Michel Revais & Chinook Jargon in the Interior

[Dave Robertson]

LhaXayEm,

I'm reading Ivy Doak's master's thesis on "The 1908 Okanagan Word Lists of
James Teit", the legendarily well-versed and quirky Shetlander who recorded
a great percentage of what we now know about several Interior Salish tribes.

The historical record of the Jargon in the Interior parts of the Pacific
Northwest, in my opinion, is remarkably spotty; it seems clear that the
language was very widely known here, but that it had a different role to
play than on the coast.  (Be aware that by "Interior" I mean the areas East
of the Cascades Mountains, roughly, and by "coast" the areas to the west of
that range.)  It remains for someone eventually to piece together the
innumerable small scattered bits of documentation of CJ in the Interior, and
synthesize a good historical picture of how the contact language was used
here.  Books like Doak's serve as good sources, for reasons such as the
following:

*They show us the state of indigenous languages like Okanagan Salish soon
after contact with whites.  Many of the (CJ) loanwords still reflect, for
example, more of a French pronunciation than they did later, once the
processes of nativization and / or anglicization began to act.  See page 39
for an example:  Teit has for "sugar" <li sikur> in the Lakes dialect,
relatively closely reflecting the French pronunciation of <le sucre>, while
the modern Okanagan form is <lisukEr>.

*They provide valuable accounts of the people who spoke Jargon, for example:
 "...an official interpreter at Jocko [in Montana]...Michel [Revais]
was...half Kalispel, one-quarter French, one-eighth Pend d'Oreille (with a
dash of Tuna'xe), and one-eighth Flathead.  He spoke French, English,
Chinook Jargon, sign language, Flathead, Okanagon and Columbia [three Salish
languages]."  (Cited on page 9.)  To learn more about the lives and careers
of people like this who used CJ in the Interior will be a huge step toward
understanding how and for what purposes they spoke the language.  Another
case:  I've heard from living native sources that many of the native people
of this region in the 20th century learned Jargon in order to communicate
with other Indian and non-Indian people of various ethnicities in the
hops-fields, where seasonal work was one of the reliable sources of cash
income for Indians.  The parallel with the Queensland, Samoa, etc.
plantations that gave rise to and nurtured Pacific Pidgin English is surely
worth reflecting upon -- Though the differences are illuminating as well.

Each contact language has its unique social circumstances, and in many cases
each variety of the language develops under quite unique conditions.  My
hunch is that this may have been the case with Chinook Jargon in the
Interior.  At the least, a thorough historical study of this topic will fill
in some tantalizing blanks in the overall study of the Jargon.

Food for thought.

Best,
Dave