Ivan Munk, “Spokane country: The way it was”
Ivan Munk. 1973. “Spokane country: The way it was / A Spokane heritage publication.” Spokane, WA: Spokane Heritage Publishing Co.
This is a wonderfully researched, thought-out and drawn comic-book format treatment of major points in Spokane’s history.
Ivan Munk wrote and drew it.
At the bottom of the second page of the “Legend of the Spokanes: As told by Chief Lot of the Spokane Tribe”, there’s a panel with the text,
“Then one day, according to the legend, at noon (called sit-kum-sun) this life was ended…the skies became as dark as night.”
‘Sit-kum-sun’ is indeed the middle of the day…in Chinook Jargon.
There’s a bibliography at the end of the book; I’d like to track down where this story from Whis-tel-posum (Lot) is found. Was he talking some CJ to the non-Native recorder?
Later in the book, a story on “James Glover” [founder of our fair city] depicts him and his partner J.N. Metheny riding out of the Palouse country toward present-day Spokane:
This is a colorful visualization of the point in Glover’s journey where his memoirs say he talked Chinook Jargon with some Indians.
I’m blogging late at night, so excuse the rough and ready scans. Off to bed! — Dave
According to what I have been able to find about this story it was told to Colville Indian Agent Ricard D. Gwydir who wrote it down and read it to The Spokane Historical Society in the late 1800’s. A copy of Gwydir’s story about the Spokane Flood was printed in the Washington Historical Quarterly in April 1907. While I have been unable to discover the precise date that Gwydir first learned this story, Chief Lot died in 1902, so prior to that date. The version I read had no Chinook Jargon in it.
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What is the connection to Chinook jargon? Is it the word “sit-kum-sun?” (An interesting word all by its self.) Dad
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“Sit-kum-sun” is Chinook Jargon for “middle / half” (sitkum) and “day” (sun), therefore “noon”. By the way, thanks for the book, Dad.
Sharon, how nice to get this background information from you. While you found no overt mention of CJ, two things make me think Lot could’ve been speaking (some of) it to Gwydir. First, Agent Gwydir elsewhere accurately recorded Native people talking CJ; this appears in the book that came out a decade ago. Second, If Chief Lot lived before 1900, that’s the timespan when most mentions of Spokanes talking Chinuk Wawa come from. The earliest possible one that I’ve noticed is around 1838 in Mary Walker’s diaries; the latest might be the 1920s or just into the 1930s from Pauline Flett’s reminiscences of older people.
Cheers!
–Dave Robertson–
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