White good, Indian bad
A racist Catch-22. Paraphrased:
The only good Indian is one who you turn into a White person. The only easy way to acculturate the Indians is to use Chinook Jargon. Chinook Jargon is a worthless Indian language.
Read on as Father Le Jeune describes to his Kamloops Wawa readers the kind of prejudices his newspaper meets with from Whites. (Issue #60 of 8 January 1893, pages 1 & 2.) It may be interesting to compare what he’s saying to the Aboriginal people, which I translate below, with his English version seen in these images.
Pus chi ikta shako kopa
When a new thing comes along in
ukuk ilihi, aiak tilikom
this world, some people
shako tiki ukuk, pi hlwima
come rushing, wanting it, while other
tilikom ilo tiki [NULL].
people hate it.
Alta ukuk Shinuk pipa
Now this Chinook paper
chi shako kopa msaika.
has recently come to you folks.
Pi alta ilip kopa <300>
And now more than 300
tilikom chako komtaks ikta
[Indian] people are learning what
iaka wawa ukuk pipa. Ilo
this paper says. It won’t
aias lili pi klaska shako
be very long till they have
komtaks.
learned.
Pi aiak hlwima tikop
But right away other, White,
tilikom klaska kaltash wawa[…]
people start putting down[…]
Ikta mamuk ilo mamuk skul
“Why not teach
kopa Inglish kopa tilikom? wawa
English to the [Indian] people?” says
iht man. = Kopit Sawash
one man. = “It’s just an Indian
pipa ukuk, wawa iht
paper, this,” says
hlwima man. = Kaltash
another. =
chort hand [SIC] ukuk, wawa iht
“That’s worthless shorthand,” says still
hlwima man. = Kopit
another. = “Just
Sawash chort hand wawa
Indian shorthand,” says
iht hlwima man.
still another man.
Ilo ik[ta] tlus iaka
“It does nothing good
mamuk kopa Sawash,
for the Indians,”
wawa iht man.
says another.
Iaka mamuk Sawash
“It makes the Indians
chako sahali tomtom
get uppity,”
wawa iht man.
says another.
Alki nsaika nanish kata
We shall see how
ukuk kanawi. Alki kanawi
all of this is. In time, every-
tilikom chako komtaks
body will find out
pus tlus ukuk Shinuk
whether this Chinook writing
pipa pus kaltash
is good or worthless.
Klhosh, I daresay. And fie on those old timey racist cynics. LeJeune earns a gold star in my book.
Changing tack, more surprises in his language:
“Ilip kopa 300” This use of elip is news to me. Does LeJeune ever use manaqi at all?
“Sahali tumtum” A new gloss to me. You reckon this as translating to “uppity” and not “happy?” Well, I can see it roughly correlating to youtlhelh/youtlh… As in, he is wryly reporting to his native readers that “The whites are worried that you might get too happy.”
LikeLike
You asked:
* Does LeJeune ever use manaqi at all?
= Never. There is no sign of that word in the Kamloops country. Instead, in BC you’ll find “ilip” or even “mo”/”mor”.
* “Sahali tumtum” A new gloss to me. You reckon this as translating to “uppity” and not “happy?”
= Yes, uppity/arrogant/conceited/snotty/full of oneself. This is a common phrase around Kamloops, and the meaning is crystal clear from the many times it’s used by Native and other speakers. For “happy” they are content to use “tlus tomtom” and “yutl”/”yutl tomtom”. Note in this connection that “yutl”/”yutl tomtom” never mean “uppity/conceited” in colloquial Chinook of the region — even though Le Jeune tries to use it that way. He had to have been confusing his readers sometimes…
LikeLike
Fascinating!
What boundaries established these divergent usage areas or dialects? From what I can tell there were: The Chinukwawa of GR and points south, the plateau, Bay Center to Puget Sound, the Okanagan, and New Westminster up to the north coast. Is this a fair appraisal?
LikeLike
It’s hard to firmly set boundaries between dialects of the Jargon, but illuminating to recognize them. I’m more or less in agreement with your classification:
(1) Grand Ronde certainly stands out.
(2) The Interior (Kamloops area – Columbia Plateau is distinct, with the former more developed.
(3) The entire coast remains, with the caveat again that the Jargon is much more developed at its historical epicenter (Shoalwater Bay) and noticeably stripped-down the farther away you get from there.
LikeLike