Crowdsourcing challenge: More Chinook Jargon archival audio?
My readers have been known to come up with great responses when I challenge them…
Chinook audio! (Image credit: Pond5)
…So, today, I hereby ask all of you Chinookers:
Do you know of old sound recordings of Chinuk Wawa that I should research & list on this site’s AUDIO page?
In 25 years of work on CW, in addition to links to online stuff, I’ve accumulated a decent number of tapes, CD’s, .WAV files, and so on, that preserve the Jargon as it’s sung and spoken.
Some of that stuff has been:
- homemade tapes of their relatives, that folks decided to share with me
- copies of commercial vinyl LP’s
- anthropologists’ & linguists’ field recordings (including ones I’ve done)
Do you know of Chinook Jargon audio that I should research??
The Issaquah Historical Museum has audio by a settler who grew up thereabouts in the late 1800s named Jake Jones (recorded in his waning years after WWII) that contains a short lesson on native names, words and the use of the Chinook language.
The IHM have the transcripts available online and so one can see what all is on the tapes as indeed they are fascinating. I seem to recall that beyond the specific part(s) of his oral history that dealt with native words, one portion dealt with a trial and reluctant native witness that may be of interest in particular. They have the material in a series of Mp3 files with about 40 total 5 minute sections, and listening to the man first hand is waaayyyy better than reading the transcripts trust me.
Here is a link to the transcript:
Click to access JONES+Jake+88-1-2+%26+3.pdf
On a side note I am seeking info on a Puget Sound region man named Dutch Charley who appears briefly in the journals of George Gibbs of the 1850s. If you ever come across that name in your own research I’d be grateful to hear.
But in any case the three journals to which I refer seem all but unknown as they are held by Yale rather than the Smithsonian (where everyone goes looking for Gibbs records) and so might be new to you.
If so lol yer gonna want to have a look as they are FULL of his language notes and observations of which will keep you consumed for some time I am sure:
https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/11237471
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Many thanks, Jim! I’ll check this out! Dave
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Have you ever got your hands om these recordings? One of them is of Arthur Urquahart! Listed under box 11
Click to access 1835-027.pdf
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Fantastic, thanks! Also some Chinook Jargon recorded by the excellent Leon Metcalf. I hadn’t known of either tape. We have to keep our eyes open, there’s always more material popping up in this language.
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There are quite a few CW treasures from the Siletz community among the dozens of hours of recordings made in the early 40’s by John Paul Marr, working with J.P. Harrington.
Side 2 of the reel at https://collections.si.edu/search/detail/ead_component:sova-naa-1976-95-ref16522, for example, features a jargon song, ~1:16-2:19, by the late Hanis speaker Frank Drew.
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hayu masi Joe!! I’ll give it a listen.
Dave Robertson
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