1892: Tacoma pseudo-CW football cheer
I’ve reported a number of times on oldtime sports yells that tried to sound “savage” — sometimes in the Northwest by using Chinuk Wawa.
The Tacoma Athletic Club football team (image credit: GNFA Football)
Here’s an addition to that genre, but it’s fake Chinook:
Black and cream were the Tacoma colors, and their call was of the Siwash tongue: “Wah-hoo-wah-wah-hoo-wah-Tack-o-mah!”
— from the Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer of January 2, 1892, page 3, column 1
This same yell was reported in the P-I several months later as being “an adaptation of the Chinook“.
Now, Siwash is CW sawash ‘Native’.
You might argue that wah-wah is Jargon (wawa ‘speak’ or even ‘yell’).
But now tell me what the rest of the cheer means…
Here’s almost the same football cheer being used by a Los Angeles, California team two weeks later. Not likely to be Chinook, in that region!
