Haida-based trade language (more)

[David Robertson]

LhaXayEm.

>From Richard Somerset Mackie, "Trading Beyond the Mountains:  The British Fur
Trade on the Pacific, 1793-1843" (Vancouver:  UBC, 1997):

page 296:  "To the North, Tolmie recalled, the company's eviction of American
fur traders from the North West Coast in the 1830s resulted in the
displacement of the 'Kygani' trading jargon and its replacement by Chinook."
[footnote 41]

page 373 [footnote 41]:  "Originally, there were two trading languages.  As
Tolmie explained:  'Before the HB Steamer "Beaver" in 1836 and later made it
unprofitable for traders in sailing vessels to visit the Coast, a jargon
consisting chiefly of broken Kygani and Tshatshinni Haida and English was the
lingua franca, or medium of communication, between traders and indians as far
south to my knowledge as Milbank Sound.'  The language originated at Kaigani.
Elsewhere, Tolmie referred to the Kaigani jargon as 'the "lingua franca" of
the Northwest Coast fifty years ago and later, altho now in disuse generally,
supplanted by a much changed Chinook Jargon.'  In 1862, Richard Mayne
similarly noted that the southern tribes universally understood Chinook, but
the northern tribes did not.  Tolmie to Swan, 30 December 1878 and 6 July
1879, Swan Papers, UBC; Green Journal of a Tour, 40-1, and Anderson, 'Notes on
the Indian Tribes,' 74; Mayne, 'Four Years,' 244-5."

I will send along some notes from this same book with regard to ChInuk
Wawa.

Lhush pulakli,
Dave