Northern Chinook Jargon “kanawi tilikom” for ‘everybody’, and Secwépemc Salish influence

In Kamloops Wawa newspaper issue #126 of March 1895, the included issue of the charming mini-newspaper Shugirkin Tintin (‘The Sugarcane [BC] Bell’) is a glimpse into how the Jargon was spoken in that more northerly part of British Columbia.

Chief William is 3rd from right (image credit: Northern Secwepemc te Qelmucw)

Along with the Secwépemc Salish words spicing up that sub-dialect of Chinuk Wawa, there’s a little stretch from Chief William of Williams Lake, addressing Chief Louis of Kamloops, that’s purely Secwépemc:

Putiha Lui
‘Goodbye, Louis.’

Putihwia hohwait a kalmoh.
‘Goodbye to all of the people.’

I’m quoting this to draw your attention to hohwait a kalmoh, ‘all of the people’.

That’s strikingly similar to Northern CJ’s kanawi tilikom (literally ‘all of the people’), a typical way of expressing ‘everyone’.

That phrase has the synonym kanawi klaksta (literally ‘every who / every someone’), which traces way back in the Jargon’s history, and is still the way to say ‘everyone’ in the Southern Dialect. (E.g. at Grand Ronde, Oregon.)

But anyways, this kanawi tilikom showing up in both Northern Chinook Jargon and in the local Secwépemc language suggests something to me:

Mutual influence.

I believe this wording as ‘all of the people’ originated within Northern Interior Salish; as you’ve seen, we find it explicitly within Secwépemc; and my understanding of Nɬeʔképmx is that their expression for ‘everyone‘ has that same structure.

Less likely to me would be to see this phrasing creeping into those Salish languages from Chinook Jargon. I’ve found plenty of CJ nouns borrowed by these languages, but there’s mighty scant indication of influence from CJ on their syntax and grammar.