A Kettle River clutchman?
“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
Monthly Archive: August, 2016
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The Thunder Bird Tootooch Legends
“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
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?
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
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
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
“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
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
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)
“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