1912: Claptrap??
In post-frontier era towns, in the Chinuk Wawa heartland, the language was quickly seen as passé.
So in 1912, a political editorial compared the out-of-touch major national parties’ rhetoric to trying to talk CW to average people…
The old names of Republican and Democrat are a meaningless slogan, and the past utterance of party clap-trap as little understood as the Chinook jargon of the pioneers.
— from the Salem (OR) Daily Capital Journal of June 21, 1912, page 2, column 1
This is from a town just 32 miles by road from Grand Ronde, where there were still kids growing up talking the Jargon!
That’s kind of the point; Chinook Jargon was now perceived as a thing of the past — in those places where it was no longer needed for daily life.
