Métis place names around the Pacific NW
Many, many place names north of Louisiana, and from the Missouri River westward, are Métis whether you realize that they were originally French or not.
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1897: UW cheer
The Seattle Times recently ran an article on the history of Denny Hall at the University of Washington.
1930: Willie McCluskey and the fair
William “Willie” McCluskey (1862-1939) was a Swinomish Reservation (La Conner, Washington) man who wrote a number of fine Chinook Jargon letters in the post-frontier era.
1899: “A busy morning” in Nanaimo
Typically unsympathetic Settler newspaper coverage of Native defendants in the colonial courts…
1914: “The last of the Indian ‘potlatch’ “
From one of the great Canadian magazines, an impressively well reported account of the colonialist prohibition on potlatching.
PNW tribe names from Métis French
Here as usual I’ll refer to the mixed Cree-French language Michif for Métis French word forms.
1894: “Hebloo tenas” song, and liberties taken
Times change…It’s incredible how many times we’ve found that the songs folks felt like translating into Chinook Jargon were racist minstrel tunes!
So many Métis words in interior PNW languages (Part 2: Interior northern Dene, far limits of Chinuk Wawa zone)
READER CHALLENGE: read on to see if you have ideas about some French source words! I’ve written that certain entire families, and types, of languages are fairly impervious to external influence.
James R. Anderson’s dad’s Métis plant names
James R. Anderson, a noted botanical authority in British Columbia, was the son of fur-trade era Chinook Jargon authority Alexander Caulfield Anderson.
Earlyish recognition of Chinook-Chehalis Jargon, plus…
One of the few published mentions of the pidgin Haida of the early Northwest Coast maritime fur trade…