Circa 1850: One clŭtchman good! Want two clŭtchman!
Chinuk Wawa was indeed current in southwest Oregon and northwest California in early frontier times; here’s more evidence.
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1858-60: A puzzler, gestures, & “their language”
John Keast Lord was a talented, fun-loving English naturalist & veterinarian on the US-British Boundary Commission that set limits between my greedy American ancestors and my defenceless Canadian ancestors 🙂
“I don’t know, some American.”
Lovely fragments of good Chinuk Wawa from Vancouver Island Salish people:
1914: tyee kopa konaway: The Star-Smith Tilikum wedding
A 1914 publicity stunt by Seattle civic boosters was “the Star-Smith-Tilikum wedding”…
1906: A Wapato invitation
An addition to the post-frontier “Chinook invitations” file:
What’s known & unknown about “Nootka Jargon”?
“Nootka Jargon” is the only widely recognized name for the Nuučaan’uł pidgin, in the linguistic and historical literature.
“Blue men” and Gaelic?
I’ve previously written that Pacific Islanders and African-Americans were seen as “blue men” by Indigenous Pacific Northwesterners…
1904: “In the Pathless West with Soldiers, Pioneers, Miners, and Savages”
Pay heed to a keen observer: “In the Pathless West with Soldiers, Pioneers, Miners, and Savages” by Frances Elizabeth Herring (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1904)
1858: Earliest “Chinook Wawa”?
hayu masi to henli (Henry Zenk) for sending this along…
Found: A Jargon word for ‘flat-headed Indians’
wəx̣t hayu masi kʰapa chup henli (thanks much, again, to Henry Zenk) for noticing & sharing this exquisite bit of what I call linguistic archaeology…