1871, Oregon: Yew bet there’s pidgin + cussin’!
An implication of the un-translated Chinuk Wawa in this frontier-era item is that pidgin English and cussin’ went along with Jargon.
I’ve claimed both of those things before.
Image credit: Facebook
Here’s a fun little item of evidence, not far from the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation:
Some eight or ten new members were
enrolled in Albany Fire Company last
Tuesday night. They are all hias
skookum Boston mans, mika hyu
mammook fire, yew bet.
— from the Albany (OR) State Rights Democrat of November 10, 1871, page 3, column 3
Hias skookum Boston mans =
hayas-skúkum bástən-mán-s =
‘very strong American/White men’.
Mika hyu mammook fire =
mayka háyú mámuk páya =
‘you (singular) will work hard on fires’.
I refer to “pidgin” because of the racialized stance, as if an Indigenous speaker of Jargon were commenting. Also because of that extra, nonstandard -s on “mans”.
And I invoke my “cussin'” theory because of the appended, eye-dialect “yew bet”. It’s informal enough to support the idea of the most heartfelt English words being deployed alongside Chinook Jargon.
