<Harvey & Bailey. General Merchants, Ashcroft, B.C.> Tilikom klaska makuk haws kopa Ashkroft. The [Indian] people’s store in Ashcroft. — Kamloops Wawa #201 (June 1902), page 143

With today’s Chinook Jargon song “Lilly Dale”, I’m getting around to writing what I thought was just another doggerel bit, but turns out to be tangled in a heck of a web of… Continue reading →

A colorful firsthand telling of a dangerous scene by a girl who lived through it, to recount it in the fullness of her age. “This was about 1854”, Mrs Parker says, and she provides… Continue reading →

This pleasant antique piano is here to offset the unpleasant elements in the story that follows. “When Sheridan Was in Oregon” by Turner F[enner] Le(a)vens (Washington Historical Quarterly, July 1925 / 16(3):163-185). Levens/Leavens… Continue reading →

A Canadian Indigenous Thanksgiving, for my American readers. I’m grateful for our always growing community of Chinuk Wawa-Chinook Jargon speakers & learners!  

In news of a local version of one of the then-popular statewide annual reunions of “old Oregon” pioneers, we have this teaser:      George W. Dunn is the retiring president.  Rev. P.R.… Continue reading →

[Edited with more info 11/20/2016 — see end of article.] I’ve been running a thread of Chinook Jargon advertisements, which will be continuing for quite a while due to the plenitude of spots… Continue reading →

     The local editors of Portland, Oregon, are abusing one another in choice Chinook, and such words as “siwash tillicums,”  “mesacha cultus wawa” are freely bandied as if they had a wonderful… Continue reading →

This is an old-school telling of the first Chinook Jargon joke I ever learned, back in 1998.  (Hat tip to Tim Montler for that.) (My comments after the proto-Trumpian ethnic-stereotyping fest [you’re forewarned]… Continue reading →

  A nice, direct yet terse, advertising appeal in Chinook Jargon:      Msaika komtaks naika: naika Shon Hol: You folks know me: I’m John Hull, naika makuk msaika musmus, pi naika I… Continue reading →