Category Archive: Chinook Jargon

Trial run of the Chinook Bible History, 5 years earlier

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  5 years before it was published at Kamloops as a book, the Chinook Bible History in shorthand made a partial appearance in the Kamloops Wawa newspaper. At the end of one installment (KW#117, June… Continue reading →

More Haida Chinook songs

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The last thing I posted on this topic was an all-time hit, for my site. (See ‘‘Mocking Haida song lyrics in Chinuk Wawa“.) Here’s more Haida Chinook songs: “Chinook Love Song” from Mrs.… Continue reading →

4 Aboriginal letters from Spuzzum + North Bend

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From Kamloops Wawa #115 (April 1894):

Clattewah, or, how variant spellings led me to a mixed Spanish-English-CJ pidgin

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[ *** Edited for clarity — because I posted this late last night 🙂 *** ] A humorous bit about the high cost of living in San Francisco — how timely! A racist… Continue reading →

Tate’s Chinook/Tsimshian hymn

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Good old C.M. Tate, the missionary who gave you the spectacularly odd and rather rare “St Marks Kloosh Yiem Kopa Nesika Savious Jesus Christ“, also left this behind: Chinook Hymn  “Nothing but the… Continue reading →

Mocking Haida song lyrics in Chinuk Wawa

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A Haida mocking song in Chinook Jargon. From Rolf Knight, “Indians at Work: An Informal History of Native Labour in British Columbia 1858-1930“. An aside about Haida fishermen and cannery workers who journeyed… Continue reading →

Chinook saw

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I’m blogging this for the name “Chinook saw”.  This was a mystery we discussed 16 years ago on the CHINOOK listserv. The phrase “Chinook saw” turns up in the Thompson River Salish dictionary,… Continue reading →

Tobacco: not just an Indian weed

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Tobacco‘s but an Indian weed, said a moralistic Elizabethan song: But it sure was popular. Chinook Jargon had many words for it… I want to add one to the documentation. You’ll never guess it. Will… Continue reading →

Prosch’s ms. dictionary: a critical find

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Washington territory pioneer Thomas Wickham Prosch (1850-1915 and yes, a son of early [1857] North Oregon settler, Steilacoom newspaper editor, and official territorial publisher, Charles Prosch) published a Chinook Jargon dictionary in 1888 that I… Continue reading →

Til mamuk: a Kamloops idiom

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Til mamuk: literally “heavy work”: an expressive idiom for violent mayhem. You’re only going to discover this one if you take the trouble to dig into Kamloops Chinook Jargon, shorthand alphabet and all. First of… Continue reading →