short reply Re: CJ origin

[Mike Cleven]

[main comments snipped; more later]
>
> I'm surprised that Mike, who has major historical
> interests, is amazed that people are interested in the
> origin question: pre-contact or post-contact, CJ is
> a wonderful language; but a lot of us find the question
> of when it arose fascinating, so why not discuss it?
> (Well, like Mike I don't want to argue about it.  But I
> don't think that all discussions have to be arguments,
> even when the issues are controversial, as this one seems
> to be for quite a few people.)

The origin question is one thing; my problem is that I have found the
tone of much of the commentary on this subject to be more concerned with
establishing the validity of a "pure" version of the Jargon as if the
later Jargon were somehow a tainted thing, not "real Wawa", and the
undertone seems to have been that the enrichment of the Jargon by the
new vocabulary was a bad thing (like all things brought by the evil
outsiders); to me it seems apposite and obvious that the impetus for
more widespread use of the Jargon came from the consequences and
circumstances of Contact, whether spread by native peoples or by "alien"
influences; whatever was before I'd think was quite a bit more basic.
English absorbed Norse and Norman words and usages and remained English;
but it was already a full-blown language.

When I say, as you note at the top, that some kind of pre-Jargon "must"
have existed (I'm not being determinist) what I mean is that: between
neighbouring peoples in regular friendly contact it seems natural that
sets of words would become shared which would form the basis for
accustomed conversation, leading to at least some kind of argot if not a
full-blown language, or even pidgin; the one I was thinking of was the
Nootka-Chinook Jargon alluded to that _did_ apparently form the basis of
what became "the Chinook Jargon as we know it", which includes the
French-English and other wordloans (few as they are); but I'll add that
I doubt very much that this Nootka-Chinook Jargon was widely used
outside those two communities except by some of their immediate or
intermediary neighbours (the Chehalis, from whose language other words
are also found fairly commonly in the Wawa); there's no evidence of its
usage farther Upcoast in those days; how developed and how old the Haida
(and Tlinkit?) Jargon(s) were I don't think anyone has established.
Were the Kalapuyan and other non-Chinook Columbia vocabularies also
found in this pre-Contact Jargon/pidgin/argot/whatever it was?  It's
true that the Nootka-Chinook Jargon helped bridge the peoples of the
Coast and Interior because of their mutual contact with the Chinook, but
did this happen before or during Contact?  It's really a pity that more
of the voyageurs and fur traders weren't better linguists and diarists
so we'd have more records; specialists of that kind hadn't been invented
yet, not even in Europe.

What's the account of the Yakima meeting between the fur traders and a
local congress of peoples from _way_ early on?  I can't remember if it
was the French who knew basic Jargon, or the Yakima....as Terry Glavin
has noted, the Chinook Jargon served a pivotal role in a pre-Contact
(sort of, post-discovery but pre-exploration and settlement) between the
Chilcotin, Shuswap and Lillooet in a war that had raged for some time;
it was _because_ of Contact that negotiations were held, with the common
enemy perceived by all rapidly encroaching; and as a common tongue was
much needed to enable dialogue Chinook Jargon was chosen, the task of
its mutual learning providing the basis for the eventual peace; this was
the introduction of the Chinook Jargon into those peoples (I'm not sure
of the year; IIRC it may have been a non-native who introduced it but
I'm not certain; but I think it was before any non-natives were through
that country other than Mackenzie and Fraser et al).

Anyway, my intent was to be brief in reference to your surprise at my
"must have risen"; I was meaning in simple terms only; the earlier
pre-Jargon, if any, was not as geographically widespread nor
linguistically developed (lexically or otherwise) as what flourished in
the 19th Century; I do understand the linguistic interest in
establishing these criteria; what I don't like is the political
bitterness against foreign influences, and the idea that the Jargon was
more a part of native culture than non-native; without doubt it was a
major part of the regional identity of non-native Northwesterners and
played a major part in daily life, i.e. "culture" in the
anthropological/sociological sense.  I'm all for study of the historical
origins and evolution of any pre-Jargon(s), pidgins, argots, whatever or
wherever they may be; but I don't like hearing them politicized to the
detriment of other contributing cultures to that of the Jargon itself,
which isn't exclusively nature in history or usage; if only non-native
by (massive) wordloans and not underlying structure.....

MC