(I meant to post this on Feb. 14th of course. Oops!) The Native “Chinook Writers” of British Columbia wrote as they spoke, charmingly. I now take you to Oregon for a seasonally relevant… Continue reading →

In Idaho’s history, you have to look either mighty early or mighty late to scare up any Chinuk Wawa.

“Bigfoot”, as a synonym for the Salish-derived sasquatch or the Chinuk Wawa-derived stick Indian, had its first known use in 1958, says Merriam-Webster.

Yesterday I wrote a little about Fred G. Mock and his fictional Chinuk Wawa, which is about all the documentation of the language that you’ll find for Idaho south of the border-straddling Kootenai… Continue reading →

A Romance of the Sawtooth is a novel of Idaho authored by Ogal Alla, a pseudonym for F[red] G. Mock (1861-1956).

A possible find of enormous interest. But cross-reference with “doggerel”!

Today we find that by 1850, people already were using Chinook Jargon words in local English without having to explain themselves…

A site-specific Chinuk Wawa public art piece, Kamloops, 1993.

I found out more of “Patriarch” Clayson’s background, and he wasn’t a southerner, he was British…

You know sparks will fly. A Jargon song, and lots of other Olympic Peninsula Chinook Jargon recollections, from an early settler who styled himself “The Patriarch”.