Sleighing(,) a mystery
While I was reading, for my dissertation, dozens of Chinuk Wawa letters that Indigenous people wrote, one word was both new and surprising to me. Lasli. “Sleigh”, it seemed to mean. But I’ve… Continue reading
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The priest makes it explicit, pardon his French
I’ve previously told how “the M-word“, musum ‘sleep’, had lewd overtones in Chinuk Wawa. Now the priest makes it explicit. Writing in shorthand French, Father Le Jeune observes in Kamloops Wawa #121 (October 1894, page 170):… Continue reading
Merry Christmas!
<Miri Krismas> kopa msaika! <Merry Christmas> to you folks! My gift to you is the first-ever Christmas story to be written in Chinuk pipa shorthand. I hope you’ll enjoy how it ties together Chinuk Wawa… Continue reading
“Fish house” part 3: it’s so definite
First I wrote about discovering a Heiltsuk word that probably showed how the Chinuk Wawa word — otherwise unknown to us — for “cannery” was fish house. Then I found backup for the… Continue reading
Chinook snowman
Snowman: Chinook. Chinook snowman!
Canneries, culture contact, and spreading Chinook literacy
The unique BC alphabet for Chinook Jargon, Chinuk pipa, found a secure place in Indigenous people’s hearts in its first few years. Not just southern interior people, and not limited either to lower mainland… Continue reading
More about the flood of 1894
I blogged the other day about the great Fraser River flood of 1894; how about some Indigenous people’s eyewitness notes, in Chinuk Wawa? From Kamloops Wawa #118b, July 1894, page 131: <More about the flood.>… Continue reading
Wine tea, a redundancy born of anachronism
When Kamloops Wawa tells, on pages 21-22 of issue #118b (i.e. a whole ‘nother issue dated July 1894), the story of the wedding at Cana, we get an additional example of the old-fashioned talk that… Continue reading
The great Fraser River flood of 1894
The great Fraser River flood of 1894 impressed those affected sufficiently for it to get immediately labeled as “the big flood”. On the bright side, settlement was still pretty sparse so deaths were… Continue reading
Why would Frederic Remington use Chinuk Wawa?
The master of the “Western” genre in American painting, Frederic Remington (1861-1909), got most of his down-to-earth experience on the Plains: places like Nebraska and Montana. On a website like mine, you’ll expect… Continue reading