Is this offensive word in Chinuk Wawa from métis French?
Here is a small set of real, if objectionable, data that I ask you to seriously analyze:
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1844: Lee and Frost, “Ten Years in Oregon” — where CW was and wasn’t spoken
Crazily enough, I’ve written here about a different, excellent book having the identical title (and quoting from this one)…
1853-56: Two brothers’ diaries (Part 1 of 2)
Patterson Fletcher Luark (1814-1901), formerly of Illinois, spoke Chinook Jargon, you betcha.
Pre-1917: Ka-mi-akin, Last Hero of the Yakamas, part 2 of 2
Returning to A.J. Splawn’s excellent 1917 book now…
1853-54, Puget Sound: Lt. William P. Trowbridge diary
William Petit Trowbridge (1828-1892), my fellow Columbia University Lion, did some coastal surveying work in the Pacific Northwest during the frontier era.
“Blue men” and Gaelic?
I’ve previously written that Pacific Islanders and African-Americans were seen as “blue men” by Indigenous Pacific Northwesterners…
1871: A Negro boot-black (& a missing pidgin)
There’s at least one pidgin missing from the flock of languages in this astonished mention of a Portland Black man.
How did it come to happen that ‘happen’ came from ‘come’?
Do you know how to say ‘happen’ in Chinuk Wawa?
1848: Allen, “Ten Years in Oregon: Travels and Adventures of Dr. E. White and Lady”
Here’s a wonderful book to read. Quite the palate cleanser, after slogging through Herbert Beaver’s letters, but that’s another story.
1888: California CPE doggerel: Ah Sing on Ah Ben
Much as African-American English was, Chinese Pidgin English was used a great deal in 19th-century US popular culture, always for comic effect, and usually by someone costumed as a Chinese person.