1893: Fred Reed is Lost
Settlers never tired of marveling at Native people who spoke good English.
That’s to say, this was the theme of a much-recycled joke, with the punchline usually being the “disgusted” Indigenous person speaking in a register more elevated than the White person involved could possibly attain.
Today’s clipping violates that convention in a way (with cussin’), so, by the definition that says humor is all about surprise, it’d be hilarious to the readers of 1893:
Fred Reed, of North Yakima, has a fresh story. He got lost while driving across the Yakima Indian reservation. For two minutes after he had exhausted his Chinook vocabulary on a stoical appearing Indian astride a cayuse the redskin spoke not. He simply looked vacantly stoical. Eventually, in the very best of the queen’s English, the siwash broke the silence with; “Why in —- don’t you speak English?”
— from the Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer of January 27, 1893, page 4, column 4
