1914, Oregon: Cradlebaugh issues book of poems
I’m mentioning this only because it uses a “Chinook jargon” word that will confuse people.
In the post-frontier era, a locally respected newsman put out a book of his poems titled “Lyeena Kloshe Illahee” in north-central Oregon. So reported the Hood River (OR) Glacier of January 29, 1914, page 7, column 4, under the headline “Cradlebaugh Issues Book of Poems”.
John H. Cradlebaugh’s explanation of that title was that it meant “Songs of the Good Country” to him.
I guess he wasn’t an old pioneer, because in fact those words couldn’t possibly mean that in grammatical Chinuk Wawa! (Here’s biographical info on him.)
Lyeena would mystify almost everyone, but I can tell you it’s a misprint of an obscure “book word” from JK Gill’s popular but not high-quality Jargon dictionaries. The intended word was my-ee-na, ‘song’, supposedly from Old Chinook(an), although I’ve not managed to find such a word yet in Lower Chinookan or Kathlamet. Amusingly, Cradlebaugh himself misspelled the word; the book’s actual title is Nyeena Kloshe Illahee!
Image credit: My Book Heaven
Kloshe Illahee does mean ‘good land’, a phrase my grandmother used to say instead of cussin’.
But to mean ‘songs of the good country’, you’d have to say something like Kloshe Illahee Yaka Myeena. (Assuming you accepted that bizarre noun.) Literally: ‘(the) good country(,) its song(s)’.
You can go read the whole book for free online. There’s no other Jargon in it that I see!
