Final report: Crowdsourcing shows there’s *no* Chinuk Wawa in Erskine Wood’s “Book of Songs”…but what is “Elowtewah”?
Juli Baumler, naika wawa masi kopa maika!
Juli was able to contact an archivist at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon about the question I posted the other day — does Erskine Wood’s “Book of Songs” have Chinook Jargon in it, as has been reputed?
The answer: no, unfortunately.
Here for your pleasure is perhaps the closest thing to Jargon in the whole shebang:
But there is an interesting language question coming out of this:
We can wonder if there’s any real-world inspiration for this name “Elowtewah”.
The Ni•mi•pu•tímt (Nez Perce) language, of the Sahaptian family in northeastern Oregon, southeastern Washington, and adjacent parts of Idaho, has láwtiwa• ‘friend’.
Maybe Erskine Wood slapped a Chinookan Masculine Noun prefix i- onto that?
