pre-1923, BC: Ending Haida slavery
Little people? (Image credit: Etsy)
An interesting article from one of the only newspapers ever published in Haida Gwaii contrasts Chinook Jargon and Haida in one section:
Children born of slaves
were also counted as slaves, and even
to the present day some of the descen-
dents of the Haida slaves, although
not in bondage as they formerly were
to any master, yet they have to inter-
marry amongst themselves and are not
allowed to intermarry with the free-
born Haidas. Lieutenant-Colonel [Israel Wood] Powell
when Indian Superintendent for this
Province could not break down at once
their custom of slavery, but issued an
order that all the slaves had not to be
called slaves, but tenas men and tenas
kloochmen, i.e., little men and little
women. The Haida word for slave is
hal-dung-a, and the chinook word is
e-lait-e.
— from “History of Queen Charlotte Islands: Article XXVIII” by Charles Harrison, in the Queen Charlotte [Daajing Giids] [Skidegate] (BC) Queen Charlotte Islander of December 23, 1912, page 3, column 2
This is a somewhat amusing idea for interference in the Indigenous community.
Chinook Jargon’s expressions tanas-man & tanas-tloochman (or in Southern Dialect spellings tənəs-man & tənəs-ɬuchmən) should never be taken in their literal meanings. These only mean ‘young man’/’boy’ & ‘young woman’/’girl’, respectively.
Which only begs the question — why on earth would Powell think calling slave descendants ‘little people’ is an improvement?
By the way: In a modern spelling, Haida ‘slave’ is xáldaang. The Jargon word for this is most often pronounced ilaitenwhen I’ve seen it show up in the Northern Dialect used in British Columbia.
Thanks to reader Alex Code for sharing this one.
