1866, Wallula, Washington Territory, U.S.A.!
The Walla Walla area in the southeast part of interior Washington still spoke plenty of Chinook Jargon in the middle of the frontier era.
Fort Nez Perces, which became the site of the town of Wallula (image credit: Walla Walla 2020)
Here you’ll see Jargon words used without translation in an opinion piece against Britain’s territorial claim on the region.
WALLULA CORRESPONDENCE.
WALLULA, July 24, 1866.
ED. STATESMAN :- Since my last, we have had
a call from some of H. B. Magrity’s [Majesty’s!] hyas tyees.”
It seems a certain corporation known as the
“Hudson Bay Company” claim a large interest
in this town site (Wallula) and every now and
then they deem it advisable to keep the claim
alive against the United States. Probe the mat-
ter a little.…
In fact, the English claimed
at one time all the land lying North of the Col-
umbia river, and had so completely instilled this
idea into the minds of the Indians, that they
considered all “Boston men” [as] intruding on the
soil of “King George men.”…
The letter to the “Ed.” is signed “CUMTUX”:
— from “Wallula Correspondence” in the Walla Walla (WA) Statesman of August 3, 1866, page 2, column 2
- Hyas tyees = háyás táyí(-s) = ‘big chiefs’
- Boston men = bástən-mán = ‘Americans’
- King George men = kinchóch-mán = ‘British people’
- Cumtux = kə́mtəks = ‘understand’; at the end of what you’re saying, it can function as the rhetorical question, “Do you get it?”
