1869: Wisconsin tauntin’
A wedding announcement is a poor place to make fun of the groom, no?
See what you can make of this one.
It was published in the frontier era, and with no English translation given.
But that’s not because folks were expected to understand the Chinuk Wawa, since this was way over in Wisconsin — instead, the language was being used as code.
LATHROP – ARCHER — At Hickory Grove, Delaware County, Iowa, April 4th, 1869, by Rev. Mr. Knickerbocker, “the smallest couple in Delaware County,” viz: Mr. Charles F. Lathrop, formerly of this city, and Miss Emma Archer, of Hickory Grove. Ah, Charley! “Mika wake tickey siwashy” any more. “Mika cumtux, eh?”
— from the Mineral Point (WI) Tribune of April 7, 1869, page 3, column 4
Why was code talk used here?
Had Charles Lathrop (1842-1915) formerly been in the Pacific Northwest? All I know of his life yet is that he was a volunteer Civil War veteran, discharged in 1861 due to disability a few months after enlisting at Mineral Point.
Was this Jargon a jibe at him, that he wasn’t meant to understand?
Mika wake tickey siwashy = mayka wik tiki sawash = ‘You don’t like Natives?’ The word siwashy seems to be in a purposeful Chinese Pidgin English pronunciation (the final -y suggests this), which might make it sound extra-scornful to White ears. I’m not confident that the word was yet used in Pacific NW English to mean ‘being 86ed’ or as we now say ‘trespassed’ from the premises. So I’m guessing the message is that he was formerly a (pardon my quoting the word from that time) “squawman”, now marrying a White woman. Settler society was that racist.
An alternative possibility: siwashy might have been an early instance of the way this word got borrowed into regional English, with a meaning of ‘roughing it’ (as Mark Twain would say), that is, ‘camping out; being in the wilderness’. So maybe it was that kind of gentle teasing that bachelors receive from their friends when they get married.
Mika cumtux = mayka kəmtəks = ‘You understand?’
It might be helpful if we could figure out that remark about “the smallest couple in Delaware County”. I dunno.
