1888: How Port Townsend site was chosen

This is actually a memory of 1851: Chinook Jargon was pivotal in the founding of the Settler community of Port Townsend, Washington Territory…

First cabin built at Port Townsend (image credit: History Link)

How Port Townsend Site was Chosen

PORT TOWNSEND, July 23, — Said an old resident yesterday: Capt. L[oren].B. Hastings, Sr. [1814-1881], shortly before his death, told me how he and Mr. [Francis W.] Pettygrove [?-1887] chanced to select a site for Port Townsend. They were encamped at the head of the bay, when the Indians told them it was “delate closhe midlight chuck halo wind charco,” meaning that there was splendid water there and no wind. One morning, just after Capt. Hastings and his companion had arisen, they beheld the sun on the bluffs below what is now Hastings’ field. This sight decided them. Capt. Hastings exclaimed: “Pettygrove, there lies our fortune,” and they came over the same day and laid out the town.

— from the Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer of July 24, 1888, page 1, column 5

The Chinuk Wawa there lacks punctuation — a common hazard in these old news clippings! When we supply the commas, we find that this is actually 3 clauses:

[Ø] dléyt ɬúsh, míɬayt chə́qw, hílu wín cháku.
it really good, there.is water, no wind come
‘It’s excellent, there’s water, (and) no wind comes there.’

A characteristically excellent page at History Link tells us that Pettygrove arrived in Oregon Territory by sea in 1843, where he became a founder of Portland, naming it after his Maine hometown. We also learn that Hastings came overland on the Oregon Trail to Portland in 1847. Both were presumably handy with Chinuk Wawa due to these facts. 

Both went to the California goldfields for a time, then determined to move their families to the still un-Settled Puget Sound, where the Chinook in the above clipping was spoken in late 1851.

We’re told also that these founding Settlers assured — surely also in Jargon — the S’Klallam tribal people whose land it was that the US government would eventually pay for the land! The nerve…

qʰata mayka təmtəm?
What do you think?