1911: “Slings Chinook like pitching quoits”
Funnest simile for talking good Jargon that I’ve seen…
“Pitching Quoits” by Winslow Homer (image credit: Wikipedia)
From a post-frontier local color note in a western Washington paper, about a Settler who “went Native”:
Milton Giles is cutting quite a swath by posing as the apostle of Poor Lo, the Indian. He makes his trips in a canoe to be in keeping with the Indian character. He slings Chinook like pitching quoits.
— from the Olympia (WA) Washington Standard of June 2, 1911, page 3, column 2
Judge Milton Giles (image credit: digitalarchives.wa.gov)
Judge Milton Giles must’ve locally been seen as an iconoclast among Settlers.
In late 1910, he had empaneled Washington state’s first all-female jury.
More relevant for us, he drew up the incorporation papers for the Chinuk Wawa-using Indian Shaker Church and was their first secretary.
We’ve seen Judge Giles talking Chinook here before.
