1879, Alaska: “Frozen Jokes”
Back when Alaskan newspapers existed only in California, someone was unfamiliar with the pronunciation of “Yakima” & with Chinuk Wawa.
That’s not so remarkable.
What is amazing is that we’ve found a mention, a thousand miles away, of a frontier-era Chinook Jargon-titled Washington Territory newspaper that published only 2 issues!
The jawbreaker (image credit: Find A Grave)
Austin A. Bell (1854-1889) was indeed the co-publisher of the Kittitas Wau-Wau (“Kittitas Speaks”).
Although the “rhythmic fancies” that follow are formatted partly as prose, they’re 100% genuine doggerel poetry.
To that end, it sort of helps that the Alaskan writer rhymes “dreamer” with “Yakima” [yəkímə]. We Washingtonians pronounce that word as [yǽkəma] or [yǽkəmə].
FROZEN JOKES.
From the [San Francisco, CA] Alaska Appeal of Aug.
30th, we take the following rhythmic
fancies:Just think of the polar bear, whose
home is on the northern billow; an ice-
berg is his chosen lair, at night the
snow his pleasant pillow. No fan he
needs ‘mid summer’s heat, mosquitoes
are to him a dream; he does not have
his girl to treat to soda-water and ice-
cream.Mr Austin A Bell. of Yakima,
A “sweetly poetical” dreamer,
Dislocated his jaw;
Trying to pronounce the infernal
Ridiculous name of his journal —
The “Kittitas Wau-Wau.”
— from the Seattle (Washington Territory) Daily Intelligencer of September 9, 1879, page 3, column 2
