1857, Oregon: Close nanage this prisoner
Typical for the frontier era, a newspaper had snarky comments about a local prisoner.
(Image credit: Cafe Bazaar)
Typical of northwest Oregon at the time, those comments made use of Chinuk Wawa.
CONVICTED .- Enock Fruit was convicted
at the Polk county court, and sentenced to
five years in the penitentiary. He has the
reputation of being a bad and desperate
character, and the penitentiary keeper had
better give him one of those stone state
rooms, and close nanage.
— from the Oregon City (OR) Oregon Statesman of November 10, 1857, page 2, column 7
Close nanage = łúsh-nánich = ‘be careful; watch out; keep an eye on’.
This is one of the many Jargon expressions that made their way into local English very quickly, once a lot of Settler colonizers had formed the nucleus of a new Pacific Northwest society.
