1917, WA: Julia Pilchuck coins a word for a ‘truck’
There wasn’t yet a standard word for ‘trucks’ in English, yet, either, as you’ll see!
Here a Snohomish elder long into the post-frontier era is probably speaking Chinook Jargon.
Image credit: HeraldNet
It’s mis-characterized as “broken English” that needs an interpreter. Her phrase “smoke wagon” may have been smúk-t’síkts’ik.
Auto Truck Driver Rouses
Wrath of Pilchuck JuliaIndian Weather Prophetess on Warpath
Against “Smoke Wagons.”SNOHOMISH, Feb. 24 .- Pilchuck Ju-
lia, who prophesied big snow this win-
ter, the only remaining member of the
tribe that lived in this valley when the
first white settlers arrived, has declared
war against the white man’s “smoke
wagon.” It’s all because her favorite
grandson, Ray Jack, and his mother, Hat-
tie Jack, were thrown out of a buggy
when an automobile truck frightened
their horse when they were driving to
town the other day. Both escaped with-
out serious injuries, but Pilchuck hur-
ried to the chief of police and demanded
that the “cultus [‘no-good’] smoke wagon” be kept
off the road leading to her home.
To make her meaning plain to the of-
ficers she did not depend on her usually
intelligible broken English, but brought
an interpreter so that the luckless auto-
mobile drivers who venture on her reser-
vation cannot say she took snap judg-
ment.
