Monthly Archive: May, 2025

1899, OR: Pioneer Women Reunite (hey readers, can you help?)

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The Portland (OR) Sunday Oregonian of August 20, 1899, page 19, columns 1-2 carries a very interesting, but flawed, source of information about Chinook Jargon.

1874, BC: Ka hokoke stemah klatawa?

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“Navigating by a Dead-Reckoning” is the headline on a territorial-era newspaper piece about the steamship North Pacific leaving Victoria, BC on its way to Puget Sound…

1918, AK: Humor about Chinuk Wawa

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Enough readers of this post-frontier era Alaskan newspaper understood Chinook to make it worth publishing the following joke.

1869, WA: “Paddle Your Own Canoe” doggerel

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I’m convinced Washington Territory was the world’s capital of Chinook Jargon-related doggerel poetry!

Another Oregon coast folk etymology? Siuslaw and ‘far away’

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Honestly, you can add this one to the pile of things I thought I’d already written up.

1858: More “broken China” with “whooping Chenook”

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Here’s another neat demonstration of how two pidgins, Chinuk Wawa and Chinese Pidgin English, coexisted in the far west of North America.

Didactic dialogues in CW dictionaries, Part 8A (Prosch’s 1912 ms. dictionary)

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Dleit naika wawa masi kopa Alik Kod, yaka wawa kopa okok kopa naika web-sait.

1779, Nootka (BC) et al.: Riobó confirms no Chinook Jargon yet

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“Relación del viage que hizo el P.P. Fr. Juan Riobó” is yet another firsthand source — this one unpublished — about the earliest contacts that happened between Indigenous people and Newcomers.

Chinook Jargon in the news: 1889 Washington’s Magazine

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“A Fight for Federal Recognition” by Daniel O’Neil is in the April/May 2025 issue of 1889 Washington’s Magazine. Great in-depth reporting and ample, thoughtfully chosen photos make this a fine read. I like… Continue reading

Kaku-Ixt Mana Ina Haws, and Ɬatwa Ina

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I don’t appear to have mentioned these Chinuk Wawa names from Oregon State University: