1917, Oregon: Indian George, another Jargon-speaking weather forecaster
How odd that we have a whole file on Native people using Chinook Jargon to give weather forecasts to Settler colonizers…
And that it keeps expanding.
A 1913 portrait of Indian George, “possibly a Cayuse Indian” (image credit: Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal)
A long 1917 article in Oregon, along the Columbia River, preserves several personal encounters with an elder known as Indian George and/or Tomilick Chinadere.
He’s said to have been Nez Perce and Wasco Chinookan (allotted on the Yakama Reservation), and to always talk Chinuk Wawa, though all the quotations of him are given in something like pidgin English. So I don’t have any Jargon to quote here for you.
The tone of this local news piece isn’t very respectful of the elder. Here’s one measure — it includes a doggerel poem by a local White guy:
Old Indian George, the ancient Lo,
He pulls the trigger and lets it snow ;
With mystic key he opes the sky.
The blanket of “beautiful” is one
squaw high.
Get out your shovels and make your
trails,
Old Indian George — he never fails.
— from “A Sketch of Indian George”, in the Hood River (OR) Oregon Glacier of March 1, 1917, pages 1 (column 3) and 5 (column 4)
