1882, Nebraska: Jargon as an attraction at the Page County Fair
I infer that “Brother Foster” — who was he? — is himself the “Oregon Man”, so I’ve added speculative punctuation here.
Kind of fun to see Chinuk Wawa as an exotic, interesting county-fair attraction in the late frontier era a thousand miles away!
We’ve previously seen a news article in the Jargon about an early Thurston County Fair, in Washington Territory.
We’ve also seen Chinuk Wawa fascinating people at Coney Island, New York City.
Now, read about the marvelous “Brother Foster” in Nebraska…
Joseph Morley, form [from] Yorktown,
Page county, Iowa, has a fine lot of
Jersey red hogs from “Summit Farm,”
and Geo. Turner and J. T. Wornum,
of Clarinda, are on hand with blood-
ed stock, and the Cedar Rapids insur.
ance company have put up a tent and
placed a general agent on “exhibi-
tion,” and as “Brother Foster” has
traveled in the far west, he is the only
interpreter to converse with[;] the
“Oregon man” speaks the Chinook
dialect of the natives of that Occiden-
tal clime, as it was introduced by the
Hudson Bay company, and he is
ready to tell all about it, and the
“Oregon jargon.”
— from the Omaha (NE) Daily Bee of September 12, 1882, page 7, column 4
