Tag Archive: siwash

Saibashi, sasquatch, Toisan, BC

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For several years, I’ve been wanting to write more about saibashi…

Sluiskin’s warning! Kloshe nanich!

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(Notice how I’m indulging in exclamations this week?!)

Wah-Kee-Nah and her people, including James Clark Strong

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“Wah-Kee-Nah and Her People“ by James Clark Strong New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893 In places, a solidly interesting piece of Northwest Americana. New Yorker J.C. Strong lived in the PNW starting in… Continue reading →

Gentrifying a Siwash neighborhood in Olympia: The history of a word in local English

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The Vancouver (Washington Territory) Independent of April 8, 1876, at the end of its “Olympia Notes” column, reproduces news from the Olympia Echo.  The piece includes the following sentence of note: Little shanties which have been… Continue reading →

Mencken on Chinook Jargon’s influence

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H.L. Mencken‘s famous 1945 book on “The American Language” (Supplement 1) gets into the subject of Chinook Jargon’s influence on our English, on pages 310-311. I hear a wisely skeptical voice in his… Continue reading →

Blazing the way, by Emily Denny

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Blazing the Way: Or, true stories, songs and sketches of Puget Sound and other pioneers. By Emily Inez Denny. Seattle: Rainier Printing Company, Inc. 1909. I enjoyed noticing on page 33 of this… Continue reading →

Lines to a klootchman

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Here’s the masculine original “Lines to a Klootchman” to which the “answer song” poem was written.  It will help you make sense of that poem, where some real queer-looking Chinook Jargon happens. In… Continue reading →

Lines by a klootchman

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From the Steilacoom (Washington Territory) Puget Sound Herald, Friday, October 14, 1859, front page I reckon. This one’s what was in early 1960s pop music called an “answer song” 🙂 (If you don’t… Continue reading →

Mary Moses’s statement

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Mary Moses’s Statement. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon, 1988.  (No author or editor credited.) Another invaluable publication by Glen Adams about Inland Northwest history.  Man, the Ye Galleon catalog must be hundreds of items… Continue reading →

Opening the remaining half of the Colville Reservation to settlement, 1906

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The context of the book I’m blogging about today is that in 1906 there was a plan to throw open the remaining, southern, half of the Colville Indian Reservation in north-central Washington state… Continue reading →