I’m not intentionally connecting alcoholism with the introduction of literacy to people who had never known it, but you’ll often find the two subjects cheek-by-jowl in the letters of the Oblate missionary priests. One… Continue reading
Eugène Duflot de Mofras authored another of the French-language sources that are less well-known in the Pacific Northwest, but very valuable for researching our history. It’s his 1844 book “Exploration du territoire de l’Orégon, de… Continue reading
Nous avons vu, entre les mains d’un Père Jésuite de Saint-Paul, un dictionnaire manuscrit assez volumineux sur la langue Tchinook, qu’il s’était, pendant quinze années, donné la fastidieuse peine de rédiger pour l’usage… Continue reading
(Just don’t say kaupy machine.)* Here is the moment when Chinook Jargon office work was born 🙂 As pictured above, issue #9 of the young Kamloops Wawa newspaper set several standards for the new literate culture that… Continue reading
I’d like to point you to someone else’s blog post, where he tells of deciding to make a traditional yearly toast to the Queen more reflective of BC’s history. Read Mike Scoretz’s “Chinook Jargon… Continue reading
In 2012, Andrew Nelson and Michael Kennedy published a good article in the highly readable journal, BC Studies, that they titled “Fraser River Gold Mines and Their Place Names”. (BC Studies 172 (Winter 2011-2012):105-125.) It comes… Continue reading
This post is short and sweet to create: “New York Markook House“, the newspaper advertisement is headlined. Seattle was originally called New York. (The more distinctive “New New York” presumably was clunky!) It… Continue reading
“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
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
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
