Translation effort

[Mike Cleven]

>
   > > "Hiyu siwash, ankate, copa conaway illahee, caqua tipso; pe alta
   wake >
   > siya halo; wake lele conaway siwash mimeloose."
   >

   Many Indians, once, all over the country, like grass; and now not far
   till
   them gone; not long all Indians be dead.


   I see from Henry's post that this is from an Oregon pioneer's account
   of a
   conversation with an Oregon native. It is curiously very much like a
   passage in Chief Seattle's speech, nearly "word for word" as if we had
   an
   exact transcription which we don't. I made a stab at retranslating the
   overblown poesy of the famous English translation back into the
   semi-original Chinook, which is at
   http://members.home.net/skookum/seattle.html (or should be). Somewhere
   near
   the middle of the speech Seattle is attributed with having said nearly
   exactly the same thing......I'm not sure at the moment what my
   retranslation
   came out like. As mentioned long ago, I welcome any further help in
   retranslating the speech, a reexamination of which (I think) reveals it
   to
   have a much different tone than the popularized version.......

   MC
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