And more Civil War Chinook Jargon by Phil Sheridan

A postscript to my previous article on General Phil Sheridan, one of the Civil War’s Chinuk Wawa “code talkers”.

A smoking gun, found in the book “A Catalogue of the Collection of Autographs Formed by Ferdinand Julius Dreer” (Philadelphia: printed for private distribution, 1893):

THE SAME [i.e. Philip Sheridan].  To George Suckley (Head Quarters Army of the Cumberland, June 19, 1863).  4o.  1p.  A.L.S.

Postscript of five lines to a letter from Captain Mallory to Dr. Suckley, written in Chinook, the Indian “trade language” of Oregon.

— Volume 2, page 106.

This item would be great to track down and read.  There’s certainly a story behind it.  Note that the letter was written by Mallory, and the Jargon PS by Sheridan.

Captain William L. Mallory was Commissary of Subsistence on Sheridan’s battlefield staff.  I bet you he was the W.L. Mallory who ran Mallory’s Stables in Portland, OR, in the 1880s:

George Suckley (1830-1869) has made an appearance on my website previously.  His intense Pacific Northwest experience before the Civil War included time at Fort Vancouver, Fort Steilacoom, and Fort Dalles; participation in Isaac Stevens‘s Pacific Railroad Survey; and a personal connection with Chinuk Wawa dictionarist George Gibbs.