Monthly Archive: November, 2019

H. Guillod, Chinook, and Alberni Indians

We learn some background on one of the original documentors of British Columbia Chinook Jargon, from an old British Protestant magazine.

Cryptic “cumtux” in a real rough Arizona newspaper

Your guess is as good as mine about this funny slug of out-of-place Chinook…

The Indians will have plenty of muck-a-muck for the winter

A century and a half later, I wish all my readers háyú mə́kʰmək for the coming year.

What do Mary’s little lamb and Chinuk Wawa have to do with each other?

This one gets pretty free-range…

1881: Remoter Sechelts don’t know Chinuk Wawa

For a community who embraced “Chinook Writing” and Chinook Jargon in the 1890s, the Sechelt Salish people of BC’s Sunshine Coast surprise us by their 1880s unfamiliarity with Jargon.

The Great Potlatch Era

A tiny history lesson:

“Builders by the Sea” by Bonnycastle Dale

The author, Ontario-born BC naturalist Henry William Johnstone Bonnycastle Dale (Waddingham) (1868-1936), has a double surname and a double publishing credit here…

Discovered: GAMINE is the etymology of lakamín ‘stew; gravy’

Among the delights of my years of Chinuk Wawa research is to just read and read … because there’s so much old data that’s never previously been analyzed.

“Kamloops Wawa” in The Stenographer magazine (Part 1)

When Kamloops Wawa was still new, many people far away were taking an interest in it…

1889: Siletz Athabaskan Chinuk Wawa myth awaits your translation

We’ve known at least one myth told in Chinook Jargon by a Siletz Reservation Indian to linguistic anthropologist Melville Jacobs (1902-1971)…