William Petit Trowbridge (1828-1892), my fellow Columbia University Lion, did some coastal surveying work in the Pacific Northwest during the frontier era.

To the list of fun research we can do once Covid-19 restrictions go away, add “find the full archives of the Washington Star“…

The muse of the Oregon coast is back…

A modest proposal…are any of my readers willing to draw the coat of arms described here?

As we so often find, a Chinookan-language “particle” is said to be the historical source of Chinuk Wawa’s qʰéẋchi ‘although, even though’.

Here’s a quick crowdsourcing challenge:

Was it doggerel?

I agree with the 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary; I just have more to say 🙂

A US Naval officer remembers some Chinuk Wawa from America’s then-new territory, southeast Alaska:

One of my readers asked the other day about the origin of a couple of Chinuk Wawa words for directions relating to a body of water…