Did I find a love note? BC Indigenous people writing stuff in their copy of Kamloops Wawa
Did I find one of those kaltash tz’um love notes that the one chief was determined to burn?
A bit of marginalia here.
At the top of the front page of an issue of Kamloops Wawa (#66 of 19 Feb 1893 at NCTR A2023-012-013), somebody wrote:
“Ambwa Lusi kata lili alta wiht”
I take that as “Ambroise (says) Lucy, how much longer?”
Ambwa is the normal local pronunciation and spelling of the French male baptismal name Ambroise, equivalent to English Ambrose.
Kata lili (kata leili in the Teach Yourself Northern CJ alphabet) is about as common as kansih lili (kantzih leili) to express ‘how long?’, ‘however long…’, and such.
Often, Kamloops Wawa‘s publisher, Father Le Jeune, would write each subscriber’s name on the front page of their copy of his newspaper.
But this handwriting is not the same as Le Jeune’s. See for yourself, in this full-page image, where everything within the dotted lines is what LJ wrote:
Here’s the relevant quote from page 70 of Kamloops Wawa #128 (May 1895):
Nsaika tlap siisim kata kopa iht ilihi iht
tanas man pi kluchmin mamuk kaltash cim kanamokst
kopa Chinuk pipa. Pi taii iaka chako saliks kopa
klaska, pi wiht iaka chako saliks kopa ukuk
Chinuk pipa, pi iaka iskom kanawi Chinuk pipa mitlait kopa
iaka ilihi, pi iaka mamuk paia kanawi. Klunas kakwa
klunas ilo, klunas kaltash siisim ukuk.“We’ve received news of how at a particular village a
young man and woman were writing naughty notes to each other
in Chinook Writing. And the chief got mad at
them, and he also got mad at this
Chinook Writing, and he gathered up all the Chinook Writing that was
in his village, and he burned it all. Maybe so,
maybe no, maybe this is a rumor.”
Gosh knows, maybe this Ambwa & Lusi note is some of the evidence that escaped!
𛰅𛱁𛰃𛱂 𛰙𛱁𛱆𛰅𛱁 𛰃𛱄𛰙𛰃𛱄𛰙? qʰáta mayka tə́mtəm?
kata maika tumtum? Qu’en penses-tu?
What do you think?
And can you say it in Chinuk Wawa?
Hey! Teach Yourself northern-dialect Chinook Jargon!
And join free Zoom sessions…
Contact me for the Zoom link.
