1886, SW Oregon: As soon as I sell my crap I will potlach
Did this mean a “crop” from a farm?
It may have been on purpose, as a dialect pronunciation of that word. You find that in published quotations and imitations of various people’s speech in the same era, from African-Americans to Scottish people.
I doubt this “crap” is a synonym for the s-word. The earliest known occurrence of that, in the research of the trusty etymonline, was later, in 1898.
The following is a sample of the way THE REVIEW is growing, many more of which would be very acceptable to us. “Mr. EDITOR, please send me THE REVIEW and as soon as I sell my crap I wil[l] potlach.” Corvallis, Or.
— from the Roseburg (OR) Review of October 22, 1886, page 3, column 3
What our news clipping of the day does confirm is that English speakers in southwest Oregon had already borrowed the Chinuk Wawa word pá(t)lach ‘give’.
We’ve already discovered that a lot of people expressed ‘pay’ as pá(t)lach dála, literally ‘give money’. This farmer was writing a clipped version of that phrase.
