Monthly Archive: June, 2018

Spokane Indians baseball used to be associated with this language

My numerous foreign readers might find the following hard to translate!

Nimíipuu Chief Joseph’s interview with cartoonist Homer Davenport, 1903

A wonderful article at The Davenport Project blog is fun reading, with the added value of bringing us rare quoted Chinuk Wawa from the Palouse region of southeast Washington and north Idaho. 

College yells in Chinook were all the rage

Chinook + Latin + German + English, wouldn’t you know. College kids…

J.A. Meyers of Meyers Falls, Washington remembers…

“Many residents”?

Indians, hops, and Chinuk Wawa

It’s been said Native migrant labor in (mostly settler-owned) hops fields of the Pacific Northwest correlated with speaking Chinook Jargon. Today, some new documentation.

Edwin Eells speech to fellow pioneers

On his election to the Vice-Presidency of the Washington Pioneers Association in 1905, oldtimer and former Indian agent Edwin Eells, who was introduced as about to speak in “both his native tongues — English… Continue reading

More from the father of the Golden Potlatch

There’s more to say about the Golden Potlatch!

A Clatsop pioneer of 1840 recalls…

Eyewitness to a maritime disaster of the United States Exploring Expedition, the wreck of the USS Peacock…

I learned Chinook Jargon in 15 minutes

…claimed the colorful, eccentric, famous rich man after whom Jules Verne may or may not have modeled his protagonist Phileas Fogg!

Ogopogo in Chinook Jargon

Among the odder themes that recur when you’re a scholar of Chinook Jargon: cryptids.