[Fwd: P. Bakker re 3 factors tending against pidgins in N. America]

[Mike Cleven]

At 03:07 PM 6/20/99 -0700, you wrote:
>On Fri, 18 Jun 1999 16:46:18 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>Quite a bit, I'm afraid - at least on my side of the border (British
>>Columbia).  I don't know enough about the social history of the Oregon
>>Territory to know to what degree there was intermarriage between natives
>>and whites there.
>
>Oh, I'm sure there was plenty, but certainly done quietly and in the
>more isolated areas.

NO.  It was just as common in Victoria and New Westminster (the only
metropoles of early British Columbia) as it was in the sparsely-settled (by
white people) "backcountry", where whites perforce had to adapt to native
ways by sheer necessity (there were extremely few whites in the
backcountry, in fact, until after 1885).  Natives (and "half-breeds") were
a predominant part of the B.C. population until the dawn of the 20th
Century; I think the main difference here might be that the white influx
"south of 49" was MUCH stronger and more numerous (in those areas where
whites settled).  The Jargon was in wide use among non-natives in BC until
World War I, despite a huge influx of Eastern Canadians and Europeans from
1885 (the railway) onwards; many of these latter readily adapted to the
Jargon, which is why certain useful Jargon words occur in everyday BC
speech to this day, even being adopted by newcomers without realizing where
they came from.  But again, the fact is that BC had and has a "half-native"
population ("half" being an inaccurate term) that was and is AT LEAST AS
LARGE as the "full blood" or "status" population; this had to happen
somehow, so obviously it wasn't "done quietly and in the more isolated areas".

    But for all Oregon's vaunted and carefully
>framed image of tolerance for individuality, it is extended to
>different races mostly by a kind of lip service, and modern Oregon
>remains ethnically white-centered.  We do have a little ring of
>multiracial diversity here in the urban center, but a kind of low,
>easy-to-step-over fence remains, and for the most part Portlanders
>wave cheerfully to their neighbors but refrain from fraternizing too
>much across cultural lines.

That may be, and it certainly seems that the mutual segregation of native
and non-native communities "south of 49" was a more severe division,
perhaps as a secondary result of the Indian Wars in the Columbia Plateau,
to which there are no corresponding events in BC (other than the
comparatively minor flare-ups of the Chilcotin and Fraser Canyon Wars).
And to this day, the non-native population of WA and OR is MUCH larger than
the native population; whereas in BC the status population is c.125,000 and
the non-status and Metis ("half-breed") population is two or three times
that; the total being between 300,000 and 500,000, depending on who's
counting and why; the province has a population of between 3 and 4 million,
putting the combined native and "mixed" population in the vicinity of 10%
or more.  In much of "rural" (smalltown) BC, the native population is well
over 30%, and even in some large centres (Prince Rupert, e.g.) can be
reckoned at over 50%.  Even without open-minded attitudes towards
"intermarriage" (formal or informal) during colonial and frontier periods,
such a density of "host populations" implies at least a fair degree of
mixed-blood offspring.

Supposedly, by the way, there are up to 65 million _Americans_ who have at
least some native bloodlines, whether they know about it or admit it or
not.  So despite the fact that there is the "you keep to your side of the
river/railtrack, I'll keep to mine" attitudes in Oregon you are speaking
of, it's obvious that there must have been a fair degree of intermixing,
publicly admitted or not.  The recent revelations about Thomas Jefferson
and the reunions of long separated white-black families come to mind......