1912: Address delivered at…Grand Ronde! (Part 3 of 5: some Settler tyee talk)
Part 3 of 5, from a great little time capsule of Jargon from Grand Ronde…
Patrick Byron Sinnott (1829-1912) (image credit: Find A Grave)
Q’alis and Alex Code sent along this “Address Delivered at Dedication of Grand Ronde Military Block House at Dayton City Park, Oregon, Aug. 23, 1912“. Naika wawa marsi kopa klaska!
It’s by M. C. George, published in The Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Mar., 1914), pp. 64-70.
Today, from page 68:
About thirty years ago when AgentP[atrick].B[yron]. Sinnott was in charge and when Father [Adrien] Croquet and Father Conrada [?], since in control of the Hawaiian Leper Colony, and now in charge of the Leper Colony at Canton, China, were the spiritual advisers of the Indians, it was my privilege, as a Washington Tyee, to pow wow the gathered Santiams, Umpquas, Calapooyas, and Rogue River Indians at this Agency; and mindful of the Governor’s fate, I did my talking direct in Chinook, with frequent reference to them as “skookum tillicums,” and vehement assurances of my “klosh-tum-tum” and a good deal of gesturing and a little soft-soap and some “te-he,” I managed to pull through safely, with grunts of satisfaction from the braves present.
Washington Tyee = ‘American boss’; “Washington” was sometimes blended with Boston ‘American; White people’ by Indigenous speakers of Chinuk Wawa. This phrase is new to me, so I take it as being created by the Settler speaker.
Skookum tillicums = ‘excellent friends’. Very Settler Chinook Jargon, this phrase is.
Klosh tum-tum = ‘good heart’. We often find Settlers saying this in CJ to mean ‘having decent character / good intentions’, which is distinct from the general Jargon sense of it, ‘feeling good / happy’.
Te-he = ‘humor; laughter’, an older variant of the more common hihi. I suspect te-he was favored more by Settlers than by other folks.
