Alaskan Jargon Survival...a most acute suggestion, Nadja!

[Mike Cleven]

Aron Faegre wrote:
>
> Dave Robertson wrote:
>
> > If those folks tell their dogs to "mush", then maybe they do also say "hyak", huh?
> >
>
> I've always suspected that "mush" came from the Ojibwe "animosh" for "dog" ... does anyone know?

Alan Hartley, perhaps, via the OED's opinion; I'd guess myself that dog
commands are _older_ than the introduction of the Jargon into Alaska/the
Yukon (late 1800s) and probably do come from much further east, in which
case "mush" might indeed come ultimately from backwoods French, but
directly from "marcher" ("to go") rather than via "mahsh".  As for
"hike, hike, hike" I'm not sure if it's a Yukonism of "hyak, hyak, hyak"
or not ("Yukon" here meaning that river's entire
basin/territory/country, and so including Interior Alaska); it sounds
like it may have originally been a muleteer's command, however; Nadja
says it's not connected to bovine/equine commands; but it rings a bell,
if only from old western movies (and therefore probably incorrect
historically), as having to do with mules or maybe with horses.
Continuing on that thought, it still might have its origin in the Jargon
adaptions of travellers and/or teamsters the Oregon Trail and/or the
Fraser Canyon/Cariboo Roads; but I'd look for a first
provenance/citation, when and where; it's an interesting connection,
though.

The state of the Jargon as it is/was in Alaska remains up to debate and
it would be good to know more; I'm of the opinion that there was a
special breed of Jargon up there, with more English pidginization plus
special local words of both native and non-native
origin/borrowing/adaption; "Alaska English" mostly as on that webpage.
Although the Jargon was somewhat known in the sparsely populated Yukon
basin before the Klondike goldrush, it was the sourdoughs who brought it
into that region "in force", and likely into the Panhandle as well to a
degree unknown in pre-Gold Rush decades; and while they'd all bought
those little books published in Seattle and Victoria that prepared them
for a language supposedly the lingua franca of the vast cold wasteland
they were about to penetrate.  Because of all this I don't think
Klondike/Alaska Jargon ever had the depth and "solidity" - community
fluency/utility - that it had in the lower Pacific Northwest.  It's
noted, however, that the co-discoverer of the rush-launching claim (a
Tahltan-Tlingit-nonnative mixed blood, IIRC) had a Chinook name (Skookum
Jim).

Does anyone have any sources/references for Jargon as-it-was in
Alaska/Atlin/Yukon?  It'd be an interesting paper for one of you
Chinook-interested academics, out there; the rate of
transmission/adoption of Jargon words into regional English and/or
native languages.  I know that high-profile Jargon words like potlatch
and tyee and mahkook are found locally, and "mahsi" is generic for
"thanks" throughout that country, but I doubt very much we'd find the
whole lexicon - bestiary, food words, adverbs, adjectives etc - but
rather a heavy influence on local English and a few borrowings into
Tahltan, Tlingit, Eyak, etc.  Is there someone already who has anything
specific on this, or who needs a research topic?

MC