1862: Letter to Abe Lincoln involves Chinuk Wawa
Ripe for back-translation into Jargon, we have some material that reached President Abraham Lincoln’s eyes straight from the Pacific Northwest.
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Chum salmon, dog salmon, (salmon)trout
An Indigenous metaphor that’s partway preserved in Chinuk Wawa is the fish species name that’s literally ‘spotted/marked on the body’ in SW Washington Salish.
1887: Kaska Dena people spoke little Chinook Jargon
A passing remark by known BC Chinuk Wawa speaker and researcher, George Mercer Dawson, helps us understand the geographic limits of CW.
lapʰísh, and Métis
I thought this would be among the briefest of notes I publish on my site.
“Siwash” in Ninilchik (Alaska) Russian
I shared this on the old CHINOOK listserv 14 years ago, and it deserves wider visibility.
1939: Sarah L. Byrd (born 1843?) remembers
An elder pioneer was interviewed by the Depression-era Federal Writers Project in the 1930s…
1898: High u skookum whisky and such!
Untranslated Chinuk Wawa in a Seattle paper early in the post-frontier period…
A further trace of Métis French “calumet”
So far, in previous posts I’ve tallied these 7 echoes of Métis French calumet ‘pipe (for smoking tobacco)’ in the Pacific Northwest:
1857: Comox people not knowing CJ?
Early days in Salish linguistics: you had your “Salt Water” Selish, your “Horse” Selish (Nisqually), your “Kwillehiut” Selish (the unrelated Quileutes!), your Yakama Snohomish Selish (the unrelated Sahaptians!), and such.
‘Cranberry’ is Salish
Lee & Frost’s “Clatsop” brief vocabulary list in “Ten Years in Oregon” (1844) is indeed Chinookan, but it’s Lower Chinookan as spoken with the White missionaries.