info (fwd)

At 08:17 PM 11/4/98 -0800, David Robertson wrote:

>Lhush san!  --My two cents:  People born in Alaska are called sourdoughs
>(in Alaska), as my family has always told me I am that.  Nice
>metaphor, isn't it?  If I understand right, sourdough is made from a
>culture like yeast, so it has "roots".

Hadn't heard that it was still in common use as a descriptor for =
Alaskans;
in Canada it simply means a veteran of the Klondike Gold Rush or one of
their hoary, grizzled mercury-crazed goldfield successors who are still =
to
be found around the Yukon today......

>But back to the point... People not born in Alaska are locally called
>cheechakos, which a lot of you will understand right away:  "Newcomer" =
or
>"just got here" in Chinook Jargon.   The most likely source for the
>sourdough - cheechako connection would seem to be California / San
>Francisco gold rushers using the Jargon in order to get along in
>multiethnic Northern mining camps, towns, and Native people's country, =
eh?

It's a bit simpler than that, I think - the Jargon was in wide use
throughout the Coast and anyone heading for the Klondike inevitably =
bought
one of the commercial lexicons that most outfitters had on sale over the
counter; many of the Victoria, New Westminster and Seattle pamphlet
publications are of this type; as a result Jargon words such as =
"cheechako"
and "tillicum" became part of the Klondike's/Alaska's English slang.  The
California connection is, however, much earlier than the 1890-1905 =
period;
the gold rush that was being spoken of was the 1849 gold rush, not the
Klondike; I believe it was during that era that the term "sourdough" was
originally coined, though who exactly came up with the idea of actually
breaking bread that had gone sour from a yeast infection I have never =
heard. =20

As far as the Jargon in northern California goes, I'd thought it was =
pretty
well-established that the native ecumene of the Jargon included the =
tribes
of the Humboldt and Shasta counties and a few to the south of that.  =
Since
the Russian fur traders (who did know the Jargon, or at least a form of =
it)
were active into the Sebastopol/Russian River and Fort Bragg region well
into the 19th Century, this provides another reason to think that the
Jargon was known to at least some non-natives in the region - probably
before the American annexation of California.  But this doesn't seem to =
be
in the Bay Area, or Spanish-Mexican records would make some kind of =
mention
of it, and there would be more evidence of it from Gold Rush-era San
=46rancisco newspapers and other publications........

To me, San Fran's always been in southern California anyway, at least
geographically; I know those are fighting words, but in Jargon terms
"northern" would be to the north of Fort Bragg or Redding....

Mike C.
Mike Cleven
ironmtn at bigfoot.com
http://members.home.net/ironmtn/

The thunderbolt steers all things.
                           - Herakleitos