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by Kerby Jackson Chinook Jargon (also called Chinook Wawa) is typically regarded as having been a pidgin language that was developed in the Pacific Northwest during the early 19th century. However, contrary to the popular misconception, Chinook Jargon was a bit more than just a sort of short lived pidgin language and is not to be confused with the language spoke by the Chinook people who originally lived in the basic vicinity of where Portland, Oregon is today. For over a century, Chinook Jargon was the dominant language spoken in the Old Oregon Country and was spoken by Indians and Euro-American settlers alike. Before the coming of the settlers, this language was spoken by almost every native tribe in the Pacific Northwest for the purpose of commerce and essentially borrowed words from tribes throughout Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia and Alaska, namely the Chinook, the Salish and the Nootka. Later, with the coming of the first European settlers to the region (most of which had intermarried into varying Indian tribes through what many regarded as strategic marriages), this language had also assimilated many English, French, Spanish, Dutch and even some Hawaiian words into it. Contrary to what you might have read in the history books, Lewis and Clark were not the first whites to be in this region. In reality, they were merely the first organized party of Americans to reach the Pacific by way of an overland expedition. When the explorers first met with the Chinooks on the Columbia River, the Indians told them the names of thirteen white sea captains whom they had met previously and also impressed the two explorers with some knowledge of the English language. In particular, the Chinook were very partial to the phrases "damn rascal" and "son of a bitch". As well, it was noted that the Chinook did not approach their guide Sacajawea speaking true Chinook, but actually spoke to her in Chinook Jargon. As a member of the Shoshone tribe and having been born in Idaho (she was later captured by the Hidatsa), Sacajawea spoke Chinook Jargon fluently. By the 1880's, over 50,000 people in this region spoke Chinook Jargon and many children, despite being the offspring of American, European and Canadian settlers, actually learned Chinook Jargon before they learned English (one of my great grandmothers fell into this category). As a general rule, the language was spoken as far south as the vicinity of Mt. Shasta, California, as far east as the Rockies and north into the Alaskan Panhandle, but it should be noted that despite the claims of many early books and articles on the subject, there never was an “official” version of Chinook Jargon and the language varied somewhat in different locales around the region. Although many "experts" outside the region like to insist that this was merely a spoken pidgin language used to negotiate trade and treaties between Indians and whites, hymn books, prayer books and even biblical scriptures were actually translated and published into Chinook Jargon and many personal letters, telegrams and journals that still survive from that era were written in the jargon. Sometimes popular poems and songs were also translated into the language and were then sung or recited in public at theaters or churches, while in Portland, the Catholic Mass was often performed in Chinook Jargon. Many of these surviving artifacts were written in what was known as Wawa Shorthand, which was a Chinook Jargon alphabet. Later on, Chinook Jargon was even used in a major Hollywood film, a western starring Clark Gable called "Across The Wide Missouri" where Gable plays a mountain man and converses with some Indians using Chinook Jargon. Gable was a regular visitor to my neck of the woods, owned a cabin here and liked to fish on the Rogue River, something he often did in the company of author Zane Grey. (One local story has it that Gable and Grey considered one section of the river very much theirs and ran off a bunch of tourists who'd invaded their fishing spot with gunfire). Before his fame, Gable also spent time in the town of Silverton, Oregon, near Portland. It is quite probable that Gable knew Chinook Jargon and was not just reading from a script, for his pronunciations in the film are actually quite fair. For those of us who are native to the Pacific Northwest, regardless of our ancestry, be it Indian, American, Canadian, European or a fusion of them all, this is the language of our ancestors and it even continues to be spoken by a rare few even in this age despite by the fact that by the turn of the century, an organized movement was already well established to eliminate it. For the most part, they succeeded by vilifying the language as a form of "Injun speak", while in reality their motives were to strip away part of region's individual identity. (Even before Oregon became a U.S. state in 1859, like California (who later did exist as an independent republic for two months), she had designs on her own political independence and for a time Oregon even minted its own currency in the form of the Beaver Coin in several denominations (an illegal act as a U.S. territory, especially since they contained more gold than federal coins and were more preferred while they were being circulated, but as the Territorial Government saw it: “necessity outweighs legality”). For a time, Oregon even threatened to join the Confederacy and gave rise to a host of political leaders who commonly snubbed the leadership of other states, as well as the federal government in public to the point that several bids for Oregon statehood were not only voted down in Oregon, but also by the U.S. Senate who saw we Nor'westers as trouble makers. And we still are the type of troublemakers who regularly banter on and on about striking off on our own way, but what would anyone expect of a territory and now a state, who's official motto is "She flies with her own wings" and recognizes a towering, white haired and hot headed Canadian born, British agent (John McLoughlin) as its official patriarch? In the late 1930's, Chinook Jargon was still being spoken in some areas of