1907: Jackson’s Cloochman
A post-frontier popular magazine with more than the usual number of female writers was among the first to oberve that “cloochman” is a slur.
This 1906 short fiction brings us just about the earliest overt comment I’ve seen on how Chinuk Wawa terms borrowed into English tended to have pejorative overtones.
Her Indian name had been Clalish, but the neighbors called her Jackson’s cloochman, the Indian term for woman, or wife, showing by their very naming of her the white man’s contempt for all of a different race, whatever qualities they might possess.
— from “Jackson’s Cloochman” by Alice Woodruff McCully, in Pearson’s Magazine, page 209, August 1907 (Volume XVI, Number 2)
I’m impressed that an author so long ago explicitly identified “cloochman” (from Jargon łúchmən ‘woman’) as a racial slur.
So that is it? Klootchman is a racial slur? Why would Klootzman make it any better?
Duane Pasco is the one who told us Klootchman is a derogatory term and we should say KLOOTZMAN. I see in the Grande Rhonde dicitionary it is Klootsman. What are your thoughts on it? Walk in Beauty, Laura Cyr
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Thanks for speaking up, Laura! I didn’t spell it out, you’re reminding me. This word, when used as a loan into English, is a slur. In Chinuk Wawa, it’s got no such baggage. Same goes for “siwash”, and broadly for Jargon words coming from English-speaking mouths. — Dave R.
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(Duane’s way of making the point is that he feels English speakers say “kloochman” but when he talks Jargon he says “klootsman”.)
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Thank You SO Much for that added bit of information. I was wondering why Siwash was not included as a racial slur…and now I see it is.
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