WPA Historical Records Benton Co. Oregon

[hzenk at PDX.EDU]

Thanks very much to Dave for this interesting material.  Oh if only the
historians who found work with the WPA had given more priority to language!
Sure, it's great to have any reminiscences of these people using Chinuk Wawa
with Indians, but what would have been really great are some samples
(preferably sound recordings) to give us an idea of what these old settlers'
Chinuk Wawa was really like.  A reminiscence like Elizabeth King Wells:

>They would get up and tell me in Chinook, "wa wa" how far they had
> come and how tired they were and how hungry. I learned to talk their
> language, could talk it as well as the English. A Klickitat named Alpia
> married a Salt-Chuck wife. He would make yearly visits to her people out on
> the coast. When he came past my house he would walk right in and insist on
> shaking hands with every one, saying "All my tillicums", meaning friends.
>

sure makes it sound like she learned her Chinuk Wawa from the Indians.  What
I've never been able to get clear on is the extent to which settlers actually
had an Indian target phonology, as Thomason's argument might lead one to
predict.  All the historical examples of which I am aware are printed, and
almost without exception show the anglicized orthography we all know so well.
While doing my fieldwork in the early 80s I tried to track down White oldtimers
reputed to have spoken Jargon, but with little success, mainly because I was
just a little too late.  One guy I did visit, the late Jim Attwell (descended
from a Cascade Locks pioneer family and the author of some locally published
books on local history and Indian lore), told me he learned Jargon from his
father, who according to him spoke both Jargon and the local tribal language
(Cascades Upper Chinook) (this is not impossible to imagine, as the man was
born at Cascade Locks in 1855 and grew up with Indians as playmates).  The few
samples of Jargon that Jim gave me, however, seemed to target the familiar
anglicized pronunciation, e.g.:

khEnchi lili mayka guli klUchmEn, given as meaning 'how long has it been since
you dated a woman?'

This does not mean that Jim's father could not have had a more Indian sounding
Jargon.  Jim himself was having a splendid time working Columbia River
steamboat excursions and other events as a local historian.  I had the
impression that library research was part of his preparation, so he may have
been influenced by the printed dictionaries as a result of reading.  Other
White old-timers of course could have been similarly influenced.  Hard to get a
virgin recording of White old-timer Chinuk Wawa, circa 1855!  Henry