Waiilatpuan family The first written vocabulary of the Molala language was published by
Horatio Hale in 1846. As a member of the
United States Exploring Expedition, he had visited the
Pacific Northwest in 1841. Missionary
Marcus Whitman was credited for providing "much valuable information" about the
Cayuse people and other natives nearby
Waiilatpu. Hale also recorded a
Cayuse language vocabulary with Whitman's assistance. In his
Waiilatpuan language family, Hale put Cayuse and Molala as the sole members. In 1910 or 1911, Stephens Savage, a Molala speaker, had told
Leo Frachtenberg that the following five words were identical in both Cayuse and Molala: : In 1929
Edward Sapir grouped Cayuse with Molala as part of the
Waiilatpuan branch of the
Plateau Penutian languages.
Bruce Rigsby reexamined the Cayuse-Molala lexical pairs provided by Hale and found only a tenth to be potentially related terms. Whitman was credited as the origin of the Waiilatpuan linguistic family. Upon his review of extant Molala and Cayuse linguistic data, Rigsby concluded "I do not see how the two languages could have possibly been mutually intelligible."
Dialects There were three known dialects: • Northern Molala, spoken in the
Molalla River watershed. • Upper Santiam Molala, spoken along the upper
Santiam River. • Southern Molala, spoken along the headwaters of the
Umpqua and
Rogue rivers. == Phonology ==