1885: Tacoma, the Terminus — and Native hops pickers
A visiting group from an Iowa newspaper in the late frontier era witnesses the huge intercultual gathering of hops pickers talking Chinuk Wawa…
Hop pickers with horses and cart loaded with hop boxes, unidentified farm, Puyallup Valley, Washington, probably 1889-1891 (image credit: University of Washington Libraries)
The holo cumtux in this excerpt is hílu kə́mtəks, Northern-Dialect CW for ‘don’t understand’. That’s entirely possible in 1885…
…Through the kind
courtesy of the Tacoma Chamber of
Commerce the party was taken by
special train up the Puyallup Valley
for thirty miles to the
GREAT HOP FIELDS
of Mr. E[zra]. Meeker. A few minutes at
the Reservation en route permitted an
introduction to the friendly Puyallap [Puyallup tribe]
boys, who “Holo Cumtux“ed each and
all of our several interrogatories. We
we were not up in the curiosities of the
Chinook dialect as we wished to be,
but readily assented and passed on.
The Puyallups are good Indians, and
self-supporting, receiving nothing from
the Government but support of their
schools, and their farms having been
patented to them. They farm in a
small way, and the friendly fish and
clam of the Sound assist them in the
problem of existence. They live in
comfortable little homes, and wear the
hickory shirts and blue jeans trousers
of civilization. The hop-picking sea-
son is their great annual festival. From
the whole Northwest section they make
pilgrimage to the number of about
five thousand, taking their women and
children along to do the work, and go-
going along themselves to revel in
nightly orgies. The curious Chinook
dialect is that chiefly used…
— from “Tacoma, the Terminus”, in the Oskaloosa (IA) Herald of August 6, 1885, page 3, column 4
