1878, OR: How does “Chenook jargon” connect with Thomas Jefferson?
The American Naturalist of December 1878, page 825, makes the following novel connection.
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Have you ever thought of US President Thomas Jefferson and Chinuk Wawa in the same moment?
The Rev. M. Eells has published at Portland, Oregon, a small book of hymns in the Chenook jargon language. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon those who have the opportunity that we cannot have too much of this linguistic material. Thomas Jefferson in his “Notes on Virginia,” p. 193, wrote: ” It is to be lamented then, very much to be lamented, that we have suffered so many of the Indian tribes already to extinguish, without our having previously collected and deposited in the records of liter- ature the general rudiments at least of the languages they spoke.”
