1905: English/Jargon doggerel for the “Sultan of Zulu”
How much do you know about the Sultan of Zulu?
Image credit: Pittsburgh Press from 1910
Apparently there were topical, news-related jokes about him among previous generations of Americans.
The final Sultan of Sulu (sometimes spelled Spanish-style as Zulu), Jamalul Kiram II, was a holdout against both Spanish and USA imperialism in the Philippines and adjacent islands.
Jamalul Kiram II with future member of the club of US Presidents exposed to Chinook Jargon, William Howard Taft (image credit: Wikipedia)
News of the obstacle he represented to the US colonization of the Philippines (recently acquired in the Spanish-American War), and of his ultimate defeat, were adapted in the post-frontier Pacific Northwest by the creative addition of some Chinook Jargon.
I interpret the following as reflecting the then-common White attitudes in the USA about Filipinos being ignorant natives and/or “n”-words, considering that folks also often heard about the Zulu nation of South Africa:
The Sultan of Zulu probably understands, ere now, how hundreds of other men felt when they got the “mitten” from one whom they adored.
Hyas, bundle money [‘big’]
Tenas, common sense [‘little’]
Cultus, swell sea-side hotel, [‘no-good’]
Tepee, you bet — immense.
— from the Olympia (WA) Washington Standard of September 22, 1905, page 3, column 3
Would’t you know, this filler poem is in the “Ask me no more questions / Tell me no more lies” meter, so beloved of North American folklore!
Bonus fact:
You might remember that America used to have a thriving press in various immigrant languages.
So it was mildly interesting to find this coverage in a Texas German newspaper, in light of the fact that the Sultanate of Sulu in 1874 had tried to work against the Spanish regional overlords by signing treaties with the German empire:
