionary Rev. Henry Spalding and his assistant Asa Smith. The result was numerous variations of spellings for many of the Indian names. Rev. Daniel Lee, a missionary at the Dalles, also noted many of the local dialects in his memoirs after returning to the states. These notations were an important step toward saving some of the history of the tribes of that time period. According to Lee, during the salmon season "there are perhaps five hundred individuals, the remnants of five different tribes, that fish on the Columbia, from the mouth of the river to the Cathlamet Islands, a distance of about twenty-five miles; and the dialects of these clans differ from each other as much as the examples do which I have given":

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