Sequim Press, Part 3 (06/10/1921): Jamestown S’Klallam and local Chinook Jargon
An engaging little series on a smalltown paper that ran untranslated Chinook Jargon pieces well past the frontier era.
This was in Sequim, Washington, phonetically [skwιm].
Hiu snass wawa? (Image credit: Amazon)
And that’s on the Olympic Peninsula, a region that was still pretty remote from mainstream Settler society.
So local folks still used some Northern-dialect Chinuk Wawa, and understood it pretty well when it was used in reporting on the S’Klallam Indigenous community of Jamestown, WA.
JAMESTOWN ITEMS
Delate hyas snass chaco tenas ‘Quite a big rainshower happened a few’
ahncuttie sun[ ]pe hiu snass wawa. ‘days ago and there was lots of thunder*.’
— from the Sequim (WA) Press of June 10, 1921, page 3, column 3
I asterisk the word ‘thunder’ in the translation, as snass wawa ‘rain noise’ is a new expression for us. ‘Thunder’ is what I think is my best guess at its intended meaning.
Otherwise it was just loudly falling precipitation, yeah?
