Cowlitz anthropology document URL

[ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU]

http://www.doi.gov/bia/bar/cowlant.htm

This is a very extensive document, filled with priceless information.  To
paraphrase Jack Nisbet without permission, it's good to see people
acknowledging the presence of metis in Washington State.

[excerpts:]

Second, Lower Cowlitz métis descendants worked as farmers and loggers, and
recalled large extended family reunions
which distant collateral relatives attended. These people served as leaders
on the General Council and Executive
Committee, and one family, the Sareault, were lawyers for the Council.
Today's petitioners maintained that their
grandparents spoke French to one another and the Chinook Jargon to Indian
neighbors into the 1940's. While evidence shows
a cultural life different from the Upper Cowlitz and the families in other
social categories, this cultural and social life was in
turn distinct in religion and social interaction from non-Indians in the
surrounding communities...

Mae Ernestine Purcell recalled her childhood, in the 1940's, when she lived
with her grandparents. Both parents spoke
French and English in their homes, and Chinook Jargon among Indian
neighbors. Ernestine, however, was taught English in
the schools, and the grandparents spoke English to her at home:

But my grandparents, when they started to school, they spoke all [i.e., the
schools] English. And they just spoke French [i.e.,
the grandparents], so they were very embarrassed over this. So they didn't
teach my sisters and me French. Which I wish they
had. But when the relatives came to visit, they really really talked a lot
of French. And that was what they talked. Sometimes
maybe we didn't know what they were talking about, but they did talk French
a lot when the relatives came.

My uncle will be out for our reunion, which will be in August. And I wish
that he were here so that you [i.e., the BIA
researcher] could talk to him, because he could tell you so many more things
about their growing up. He speaks just a little
bit of the [Chinook] Jargon. My granddad knew some, but they mainly talked
French, but he did understand some Jargon
(Mae Ernestine Purcell, BIA Interview 7/25/1995)...


Oh, my mom just speaks English. My grandmother spoke Chinook Jargon. But I
don't -- and I'm sure my mom heard it --
know if my mom ever spoke that. And my grandmother also knew the Indian
language up the river, which would be Wasco
dialect, or Chinook dialect. But I don't think my mother heard that (Marsha
Williams, BIA interview, 7/24/1995)...


The métis spoke French, the Upper Cowlitz
Taitnapam, the older Lower Cowlitz spoke both Salish and Taitnapam, and the
Cascade spoke some Wasco dialects and
Chinook Jargon. The métis also reported knowing the Chinook Jargon, as did
some of the Lower Cowlitz (Grace Wannassey
Lane, personal communication 9/9/96)...

[There are also several mentions of Simon Plamondon in this document]