1865, OR: Treaty-making between Northern Paiutes and USA
A little more evidence of Northern Paiute speakers in Chinook Jargon-speaking environments.
Here we see Chief Pah-ni-ne/Pahninee/Paulina in negotations with US Government folks, in the frontier era…
Chief Paulina (image credit: Wikipedia)
“Negotations”, as usual, may be an exaggerated description. There was very clearly some strong-arming and threatening of the Indigenous people going on.
I’ll only show the start of this long article; you can follow the link to see it all. There’s plenty of material there for back-translation into Chinuk Wawa. There’s also some CW, although it’s imaginary…
THE SNAKE INDIAN TREATY-SPEECHES
ON BOTH SIDES, ETC.We clip the following interesting account of
the making of the treaty with the Snake [here Paiute] In-
dians, from the Fort Klamath correspondence
of the Sacramento Union. It is well worth
reading, as showing up the Indian character,
and the proceedings and trouble of making a
treaty with them:The morning of the treaty dawned as the
days always are at this glorious season of the
year, and at nine A. M. the assembly convened.
The Snakes seated in two semi circles, flanked
by the Warm Springs Indians and the Klam-
aths; seats of flour sacks were arranged for
the gentlemen under a shade, and soldiers with-
out arms stood in the back-ground as specta-
tors. All being prepared, Superintendent
Huntington spoke in English; Doctor [William] McKay,
assisted by his brother, Doonald [Donald] McKay, trans-
lated into Chinook jargon to a Klamath, by
whom it was rendered into Snake; and though
it may appear somewhat circuitous, yet the
rendering appear perfectly complete and well
understood. The following is a literal transla-
tion of the speeches on either side, from ver-
batim notes taken at the time :
— from the Salem (OR) Weekly Oregon Statesman of September 18, 1865, page 1, columns 4 and 5
