Pre-1917: Ka-mi-akin, Last Hero of the Yakamas, part 2 of 2
Returning to A.J. Splawn’s excellent 1917 book now…
Returning to A.J. Splawn’s excellent 1917 book now…
William Petit Trowbridge (1828-1892), my fellow Columbia University Lion, did some coastal surveying work in the Pacific Northwest during the frontier era.
I’ve previously written that Pacific Islanders and African-Americans were seen as “blue men” by Indigenous Pacific Northwesterners…
There’s at least one pidgin missing from the flock of languages in this astonished mention of a Portland Black man.
Do you know how to say ‘happen’ in Chinuk Wawa?
Here’s a wonderful book to read. Quite the palate cleanser, after slogging through Herbert Beaver’s letters, but that’s another story.
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.
Robert K. Beecham (1838-1920), born in New Brunswick, served in a Wisconsin division in the US Civil War, moved to Everett, Washington in 1894 — which is a telling detail.
At points offensive, but well worth quoting in full, is this nationally circulated rare biographical remembrance of a very early African-American settler and Jargon speaker on the Lower Columbia.
Mifflin Wistar Gibbs (1823-1915) was a remarkable person.