Shasta speakers were one of the Indigenous groups who wound up at Grand Ronde and Siletz Reservations in Oregon, thus participating in the re-creolization there of Chinuk Wawa.*

In Kamloops Wawa newspaper issue #126 of March 1895, the included issue of the charming mini-newspaper Shugirkin Tintin (‘The Sugarcane [BC] Bell’) is a glimpse into how the Jargon was spoken in that more northerly part of… Continue reading →

Listening to a podcast in American English, I was struck by a phrase used: “doing God knows what“.

Still another version of the Civil War “code talking” Chinook Jargon anecdote/joke!

The Seattle Times’ Nick Deshais (who used to report here in Spokane) has a great article in that paper’s “Traffic Lab” series:

Let me echo the sentiments of Bright and Olmsted!

The farthest southeast that I’ve found accounts of people speaking Chinuk Wawa is in Modoc-Klamath country of far south-central Oregon, which abuts Achumawi territory, in the northeastern corner of California.

My thanks go to Gaye Schafer for sharing this book of her ancestor’s frontier-era memories of Oregon, and other Pacific NW areas.

Are ‘fast’ & ‘slow’ ever Adjectives in Chinuk Wawa? Nope.

Naika tloosh tilihum (my good friends),