Monthly Archive: June, 2022

1869: Psycho, the Demented gives a speech in Chenook (partly)

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George Francis Train’s large head looms in California, and you can see it from my house!

1907: Southern interior BC Chinook conversations, and residential schools

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One of my readers, Darrin Brager, was kind enough to send along a really interesting article that some condescending newspaper editor gave an unfortunate headline to.

A discovery: “Boston name” + more Métis horse naming influence

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Really truly and for sure, I recommend Geo. Gibbs’s 1877 “Tribes of Western Washington and Northwestern Oregon” as a phenomenal, fun ethnographic read.

“Stick shoes” loan-translated into Lushootseed, twice

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In memory of the late Thom Hess.

1945: Skqee Mus letter from Nooksack country

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On page xv of Robert Emmett Hawley’s book “Skqee Mus, or Pioneer Days on the Nooksack” (Bellingham, WA, 1945) is the following letter to the reader.

T’əmánəwas boards among Lower Chehalis + Chinooks

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Like a number of other highly important cultural terms that Geo. Gibbs reports in his 1877 ethnography, I take it that the phrase “tamahno-ūs boards” was definitely Chinuk Wawa.

Alaska/BC Canadians/”French half-breeds” talking Chinook Jargon

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Missionary S. Hall Young remembered plenty about his conversations with Canadian French speakers from originally fur-trade families in the area of Fort Stikine (Wrangell), Alaska, in the 1880s.

1914: LBDB’s “Chinook-English Songs”, part 2 of 15 “Nika Wake Shunta Ole Sante”

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Being a longtime partisan of Chinook Jargon, it pains me to confess that the Chinooking of today’s song made it much worse than the touching original!

My attempt at a Siletz etymology for t’ísáy ‘stick game’

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A word that I first learned from the wonderful 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary of Chinuk Wawa is t’isay ‘the many-stick gambling game; the bundle of sticks used in playing the many-stick game’.

Cayuse language implications for Chinuk Wawa?

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The Molala (or “Molalla”, “Molale”, “Pole Alley” etc.) language too, maybe.