Father Francois Marie Thomas OMI

[David D. Robertson]

On Sat, 31 Aug 2002 17:50:07 -0700, Theresa Kishkan <tkishkan at UNISERVE.COM>
wrote:

>I don't know if this has been mentioned before but Sound Heritage Number 34
>(1981), Now You Are My Brother: Missionaries in British Columbia, edited by
>Margaret Whitehead, has a section on Father Thomas. He preached in Chinook
>and insisted that the other missionaries did so as well. This would have
>been in the Chilcotin area from about 1897 on....

Hi, Theresa,

Thanks for this good pointer.  Sounds very useful for the research I'm
trying to do!  I'll have to look for mention of a "pir toma" (Pere Thomas)
in Kamloops Wawa.

Sound Heritage is an interesting series, from what I've seen, e.g. some
Lillooet tales whose accompanying cassette was unfortunately lost.  Is
there a complete list somewhere of the series?

Chilcotin country seems approximately the northern border of Chinook
Jargon's realm of usefulness in BC.  Someone's just recently sent me a
Jargon hymn to the Virgin Mary from Chilcotin territory, as (it seems)
remembered by a Carrier.  It's written as heard by a Carrier ear, with
strong distortions that obscure the Jargon words.  (Something like the
Finnish nursery rhyme I just read about which is nonsense in Finnish
because it's a distorted copy of a Swedish one!)  And in Carrier country
the Jargon was not much help in communicating with Native people, if I've
understood Mulhall's book on Father Morice correctly.

Cheers,

--Dave