1904, WA: LBDB’s letter in Jargon to hometown folks
Everyone was getting old.
The Pierce County, Washington pioneers association met in 1904, well beyond the frontier era, noted its ranks thinning, and voted to allow newcomers to join — folks who arrived as late as 1870 in the territory!
A photo from the group’s meeting 2 years later, featuring Chief Koquilton (image credit: abebooks)
Such Settler gatherings were routinely well-covered in the news media. This one, as well, although the paper from King County flubbed the famous name of the Pierce pioneers’ leader. We know her as Laura Belle Downey-Bartlett, the subject of about 40 posts on my website as of today.
A further stumble was the introduction of some typographical errors into Mrs Downey-Bartlett’s already challenging Chinook Jargon. One source of her CJ oddity: she grew up speaking the historic Central Dialect as it was developing a new branch, the Northern Dialect. Another source: she had peculiar ideas about the grammar of the Jargon.
(I should talk, eh?! This weekend I myself was among Southern Dialect speakers, and realized how rusty I am at speaking anything but Northern Dialect!)
Sends Letter in Chinook
A congratulatory letter was read from
Mrs. Laura Bell Downing, president of
the association, who is now visiting in
Oregon. At the close of the letter she in-
cluded the following communication writ-
ten in Chinook jargon, the vehicle of com-
munication between the pioneers and the
Puget sound Indians:“Nika tum tum delate hiyas sick spose
mika wake mitlite Tacoma te mannich
nika ancotte tillicums spoe wa-wa skook-
um ko-pa. Saghalle tizle quanisom man-
1tch mesika.” A free translation reads:
“My heart is very homesick for Tacoma.
I cannot see Tacoma and my old-time
friends. Suppose you are having a good
time. May the Heavenly Father always
watch over you.”
— from “Pioneers of Pierce Talk of Old Times”, in the Seattle (WA) Post-Intelligencer of October 13, 1904, page 8, columns 3 & 4
That is indeed a translation that takes liberties! Allow me to examine it more closely:
Nika tum tum delate hiyas sick spose
nayka tə́mtəm dlét hayas-sík spos
my heart really very-hurting to/when
‘I’m really sad not to’
mika wake mitlite Tacoma te mannich
nayka wík míɬayt Ø təkʰóma pi nánich
I not be.there in Tacoma and see
‘be in Tacoma and see’
nika ancotte tillicums spoe wa-wa skook-
nayka ánqati tílixam-s spos wáwa skúkum
my oldtime friend-s to talk strongly
‘my friends from old times to have wonderful conversations’
um ko-pa. Saghalle tizle quanisom man-
kʰupá. sáx̣ali-táyí kwánsəm nánich
there. sky-chief always watch
‘there. God will always watch over’
itch mesika.
msayka.
you.folks.
‘you folks.’
My comment is that LBDB’s Chinuk Wawa here is identifiable with the old Central Dialect of the Columbia River:
- She says spos (a variant of pus) in the first line to convey “that” in the sense of “because”, as well as in its usual meaning (in all dialects) in the third line to mean “in order to”.
- In the first line, she says hayas-sik, which remained the normal way to say ‘very sick; very hurting’ in the Central and Northern Dialects.
(In the Southern Dialect, a preference developed for saying dret sik ‘really sick’.) - And in the fourth line, she says kʰupá for ‘there’, which is Central Dialect and which remained in use in the Southern Dialect.
(In the North we’re more likely to say yawa.)
LBDB’s “I grew up here” Jargon also contains features that are highly fluent in every dialect, such as knowing to use “silent AT” (Ø) in line two.
Her CJ also shows what I’ve come to see as distinctly Settler ways of using the language, since they tend to mirror English syntax and thinking instead of canonical Chinook:
- nayka tə́mtəm dlét hayas-sík, literally ‘my heart is really very-sick’, whereas more distinctly Chinook Jargon phrasings would be
- dlét hayas-sík nayka tə́mtəm, literally ‘really very-sick is my heart’
- dlét hayas-sík-tə́mtəm nayka, literally ‘really very-sick-hearted am I’
- tilixam-s ‘friends’, with an unnecessary plural -s from English (the word kind of defaults to a plural ‘people’ meaning anyway)
- skukum in a meaning of ‘wonderful, excellent’ is strongly associated with Settler talk; I had to pause a moment to realize that LBDB’s wawa skukum was intended as ‘talk wonderfully = have a lovely chat’, rather than a version of skukum wawa ‘yell’!
We can also keep in mind that by 1904, most of the “Pioneers” will have been quite out of practice at talking Chinuk Wawa. Due to the numerical dominance of non-Indigenous people, daily CW use had fallen aside in favour of English in almost all of the Pacific Northwest.
Bonus fact:
In the body of the article and in a list at the end of it, if you click the link above, you’ll find a large number of early Settlers named.
Maybe some of them are your ancestors? Maybe they talked Jargon? They were definitely exposed to it, at meetings like this, and in earlier years.
Bonus bonus fact:
A 1906 speech to this pioneer association by the above-pictured Muckleshoot Chief Slugamus Koquilton is preserved and ready to be back-translated by our Chinook Jargon community members.
