The 6th pair of page images from an unexpectedly important but long overlooked Chinuk Wawa document!

The title of the article at the Skagit River Journal site is long and informative:

I want to direct your attention toward a newspaper article that involves Chinook Jargon!

Victoria, British Columbia, was already a highly cosmopolitan town by 1862, making Chinuk Wawa an indispensable tool for everyone there.

Advice: whenever you see a “sauvage” or sáwásh, get closer & have a careful look.

One last time (in our mini-series on Howay’s collected journals of the Columbia Rediviva) — do we find any evidence whatsoever of Chinook Jargon, or any other stabilized pidgin/trade language, existing in 1792 along… Continue reading →

My esteemed friend Henry Zenk once wrote a book chapter examining Dr. William C. McKay’s 1892 address on the 100th anniversary of Captain Robert Gray’s (“)discovery(“) of the Columbia River. 

Another photo from Kamloops Wawa #130 (July 1895), on page [106], is this historical treasure:

Among the animals we’re told understood Chinuk Wawa, we’ve seen the Thunderbird, dogs, and wood rats. 

(Image credit: Chehalis River Mutual Aid) < ō’ma > is how Franz Boas’s really lovely 1892 article “The Chinook Jargon”, published in Science, writes úmaʔ (the modern Grand Ronde spelling).