Monthly Archive: August, 2016

A Kettle River clutchman?

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“You’d better go and cut some wood for your clutchman [squaw]. As I came by I saw her chopping and splitting that old log in front of the house,” replied Maurice. — “Camp-Fires… Continue reading →

The Thunder Bird Tootooch Legends

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“The Thunder Bird ‘Tootooch’ Legends” (Seattle, WA: Ace Printing Co.): what is the story on this quirky 1936 book that I’ve been reading online?   In some ways it reminds me of Alfred… Continue reading →

Pidgin sign languages in the Pacific Northwest

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Thanks to the wonderful language-themed radio series A Way With Words, who give a justified hat tip to Atlas Obscura, we’re led to an article by Robert E. Johnson about “An Extension of… Continue reading →

“Le pea-coat”, a Canadianism?

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Once in a while I reencounter this rarish Chinook Jargon word that has always caused my brain a mild itch that I’ll get to momentarily: lapikwo “frock; short-coat” (as given in Father St Onge’s… Continue reading →

Father St Onge writes from his deathbed, in Jargon

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A strangely unsung figure in Chinook Jargon history writes from his deathbed, in Jargon, in 1898. Father Louis-Napoléon St Onge, OMI (b. 1812), had apprenticed as a young missionary with the now better-known… Continue reading →

Rudolf Wickberg: Ett blandspråk i nordamerikanska vestern

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This looks like quite good Chinook Jargon information (it might help answer a recent question about how Scandinavians pronounced their CJ), but I’ll need a friend to translate it from this Swedish: The… Continue reading →

The Ice-Caves of Washington Territory

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“The Ice-Caves of Washington Territory” was an uncredited travel piece in the illustrious Bret Harte‘s Overland Monthly, volume 3, number 5, November 1869, pages 421-427. (Earlier in the same issue is an interesting article… Continue reading →

Three Mox places, or, I digress

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In a comment to my post about Molalla-area pioneers, Sara Palmer raised a question about an Olympic Peninsula place name: We see “Mox Chehalis” here in the south Sound as a road and watercourse… Continue reading →

Molalla-area pioneers

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I have readers who will take exception to the title “Our Proud Past” of the book where I found the following nuggets of Chinook Jargon.  (It’s subtitled “A Compiled History of the Families… Continue reading →

Gi-a-wak (doggerel)

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“Should you ask me, whence these stories?” — H.W. Longfellow There’s evidence in the following “Song of Hiawatha” clone that Chinook Jargon lies beneath.  For instance: You have the overt “Shaped his lips… Continue reading →