Seattle, Portland and Victoria, but within another thirty years, the language had almost completely died out and was reduced to only a few dozen fluent speakers. Still, despite the fact that Chinook Jargon has appeared on the surface to have died out, it really isn't this way at all if you know where to look. Countless town and place names throughout the region still bear Chinook Jargon names. Some of them include Owyhee (a regional corruption of the word "Hawaii" after some Hawaiians miners (known as “Kanakas”) vanished into that wild region in the 1800's). There's also a Kanaka Point in British Columbia and a Kanaka Creek and a Kanaka Gulch in California's Siskyous. And incidentally, the word “Siskiyou” is also Chinook jargon, as a Siskiyou was a horse with a bobbed tail and this word came to be associated with that mountain range along the Oregon-California border after a man riding such a horse vanished into those hills. Tumwater, Washington (originally "temchuk") means "waterfall", while tem refers to the sound that falling water makes. Tem-tem refers to your heartbeat. Pilchuk Falls in Washington (where I was once involved in a severe bus wreck) literally translates as "red water", probably after the clay soil seen nearby. "Illahe" was once a community located along the Rogue River up until about 1900, was mostly populated by Metis (ie. half-breeds) and literally means "land" or “place”. Yet another example is Washington's state motto of "Alki" which is Chinook Jargon for "the future" and is also the name of a neighborhood in Seattle. There are also numerous place names using the word "Tyee", which means "chief" or "leader". And the list goes on and on by the hundreds, attached not only to towns and geography, but also roads and business names throughout the region. The truth of the matter is, you can't really go anywhere in the Pacific Northwest without bumping into Chinook Jargon. Probably the best known derivation from Chinook Jargon is the common phrase "high mucky-muck" which refers to someone who is a big shot and is a corruption of the Chinook Jargon phrase "hiyu mekemek" which means "much food" or "plenty to eat" and probably became attached to the wealthy simply because they always sat at the head of a table. Other popular phrases and words including “out in the sticks” (“stik” means tree, so this phrase literally meant “out in the trees”), “skid row” and “hooch”, are also believed to have Chinook Jargon roots. And then there is the Tyee of all Chinook Jargon words, the big chief of them all: skookum. Skookum was regarded as the most powerful word in Chinook Jargon and has multiple meanings. Typically it means something that is strong, good or powerful, but a Skookum was also an evil spirit that many tribes of Indians in the region feared. Sometimes you still hear people in places like Seattle use the word skookum, but in common parlance today, if something is skookum, it means that it's something that's cool or of a quality that is suited for high mucky-mucks. There are approximately only 1000 simple words in Chinook Jargon, but a person can hold a conversation in the language with a vocabulary of only about 250 words, as simple words are combined into compound words and then treated as singular words. As well, unlike English, depending upon how they are used or where they are placed in a sentence, a word can take on completely different meanings and Chinook Jargon is largely idiomatic. By that, I mean that a word has a meaning beyond its literal definition. For example, your "temtem" is your heart or heartbeat, but it also refers to your inner feelings or thoughts. So if you temtem something, it's what you think, while your temtem is also your opinion. But if you have a "sik temtem", that means that you are feeling sad, opposed to suffering from some sort of cardiovascular ailment. Even though Chinook Jargon has mostly died out in this day and age, its use is again on the rise and thankfully, it is now reasonably easy to learn Chinook Jargon due to the increasing number of books, websites and yes, even public education courses that are appearing on the subject. So why not try it? You'll
be skookum if you do.
A short list of common Chinook Jargon words (compiled from Shaw's "Chinook Jargon & How To Use It", Seattle, 1909) - Ahnkuttie,
formerly; ago.
Online Resources: The
Chinook Trade Jargon
Tenas
Wawa: The Chinook Jargon Voice
Wawa
Press
Chinook
Jargon @ Native Languages
Lexicon
of the Chinook Jargon @ Cayoosh.net
Chinook
Jargon @ Wikipedia
Online Chinook Jargon Audio: Ntskaya
Ikanum @ Grande Ronde.org
Chinook Jargon Remnants and Curiosities A Seattle
Road Sign in Chinook Jargon
Letter
written in Chinook Jarrgon from 1871
Skookum
Coffee
Skookum
Fruit Label from the 1930's
Illihe
Fruit Label from the 1940's (with a bit of a questionable translation)
Hiyu:
West Seattle's Summer Festival
Online Chinook Jargon Dictionaries and Guides: Chinook
Wawa Shorthand
Coombs,
S.F. “Dictionary of the Chinook jargon as spoken on Puget Sound and the
Northwest: with original Indian names for prominent places and localities
with their meanings, historical sketch, etc.” Seattle; Lowman & Hanford,
1891
Gibbs,
George, “Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon or Trade Language of Oregon”,
1863
Holton,
R.J. “Chinook Jargon: The Hidden Language of the Pacific Northwest”, Wawa
Press, 2004
Le
Jeune, J.M.R., "Chinook Rudiments." Kamloops Wawa, No. 1739 (3 May 1924).
Phillips,
W.S., “The Chinook book; A Descriptive Analysis of the Chinook Jargon in
Plain Words, Giving Instructions for Pronunciation, Construction, Expression
and Proper Speaking of Chinook with All the Various Shaded Meanings of
the Words”. Seattle: R.L. Davis Printing Co., 1913.
Shaw,
George, “The Chinook Jargon and How to Use It: A Complete and Exhaustive
Lexicon of the Oldest Trade Language of the American Continent”. Seattle:
Rainier Printing Co., 1909
T.N.
Hibben & Co. (publ.), “Dictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or Indian
Trade Language of the North Pacific Coast” Victoria, 1889
Copyright
2008 by Kerby Jackson. Work archived by WorldWideOCR.com
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