Chinook Jargon in the Interior

[Dave Robertson]

Thanks, Sally, for the note on Montana.

I don't know of, nor do I infer, much knowledge of Chinuk-wawa among Idaho's
Indian people either.  And it's interesting to read references made a hundred
years ago to a Kutenai jargon-!  So the eastern border of present-day
Washington State also serves as the southern leg of a makeshift eastern
boundary of the Chinook Jargon speech area.

What I think I've seen evidence of so far is some fairly solid knowledge of
Chinuk-wawa among native people of northeastern Washington (the Salish
tribes); among the Nez Perce (Chief Joseph's use of Chinook Jargon has been
recorded); and perhaps sporadically among Sahaptins of the southeast corner
of the state.

That covers the border region.  As for the lands a little more to the West,
my impression is that the Jargon was known virtually all along the Columbia
River northward into Canada.  We've seen that knowledge of Chinuk-wawa was
claimed to be almost universal at Yakama Reservation in the late 1800's; we
know for sure that people from the mouth of the Columbia up to the
Klickitats, Wascos and Wishrams spoke it; and again, the Salish territory
farther up the river was also a place of intense fur-trade activity and of
cultural contact with non-Indians in general.

It shouldn't be any surprise to see a language being diffused along a
watershed.  That's the rule for any indigenous language of the Northwest, and
perhaps the most common route of transmission observed throughout the world.

My questions include these:

*How far North along the Columbia watershed did Chinuk-wawa extend?

*Did any separate major route of transmission exist, which might for example
have caused tribes like the northern Interior Salish (Lillooet, Shuswap,
Thompson) to have learned the Jargon from the people living along the Fraser
River, much as the Columbia people may have taught each other the language?


*To borrow from the controversies of the Reagan era, "who knew what when?"
What seem to be the earliest dates for the presence of CJ knowledge among the
various Interior peoples in question?  What does this tell us about the
pattern of spread of the language?

Let me explicitly note that for the moment I'm omitting consideration of the
transmission of Chinuk-wawa northward along the Pacific Coast.  That will be
a fine research project also.

LhaXayEm,
Dave


Sally Thomason <thomason at UMICH.EDU> wrote:
>
> I've asked Salish and Pend d'Oreille elders on the Flathead Reservation
> about Chinook Jargon, and they all say it wasn't ever spoken there.  They
> say that people knew the Sign Language, though; and my guess has been
> that CJ stopped spreading eastward at about the same point where the
> Sign Language stopped spreading westward -- that is, that the two
> contact languages, used for similar functions in intertribal
> communication, didn't overlap much.
>
> There aren't many loanwords in either Montana Salish or Pend d'Oreille
> from CJ.  There are a few, but it's quite possible that the were borrowed
> from neighbors to the west, not directly from CJ itself.  Both tribes had
> close ties with the Spokanes, Kalispels, Nez Perces, for instance, and
> all three of those tribes may have been, as Dave suggests, within CJ
> territory -- maybe at its easternmost point of spread.
>
> All this is hard to prove, or even to find *any* evidence for, at this late
> date.  It is certainly possible that the current elders (I think I first
> asked about this ca. 1985) remember the use of the Sign Language but not
> of CJ because the Sign Language hung around longer in the region; that is,
> it's possible that CJ was once used in western Montana but it vanished
> early from use and then from tribal memories.  Still, without direct
evidence
> of the use of CJ east of Idaho, it is probably most reasonable to assume
> that it was never used there.
>
> Well, except possibly by Michel Revais!  -- Jocko, where he was an
interpreter,
> is on the modern Flathead Reservation.  But note that he was half Kalispel,
and
> the main bands of the  Kalispels live farther west.  (There are said to be
some
> Kalispels on the Flathead Reservation, but I've never met any there.)
>
>    -- Sally
>
> P.S. There's quite a bit of controversy about whether the Pacific Pidgin
English
>      *arose* on those plantations -- many people believe that it arose as a
pretty
>      typical trade pidgin -- but it may now be generally accepted that it
was
>      *nurtured* on the plantations of Queensland and/or Samoa (etc.), as
Dave
>      suggests.
>