Chinook Wawa pe Alaska Boston Wawa

[David Lewis]

>> Furthermore, I suspect that use of Chinook Jargon was never even attempted
>> by whites for communication with Aleut and Inuit people.  Guidebooks of
>> the time of the American and Canadian influx to Alaska routinely propose
>> the Jargon for use with "Indians", as an "Indian" language.  It seems to
>> have been implicitly understood that these other two groups were not
>> Indians.
>
>This is what keeps puzzling me. The somewhat arbitrary distinction
>between
>Eskimo/Inuit/Yuit and "Indians" seems to have a very long tradition.
>As if the
>Saami ("Lapps") where not Europeans...

Do guidebooks embody the complete knowledge and happenings of the time
period in question? I think not. I think it necessary for at least myself
to recognize that there was extreme variability in communications in the
colonial era and that there may have been some attempts to communicate with
the people of the far North through Chinook Jargon.

Whether these peoples are Indian is an interesting comment. None of those
people we think of as Indian were ever Indian until White settlement on
this continent. We are people of different Nations which have there own
names. I never thought the Eskimo were Indian, and they may not think that
as well. They may not even think of themselves as Eskimo but have another
native description of who they are.  The various migration theories of the
small-tool builders and the later Inuit should not continue to define who
these people are and were.
In Spirit
David


>
>Lush San,
>
>Henry K.
>