Author Archive

1894: Thanksgiving thoughts from Franz Boas

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I think the following would be easy and delightful to translate into Chinuk Wawa; anybody care to try it, on their American Thanksgiving holiday?

1861 CPE: “Too muchee ghost”

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That other widely used pidgin language of the West Coast shows up in plenty of early journalistic accounts of life out here. 

1891, Bellingham WA: “A Sign of Civilization”

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See what you think…

Beresford 1789 [1786-1787] found no northern NWCoast pidgins

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Thanks to John Enrico’s phenomenal “Haida Dictionary” (freely searchable here), I found this additional on-the-spot report from earliest times of Native-Newcomer contact on the Northwest Coast.

1900 letter: A Native Donation to a favourite band

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One of the very few times I’ve seen any Kwak’wala (“Kwakiutl”) word used in a Chinook Jargon environment!

1901: Olympia CW-dependent humor

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If you grew up in Washington State when I did, you know “it’s the water”…

More about Ktunaxa use of Chinuk Wawa

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I’ve been having a look into Leonard Corwin Brant’s book…

Bagley, “The Acquisition and Pioneering of Old Oregon”

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I acquired a little book by Clarence Bagley, “The Acquisition and Pioneering of Old Oregon: In the Beginning / Pioneer Reminiscences” (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, undated].

John Enrico’s insights on the old “Haida” Jargon

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Independent agreement that there was a sort of pidginized Haida in use during early days of contact with non-Indigenous people…

The Mission Field and “Chinhook” (Part 2 of 6)

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Calling all “back-translators” —