Chinuk Wawa shows up in a funny place: American Machinist magazine. (February 2, 1884, page 3.) In the middle of a serious discussion of Root’s new boiler design, they throw in some lighter-weight filler. “What… Continue reading
(Notice how I’m indulging in exclamations this week?!)
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
Just to bring alive for you one of the uses we talk about the Jargon having–a “token of pioneer identity”, a “badge of Northwesternness”–I give you the following correspondence, nine letters that were… Continue reading
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
The Tilikums of Elttaes were “a bunch of boosters“. Do you know more about them? Add it in a comment. Their early 20th-century organization was headed by a Hyas Tyee or Tyee Kopa Konaway. It… Continue reading
“Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon, and California, 1865-1881″ Boston: Lee and Shepard / New York: Charles T. Dillingham, 1884 The title and subtitle tell you… Continue reading
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
On our way back to Spokane from a visit to the coast, we stopped in at Roslyn, Washington, one of my mom’s and late dad’s favorite little towns. This town was founded in… Continue reading
By Dave Bidini in the National Post. Give’r! But it sounds like he stopped right about the Alberta-BC border, eh? 😉 I’ve never heard BC folks call each other “Skookum”. See my addendum below.… Continue reading
