1896: About an Arapaho
I’m fairly confident the Chinook words “quoted” here were put into the mouth of the Salish man who is mentioned…
Image credit: Scenic Washington
Everything about the following article suggests it’s a fictitious Chinuk Wawa quotation.
Most obviously, the editor is staunchly opposed to soon-to-be-US-President McKinley, and has a local Native man expressing a similarly vociferous scorn.
Indigenous people couldn’t vote.
They probably didn’t get a lot of Settler political information, seeing as how most of them didn’t speak English yet.
Ah, also, “Skyklomish” is an inaccurate and maybe purposely derisive version of the tribe- and place-name “Skykomish”.
However! (As one of my professors used to exclaim!) The Jargon is pretty good…
“FE-FI FO-FUM.” —McKinley’s en-
thusiastic friends relate how an Ara-
pahoe Indian, known as “Old Lemon
Peel,” belonging to the Wild West
show, visited the tin god, and gave
him a “medicine stick,” inscribed
with the following cabalistic words:
“Aki to tan toko sila dis ny a falin-
fels,” which the copper-colored visitor,
with the sagacity of his race, ex-
plained meant, “You Will be Presi-
dent.” Those Eastern archaeologists,
who base their knowledge of Indians
on Cooper’s romances place special
significance on this voice from Na-
ture’s child. The inscription when
submitted to Old Skyklomish, the
Tomanowous Man of the Far West, is
transposed into the classic Chinook
as the equivalent of “Okoke man
hyas pilton yaka mitlite sochily hyas
cuitan pe klonas alki yaka kelipi pe
kockshet yaka letate,” which under
liberal translation into expressive
English means, “That opiniated gen-
tleman rides a high horse, and is
likely to fall and break his neck.”
— from the Olympia (WA) Washington Standard of July 31, 1896, page 2, column 5
Tomanowous Man = t’əmánəwas-màn = ‘medicine man’ in this case.
Okoke man hyas pilton yaka mitlite sochily hyas cuitan pe klonas alki yaka kelipi pe kockshet yaka letate
= úkuk mán hayas-pʰíltən(,) yaka míɬayt sáx̣ali háyás(h) kʰíyutən(,) pi t’ɬúnas áɬqi yaka k’ílapay pi kákshit yaka latét
= ‘That man is really crazy(,) he has a tall big horse(,) and he might some day capsize (fall over) and break his head.’
OR
…yaka míɬayt sáx̣ali Ø háyás(h) kʰíyutən…
‘…he sits high on a big horse…’
Those are the 2 valid interpretations I see in fluent Chinuk Wawa.
I suspect, though, that the editor who concocted this Jargon was thinking in English, and using sáx̣ali ‘high/tall’ like an English preposition ‘atop’.
Did the editor bother to translate the Chinook that we see?
That’s always the interesting question to ask when we find this language in print way back when.
Yes, he did, providing a liberal (not literal) English approximation, because this was after the 1890 cutoff of the frontier period.
That’s my rule of thumb, anyway; and we routinely find pre-1890 written Jargon un-translated.
