Main entrance, Kamloops residential school

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Said to be a 1930’s photo by George Meeres, this shot of the Kamloops residential school entrance surprised me.

Lower Chehalis’s ‘stands up the sail tool tool’, and Chinuk Wawa influence

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A word of Lower Chehalis Salish from elder Emma Luscier in 1941 ultimately shows traces of Chinuk Wawa.

1881: From Alaska — Why a Washington [DC] Clerk Went to a Far-Off Country

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When Alaska was still a newly acquired territory of the USA (since 1867), most Americans to be found there were located in its southeast panhandle.

1912, Siletz, OR: Native minstrel show in Jargon?!

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Most unexpectedly, we find Native people in Oregon doing a minstrel show in Chinuk Wawa…

More humor in Chinuk Wawa: How the priest wound up selling beer

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This one’s also in a non-Chinook Jargon language, but it’s from the Chinook newspaper, and it’s quite a funny true experience!

1916: How to say “Ish Kabibble” in southern-dialect Chinook Jargon

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Very important, as John Peabody Harrington might say in his field notes: here’s Grand Ronde’s style of Chinuk Wawa, spotted in the wild…

1855, OR: Where is the fault?

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Genuine early-creolized, Grand Ronde area, Chinook Jargon had already crept into Pacific NW English by the time our first newspapers were being published (and complained about).

January 1895: “Our Monthly Budget”, Part 1 of 3 (St Agnes’s weird story)

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Kamloops Wawa #124, page 2, promises us:

Places called “Tenas Illihee / Tenas Illahe(e)”

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The Chinook Jargon term for ‘island’, tənəs-íliʔi, has a literal meaning of ‘little land’.

1883: John Slocum’s return from death + competition with White guys

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This “Wiggins” stuff is an interesting wrinkle!