1896: Chief Andrew of North Thompson teases Chief Louis of Kamloops
Two Secwépemc chiefs show that they like each other…
Qelmucw at Yehelesten, Simpcw First Nation folks (image credit: Simpcw.com)
My Spokan Salish-teaching elder Pauline Flett, anyway, always said that if an Indian teases you, they like you.
I guess these two leaders had a high opinion of each other!
From Kamloops Wawa June 1896 No. 6 Vol. V Number 141:
The Introductory page contains an anecdotal story of nearly-60-year-old Chief Andrew (North Thompson) [Simpcw First Nation] learning to read Chinuk-Pipa writing with spectacles, once he…
“…saw his young men progressing in the knowledge of the Chinook writing.
He had to procure a set of spectacles, and to have a special edition writtten out in large characters by some of his men.
After a few days’ study he found out that he was not too old to master the shorthand, and he was so much pleased with his success that he at once wrote to Chief Louis, at Kamloops:
‘If you are not quite blind yet, you had better start in to learn the Chinook writing: you see, I am nearly blind, yet I am learning the “Wawa” Shorthand.’
He succeeded so well that he is now able to read anything in Chinook.
His wife has made the same progress in the study.
As an evidence of this, Mr. J.F. Smith, settler on the North Thompson, relates how, a few months ago having received from the Indians a note in shorthand, which he was then unable to read, he called upon Chief Andrew, to see if he could not make out the contents of the message.
Whereupon Andrew drew out his spectacles, and at once read the letter, explaining the contents to Mr. Smith, and concluding with the remark, ‘that previously the Indians had to recur to their civilized friends for the reading of their correspondence; now the contrary takes place.’”
Chief Andre (“Andrew” is the Anglicized version of his name that the Feds decided on, and henceforth cast into stone), may well have been teasing his cousin CLEXLIXQEN, LOUIS (Xlexxle’xken, Klicktickkun, Tlihtlihen, Hatakun, Little Louis, Petit Louis), also given the Anglicized (DIA), because of Louis’s insistence that in order to communicate with whites, one must take up Christianity, specifically Catholicism, and doubtless, Andre wanted to prove him wrong…which he did. Louis eventually stepped away from proselytizing, and got into race-horse breeding, so there you go. The person in this whole story you want to learn more about, for this era, is John Freemont Smith, fluent in Chinook Wawa, busybody post office operator AND Indian Agent, AND entrepreneur of coal and mica found on Andre’s reserve…he was up to his eyeballs in whatever was going…he may even have had a role to play in altering the written record of what we know about the way things were back in this day.
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Your comments are valuable, Judy! Here’s a bit more about John Fremont Smith, for those who don’t know enough about this Black BC pioneer. (Linguistic trivia: He likely spoke the creole language Negerhollands, because he was born in the Virgin Islands in 1850.)
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