1856: Monsignor Demers writes another letter
On January 21, 1856, Modeste Demers undertook one typical minor duty of a frontier archbishop such as himself: he wrote a report to the bosses, in the form of a letter…
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1866: White guy’s defense: Indian guy he beat up talks bad Chinook
Some sleazy tactics never get old…
1888: California CPE doggerel: Ah Sing on Ah Ben
Much as African-American English was, Chinese Pidgin English was used a great deal in 19th-century US popular culture, always for comic effect, and usually by someone costumed as a Chinese person.
1914: Some loanwords in “Thlinget”
A pretty good observer of Alaskan Lingít life noticed more about Chinuk Wawa than he realized!
Indigenous & Chinese couple talk Chinuk Wawa & pidgin English
The writer J.H. Grant contributed a good number of Chinook Jargon-related human-interest pieces to British Columbia Magazine…
1858-59: Bushby, Gold Rush eyewitness, and James Douglas’s family
Today’s gold nugget is “The Journal of Arthur Thomas Bushby, 1858-1859“, edited by Dorothy Blakey Smith (reprinted from the British Columbia Historical Quarterly volumes of January-October, 1957-1958).
1891: Schoolboy learns Jargon from mysterious ex-“governor of Vancouver”
If the description of the speaker is accurate, this kid was lucky to learn from such an authority on Chinuk Wawa…
A Yukon pidgin: Slavey Jargon
We’re forced to rely on a strange character for nearly all we know of an 1800s Far North pidgin (some think it may have been 2 pidgins) called “Slavey Jargon / Jargon Loucheux… Continue reading
Animacy that’s in the House that Jack Built that Robert Stuart wrote
Pop quiz: Was Chinuk Wawa author Robert F. Stuart… (A) an Astorian (which would make him old enough to be Mrs. Downey-Bartlett’s grandfather), or (B) the California gold-rushing father of Granville Stuart (which would make… Continue reading
Remembrance of veterans past?
A short excerpt from a short play involving shúlchast (which is Chinuk Wawa for ‘a soldier’).