Category Archive: Chinuk Wawa

Cathlamet on the Columbia

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“Cathlamet on the Columbia: Recollections of the Indian people and short stories of the early pioneer days in the valley of the lower Columbia River“, by Thomas Nelson Strong (The Holly Press, Portland… Continue reading →

A.C. Garrett’s lost Anglican manuscript in Chinook

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Chinook Jargon lore abounds with tales of lost resources.  There’s the pre-shorthand attempt to write CJ in Cree/Dene-style syllable symbols: Some 500 ‘books’ of such syllabic productions were said to have existed in the late… Continue reading →

What do you call a meteorite in Chinook Jargon?

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Bobby, I don’t know (this is paraphrasing James Brown because we are talking about rock history), but whatsoever I call it, I got to make it “Tomanowas“.  Chinook Wawa history is stone soul… Continue reading →

The People are Dancing Again, or, Hire a Linguist

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An excellent book can be made more excellent by hiring a linguist.  Today I’m commenting briefly about: The People are Dancing Again: The History of the Siletz Tribe of Western Oregon, by Charles Wilkinson… Continue reading →

Edward Holland Nicoll’s phony Chinook

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Maybe I shouldn’t be so tough on the author of this Popular Science Monthly feature (June 1889, pages 257-261).  In his “The Chinook Language or Jargon” — which follows an interesting argument with Prof. Huxley on… Continue reading →

Civil War Chinook Jargon letter mystery

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The superb “Civil War Day by Day” blog (“from the Louis Round Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill”) put up a post about 4 years ago that contained a… Continue reading →

Getting specific about David Douglas and Chinook Jargon

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I’m not too sure that botanist David Douglas’s 1820s journal notes on early Chinook Jargon have ever been published. A few isolated words in his daily entries, to be sure, have made it into… Continue reading →

So 2 chiefs & a priest to go Europe, part 64 — FINALE

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Pi naika wawa “Mirri Krismas” pi “Hapi Nyu Iiiir” kopa msaika.  Kanawi tilikom mitlait kopa Kamlups, klaska wiht wawa kakwa kopa msaika. And I say “Merry Christmas” and “Happy New Year” to you folks. Everyone who lives… Continue reading →

Jargon (and callie-ope) in more old sports cheers

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One fictional (1898): And one factual (1897): Just try and tell the difference! A lot of team yells several decades ago sported equally nonsensical blends of Chinook Jargon and, um, white-people vocables.

General Pickett: “Keep up a skookum tum-tum, dear one”

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La Salle “Sallie” Corbell Pickett, third wife of Confederate general George E. Pickett of the doomed Pickett’s Charge, wrote a number of publications including her 1899 book, “Pickett and his Men” (Atlanta: Foote… Continue reading →