Patterson Fletcher Luark (1814-1901), formerly of Illinois, spoke Chinook Jargon, you betcha.

Nootka Sound, in Nuuchahnulth Wakashan traditional territory on Vancouver Island’s west coast, was the centre of a late-1700s trade in sea-otter furs.

I’ve written several articles on this site showing that there were widely known phrases in Chinuk Wawa relating to burial of the dead, not all of which have been documented in CW dictionaries.

Courtesy of the remarkably creative mind of Alex Code, we have Kaltash Wawa…

Today’s post began as a parenthetical note, but is important enough to be its own article.

Is there some easily searchable full-text archive of historical French-Canadian newspapers that I don’t know about?

The source of the basic CW word kʰapú ‘(over)coat, jacket’ has been much discussed.

Headlined “Didn’t Understand Oath”, today’s old news clipping adds to our abundant proof that Chinuk Wawa got used a whole lot in Pacific Northwest courts.

I’ve recently come back to studying a certain tale by the Grand Ronde elder, Victoria Howard…

In my research on Chinuk Wawa, I admit it took years to come to see verbs prefixed with chaku- (literally ‘come’) as Inceptive Aspect.