1900: Klose Tillicum literary society
Seems like it was always in the post-frontier era, after Jargon declined from daily use, that Settlers started naming things in it.
This language continued to have sentimental associations with the pioneer past.
Exhibit A today is the “Klose Tillicum Literary Society” of Hood River, along the mid-to-lower Columbia River in Oregon.
Klose Tillicum = ɬúsh tílixam = ‘good friends’ in Settler use of Chinuk Wawa. (It’s just ‘good people’ in everyone else’s CW.)
I’ll repeat a constant observation about how Settlers used the Jargon word klose in their PNW English — they treated it as if it meant not just ‘good’ but also ‘close’ (as in ’emotionally intimate; frank; etc.’).
Here’s your data:
Klose Tillicum literary society organized at Frankton school house last Saturday night. The first debate was on the subject, “Resolved, that money is more to be desired than education.” Subject for debate next Friday evening, “Resolved, that ignorance and superstition have caused more bloodshed than pride and ambition.”
— from the Hood River (OR) Glacier of November 30, 1900, page 3, column 2
Bonus fact:
The Oregon Normal School (I expect it was a teacher-education college) also had a student organization of some kind named the Klose Tillicums, apparently for young women only:
— from the ONS (Western Oregon University) Lamron of February 22, 1926, page 3, columns 2 & 3
