1879, northwest Oregon: Another Jargon “Mary had a little lamb”
Sort of un-translated, in fairly decent Chinuk Wawa with a couple “new” English words, here’s another Chinook version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”:
I think the English words were probably known and used by all Jargon speakers in that region (the Siletz Reservation area) and time. They match up well with what we find documented in the northern dialect…
The aboriginal idea of Mary’s diminutive
mutton is in the words and figures follow-
ing, to-wit:Ugh! Boston cluchman Moll
Had tenas tilacum sheep,
Spose okoke cluchman clatiwaw syah,
Tenas lemote hyak too.
— from the Corvallis (OR) Gazette of August 1, 1879, page 3, column 3
That “Ugh” is a Settler stereotype of Indigenous speech.
Here’s a quick transposition of the poem into Grand Ronde-style spellings, plus a translation:
ə́x̣! bástən-ɬúchmən mál* (‘Ugh! The white lady Moll’)
hǽd* tənəs-tílixam shíp*, (‘had a little friend sheep;’)
spus úkuk ɬúchmən ɬátwa sáyá, (‘when that lady went away,’
tənəs-limotó (h)áyáq tʰú*. (‘the lamb hurried along too.’)
