Author Archive

Northern Chinook Jargon: Do “go” and “come” only encode destinations?

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Cutting to the chase: 

Sequim Press, Part 3 (06/10/1921): Jamestown S’Klallam and local Chinook Jargon

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An engaging little series on a smalltown paper that ran untranslated Chinook Jargon pieces well past the frontier era.

WA: Ned Chambreau’s phenomenal 1876-1880 journals

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Some great information from an eyewitness of the later frontier era of Washington is to be found in Ned (Edouard) Chambreau’s journals.

1873, OR folklore: Earliest known version of the “sitkum dolla” joke?

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I think we may have just antedated the classic Pacific NW “sitkum dollar” joke by 24 years!

Shaky shaking hands?

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One of the first expressions I was taught in Chinuk Wawa was from a Southern-dialect speaker: ískam ləmá. 

1877, Klamath, OR: Declining to make use of widely spoken Chinuk Wawa

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From another US government “Annual Report of the Department of the Interior“, we have this account of missionaries in charge of the Klamath Indian Reservation declining to take advantage of the people’s familiarity… Continue reading

Chinook Jargon in the news: BCLC GameSense brochures

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You might enjoy the very informative post recently published by BCLC, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation.

1898, BC: A friend’s letter tells of Baptiste’s dying words

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Here’s an Indigenous young man’s Chinuk Pipa letter that got published in the Kamloops Wawa newspaper.

Different Catholic hymns, Part 1 of 2: “Prayer to the Blessed Trinity, the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph”

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As we continue to collect all the known songs in Chinuk Wawa, we can turn our attention to a couple of Catholic pieces from Hulq’umi’num’ territory.

1900, WA: Kloshe tanse in Spokane

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Post-frontier era, in town where Chinuk Wawa had never been as important as it was elsewhere…