Early 1850s: ‘Christmas’ & ‘eat crow’ humor on Shoalwater Bay
James Gilchrist Swan, early pioneer on Shoalwater Bay, Washington Territory (near Astoria), spoke excellent Chinuk Wawa & could repeat a good joke…
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Is “rancherie” a gold rush word?
In English, it’s primarily a Canadianism of a certain age.
Noses, Salish metaphors, & French rarities
I’ve got two things on my nose, er, mind.
More of Bonnycastle Dale’s Chinook Jargon
When the first word in a short article is an offensive use of a Chinuk Wawa word, I’m already skeptical…
“Potlatch house”, a PNW-ism … from Jargon?
The phrase “potlatch house” first came up for my readers and me in an article about southeast Vancouver Island. (See “The Potlatch at Sooke“).
1887 Oregon CPE: Toy Chen’s opinion
More about another frontier-era pidgin…
“Kamloops Wawa” in The Stenographer magazine (Part 3)
The local Kamloops newspaper wrote about kamloops Wawa in a piece that probably was cut out and sent to The Stenographer (Philadelphia) by…
The Potlatch at Sooke
Chinook Jargon is candidly used for local colour in this touristy 1907 eyewitness piece…
1901: Martha Douglas Harris’s “Chee-chee-ka” (Part 1)
Martha Douglas Harris has a really interesting biography, from the BC Archives website: Martha Harris (née Douglas) was born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1854 and was the youngest member of her family.… Continue reading
LBDB: Prose, not lyrics (Part 2)
We’ve been looking at pioneer Laura Belle Downey Bartlett’s writing in Chinook Jargon, in contrast to her well-known song lyrics.