Darrin Brager’s find of Vocabulario Chinook
Dleit haiyoo naika wawa masi kopa Darrin Brager!
Image credit: Ask Leo!
Darrin is Métis from British Columbia, and he’s a very active force helping the Chinuk Wawa community research its heritage and keep it alive.
Recently he sent me a link to an item he’d discovered in his research.
It’s at the famous Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, an item indexed with a Spanish title, “Vocabulario Chinook“, in the Alphonse Louis Pinart Collection.
I’m particularly grateful to learn of this item, for an unexpected reason.
This manuscript vocabulary of “Cheenook” from the “embouchure de la Colombie” (‘Chinook from the mouth of the Columbia’) turns out to be Lower Chehalis Salish!
One of the big points I’ve been making with my research for years is that the name “Chinook”, in the first several decades of contact between the Native people of the lower Columbia and Euro-Americans, normally referred to the village named Chinook — and its blended Salish & Lower Chinookan people — and both of their languages.
Pinart here notes that he’s copying his vocabulary from (Dr. William Fraser) Tolmie, (John) Scouler, (Duflot de) Mofras, and (George) Gibbs.
Also in the document (as we see it online) are vocabularies from certain South American languages (with Spanish translations, thus the artificial “Vocabulario Chinook” title on the file), and from a clearly labeled “Tshinook Supérieur”, which means Upper Chinookan (probably Clackamas or its upriver sisters such as Wasco, Kiksht…), Tsimshian, and more.
Some of the sources that Pinart was copying from may have disappeared through the years, possibly leaving this as the only existing copy of them…
And that “backup copy” status is very important to us, if often unsung!
Hayu masi Darrin!
