Chinook Jargon in the news: Ranald MacDonald stamp issued
I don’t know how to order one from Japan Post, but this may be the first Chinuk Wawa speaker ever on a postage stamp!
Image credit: FOM Canada, on Facebook
A Facebook group of us Ranald MacDonald superfans has announced the existence of a new stamp showing this grandson of Lower Chinookan chief Q’amq’mli (Concomly) and son of Hudsons Bay Company honcho Archibald MacDonald.
Ranald (1824-1894) was the first natively fluent English speaker to teach that language (to samurai!) in Japan, having had the guts to sneak into that officially closed country in 1848.
You might also be interested to know that Ranald, a member of the new Métis community of the Pacific Northwest, was born at Fort Astoria a.k.a. Fort George in Oregon, and was educated at Red River, approximately modern Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada.
Image credit: Wikipedia
He’s buried at the Ranald MacDonald Cemetery a ways beyond Curlew in northeast Washington State, near Midway, BC. His grave is, all on its own, Washington’s smallest State Park. When I’ve visited it, it was adorned with offerings from appreciative Japanese visitors.
Bonus fact:
The Oregon Encyclopedia article on Ranald MacDonald claims that his Chinookan mother was named Koale’xoa, “Raven”.
That’s wrong, in that it’s some historical revisionism.
That representation of the Chinookan word for ‘raven’ demonstrably is taken from page 598 of Franz Boas’s 1910 “Chinook: An Illustrative Sketch”. There, Boas is listing roots, not freestanding words.
And this particular root, Boas says, only shows up with the Masculine Singular Noun-marking prefix i-. Hmm, masculine?
And to my knowledge, women’s names (and most male ones as well) did not contain such prefixes.
It looks like the encyclopedia article’s author wanted to fabricate proof that this woman was called Raven.
