Category Archive: Uncategorized

Rudolf Wickberg: Ett blandspråk i nordamerikanska vestern

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This looks like quite good Chinook Jargon information (it might help answer a recent question about how Scandinavians pronounced their CJ), but I’ll need a friend to translate it from this Swedish: The… Continue reading →

The Ice-Caves of Washington Territory

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“The Ice-Caves of Washington Territory” was an uncredited travel piece in the illustrious Bret Harte‘s Overland Monthly, volume 3, number 5, November 1869, pages 421-427. (Earlier in the same issue is an interesting article… Continue reading →

Three Mox places, or, I digress

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In a comment to my post about Molalla-area pioneers, Sara Palmer raised a question about an Olympic Peninsula place name: We see “Mox Chehalis” here in the south Sound as a road and watercourse… Continue reading →

Molalla-area pioneers

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I have readers who will take exception to the title “Our Proud Past” of the book where I found the following nuggets of Chinook Jargon.  (It’s subtitled “A Compiled History of the Families… Continue reading →

Gi-a-wak (doggerel)

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“Should you ask me, whence these stories?” — H.W. Longfellow There’s evidence in the following “Song of Hiawatha” clone that Chinook Jargon lies beneath.  For instance: You have the overt “Shaped his lips… Continue reading →

Cree loan words into BC Chinook Jargon

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Yesterday, in my article about Walter Moberly’s cool 1885 book “The Rocks and Rivers of British Columbia”, I asked about a word that some apparently Columbia River Shuswap (Kinbasket Secwepemc) guys used, likely… Continue reading →

Kinbasket’s “Columbia River Shuswaps”, a railroad surveyor, and the Jargon

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“The Rocks and Rivers of British Columbia” by the engineer/surveyor Walter Moberly (London: H. Blacklock & Co., 1885.) This is the sort of old Northwest book that’s not quite crammed full of the stuff… Continue reading →

Blackfeet story

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  Around the turn of the century, as they used to call 1900, a lot of Indigenous people were recorded as talking a mixture of pidgin English and Chinook Jargon. Here’s an Okanagan… Continue reading →

Halo jawbone

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At evening we walked up to Geary’s ranch, which he ” runs ” as a kind of hotel for the few travellers who pass this way. Conspicuous on the wall of the only… Continue reading →

When your grandpa isn’t your chúp*

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( * In honor of chup henli Zenk.) 🙂 When your grandfather isn’t your chúp, what do you call him? I’m not thinking here of the affectionate variants that you can find in… Continue reading →