US Edition
News from Chinook Jargon
Top Chinook Jargon News
Sequim · SequimAn engaging little series on a smalltown paper that ran untranslated Chinook Jargon pieces well past the frontier era. This was in Sequim, Washington, phonetically [skwιm]. Hiu snass wawa? (Image credit: Amazon) And that’s on the Olympic Peninsula, a region that was still pretty remote from mainstream Settler society. So local folks still used some Northern-dialect Chinuk Wawa, and understood it pretty well when it was used in reporting on the S…Read Article
Sequim Press, Part 3 (06/10/1921): Jamestown S’Klallam and local Chinook Jargon
Yakima · YakimaSome great information from an eyewitness of the later frontier era of Washington is to be found in Ned (Edouard) Chambreau’s journals. Chambreau was US Army General O[liver] O[tis] Howard‘s Chinuk Wawa interpreter. Edouard (Ned) Chambreau (born in France in 1821; to Montreal 1825; to Oregon Territory in 1847) (image credit: Offbeat Oregon) He was not literate in his native language, French! But he could write good English. It’s clear from Chamb…Read Article
WA: Ned Chambreau’s phenomenal 1876-1880 journals
Portland, Oregon · PortlandI think we may have just antedated the classic Pacific NW “sitkum dollar” joke by 24 years! It’s a crime to explain a jest…which I’ll do after you get a chance to read this & see if it makes you laugh: A friend tells us a good story on Capt. Whyte, of the Forward. While at Astoria a clootchman stepped up to him and presenting to his notice a basket full of crabs, offered to sell the lot for sitkum dolla — half dollar. The Captain planked down a …Read Article
