1912: Address delivered at…Grand Ronde! (Part 1 of 5: earliest ‘room’)
naika wiht wawa mirsi kopa ukuk Qalis pi Alik Kod…
Image credit: Oregon Encyclopedia
Qalis and Alex Code sent along the “Address Delivered at Dedication of Grand Ronde Military Block House at Dayton City Park, Oregon, Aug. 23, 1912” by M. C. George, published in The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Mar., 1914), pp. 64-70.
Today’s first installment has what I think is the earliest documentation of the Chinuk Wawa way of saying ‘a room’, on page 67.
When I was in Washington City Sheridan had become the Lieut. General at the head of the Army, but his memory was still alert to the scenes of his Oregon experiences. He was especially fond of burnishing up his old Chinook, and took delight in carrying on our frequent conversations in the old Indian dialect. When he saw me passing in the corridor before his open office door he would hail me something like this: “Klahowya tilakum, mika hyak chaho kopa nika house. Spose nesika skookum klosh wa-wa. Nika hyiu cumtux, ancutty mika Grand Ronde illihee.” Around us might have been sitting senators or judges or generals, but no matter. Sheridan would talk in classic Chinook, and I in rusty jargon — all to the consternation of those assembled, who cudgeled their brains over the strange language to which they were forced but interested listeners, wondering whether it were learned Greek or possibly ancient Sanskrit.
Please take note, Mr. George doesn’t go to the trouble of translating that quoted Chinuk Wawa into English for his Grand Ronde-neighborhood audience.
No need to!
For everyone else’s benefit, I’ll do the honors. The Jargon here is just as fluent as George describes it being.
- “Klahowya tilakum, mika hyak chaho kopa nika house. Spose nesika skookum klosh wa-wa.
Nika hyiu cumtux, ancutty mika Grand Ronde illihee.” - (modern GR style)
ɬax̣á(w)ya(m), tílixam, mayka (h)áyáq cháku kʰupa nayka háws, (s)pus nsayka skúkum ɬúsh-wáwa. nayka háyú kə́mtəks, ánqati mayka Ø Grand Ronde ílihi. - (literal)
hello, friend, you quickly come to my room, so.that we extremely well-talk.
I much know, previously you be.at Grand Ronde place. - (translated)
‘Hello, friend, come right into my office, so we can have a splendid chat.
I know very well that you used to be at Grand Ronde reservation.’
In the 2012 Grand Ronde dictionary, we learn that ‘room’ is tənəs-háws, literally a ‘little building’.
I have no doubt that in Sheridan’s time at Grand Ronde, folks may have simply called a room the same thing as a building, a háws.
Why do I say so? Because, just about every building in the area, from Native big houses to Settlers’ earliest cabins to military barracks to jails, were one-room structures.
I can well envision that it was only later that Chinuk Wawa speakers felt much need to differentiate ‘house’ from ‘room’, as it became more common to partition the interiors of edifices.
What do you think?
There are a couple of Settler-isms in Sheridan’s Chinook Jargon, showing us even more evidence (we already had plenty) that English speakers had already tended to constitute an identifiable subgroup of Jargon speakers by the 1850s. (Unless of course these are artifacts of George’s secondhand telling of his words!)
Briefly tallying the most obvious of these features:
- Sheridan says klahowya with no /m/ on the end (as if influenced by English ‘how are you’),
- he uses tilakum ‘person; relative’ for ‘friend’,
- and he says spose rather than pus (as if influenced by English ‘suppose’)
But his grammar is superb — for instance, a “noob” wouldn’t know to use a “silent BE”, which is a valid option in Jargon.
