John Ball

[peter webster]

Margarite McLoughlin, I think, was a cree-speaker, originally... Narcissa
Whitman said she spoke "a little French." Sounds like John Ball was sort of
like the Rev Beaver, who arrived at the post around then and made a great
deal of trouble...


At 8:13 PM -0700 4/13/01, Mike Cleven wrote:
>George Lang wrote:
>>
>> Since the matter of John Ball has come up , I thought I'd append the
>> following information from a recent hagiography of Ranald MacDonald, a son
>> of Concomly (Lewis and Murakami, 1990)
>>
>> John Ball opened a school in 1832 at Fort Vancouver "for two dozen half-
>> breed Indian children of the HBC employees.  These children ranged in age
>> from six to sixteen years and "talked the Cree, Nez Percé, Chinook,
>> Klickitat and other Indian languages."
>>
>> In this context one might read "Chinook" to mean Chinook proper, but the
>> following passage from Ranald MacDonald suggests not:
>>
>> "I attended the school to learn my A.B.C. and English. The big boys had a
>> medal put over their necks, if caught speaking French or Chinook, and when
>> school was out had to remain and learn a task...."
>>
>> John Ball's job, as he conceived it, was to discourage Wawa. He "dunced"
>> them.

peter