Henry's followup: Early linguists using CJ w/native people? (fwd)

[David Robertson]

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2000 23:06:31 -0800
From: David Lewis <coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU>
To: chinook at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Cc: chinuk_illahee_northwest at egroups.com
Subject: Re: Henry's followup:  Early linguists using CJ w/native people?

I would venture to say that George Gibbs was the first, as he learned CJ in
Astoria in the late 1840's. He was then present and taking vocabularies in
California and Oregon and Washington Territories. I know he is not
considered by many as a linguist but his work has been used linguistically
by many linguists and has probably set an early example of fieldwork in
linguistics. One of the elements in the foundation of American Indian
linguistics if nothing else. But he used the Oregon Jargon to communicate
during the Dayton treaty signings with the Willamette Valley Indigenous
nations. Boas,to my mind, has been given the lion's share of credit for
this early work. Boas served to create great things for linguistics and the
science of Anthropology but his name tends to overshadow the earlier
researchers such as A. Gatschet.

David

At 10:14 PM 03/08/1999 -0800, you wrote:
>LhaXayEm, pi wEXt hayash mersi khapa mayka, Henry,
>
>You bring up a very good question, and you make me realize that I do not
>know whether any other *early* linguists used CJ to communicate with their
>indigenous informants.  Was Boas the first?  Did it take a while for the
>practice to catch on?
>
>Suggestions like yours, for research that needs to be done, are highly
>valuable in our field.  (I think in a similar way of the many concise
>statements in Kinkade & Czaykowska-Higgins' Salish linguistics volume, to
>the effect that "little work has been done yet on such-and-such".)  I hope
>that someone will do research on issues like the actual authorship and
>conditions of composition of several early sources; not only Demers /
>"Demers", but also materials such as the early Nootkan vocabularies.
>
>Maybe on a vacation some time, you'll be able to write something up about
>it!
>
>Lhush pulakli...wek saya sItkEm pulakli.
>Dave
>
>
>
>  *VISIT the archives of the CHINOOK jargon and the SALISHAN & neighboring*
>                     <=== languages lists, on the Web! ===>
>            http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/salishan.html
>            http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/chinook.html


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               David Gene Lewis
         P.O. Box 3086
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Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community, Oregon
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