Category Archive: Chinook Jargon

Chinook Jargon songs, part 1

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Have you heard a version of this song?  Let me know.  (See also part 2, part 3 and part 4.) As found in the second edition of a really authoritative collection with musical… Continue reading →

Oral history: remembering Chinuk pipa shorthand writing

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Oral history reminiscences of Chinuk pipa (‘Chinook writing’, the endangered writing system associated with Chinook Jargon in southern interior British Columbia. DOCUMENT NAME/INFORMANT: DAVID & CELESTINE JOHNSON #1 INFORMANT’S ADDRESS: ALKALI LAKE RESERVE BRITISH COLUMBIA INTERVIEW… Continue reading →

Who can CAT-scan a worn, carved inscription?

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I wonder if any readers of the Chinook Jargon blog have a connection, or an inspiration: Who can CAT-scan a worn, carved inscription?  Or PET scan.  Or X-ray.  Or ultrasound. There are more… Continue reading →

Speidel, Sons of the Profits

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Speidel, William C.  1967.  Sons of the profits: Or, there’s no business like grow business! / The Seattle story, 1851-1901.  Seattle, WA: Nettle Creek Publishing Company. An entertaining local history, told with a… Continue reading →

Brokenshire, “Washington State Place Names”

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Brokenshire, Doug.  1993.  Washington State place names: From Alki to Yelm.  Caldwell, ID: Caxton. The author of this reader-friendly volume focuses more on the histories associated with the place names than on their… Continue reading →

Story of a Stump, decoded

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As mentioned in the original post about “Story of a Stump“, I’m providing a decipherment of the shorthand text.  Here it is, numbered by lines of the original.  Note that the translation in… Continue reading →

Chinook to the rescue

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From Everybody’s Magazine (did O. Henry really edit it?).  Volume X, number 2 (February 1904), page 292. “Delate hyas kloshe papah.  Halo kultus wawa kopa ocoke Konaway Tilacums.  Delate skoom kumamook [sic].  … Continue reading →

From Copenhagen to Okanogan, part 4

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[Final installment.  See previous episodes for more info on this fascinating pioneer memoir…life in the Okanogan Highlands of Washington State, 1880s-1930s.  Most of what I’ve excerpted in this blog happened in the last… Continue reading →

A note about the Chinook Jargon blog, o children of the forest

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Actually several points about this Chinook Jargon blog. I tag the posts to help their content be searchable in Google.  But my tagging system will change.  I’ve learned that a person’s idea of… Continue reading →

Alfred Downing, “I Signal an Indian from Opposite Shore”

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The superbly readable naturalist-historian Jack Nisbet of Spokane has a column “Boundaries” in the free North Columbia Monthly, out of Colville.  Thanks to Jack for this find… His current (April 2012) column is… Continue reading →