Chinook literacy in surprising places

[David Robertson]

Get a load of this passage, reminiscent of what I've read about Cree
syllabics literacy.  This comes from Kamloops Wawa, September 1895.  It's
Father Le Jeune telling about his vacation trip with Chief Andrew of the
North Thompson Shuswap and several of his people, in the back country.

"Before we came to the top of the mountain we found a letter written in
shorthand, fastened to the branch of a tree, bidding us good luck on our
trip, and requesting us to take advantage of a quarter of deer which was
suspended to another tree across the narrow path.  Those who had come to
the place before us took the deer with them, but left the letter where it
was for others to read.  All, to the last, read the letter, and searched in
vain for the meat.  Other letters were found every five or six miles,
diverting our journey by the recital of our predecessors' luck in hunting
or fishing.  Some of those letters were written on clean paper, some on
shreds of wrapping paper; then, when paper failed, trees were stripped of
their bark or squared with the axe, and the correspondence written on the
tree.  One of those letters amused us so much as to make us unaware of a
marshy swamp we had come to, until some of the pack horses began to sink
into the mire."

By the way, we know that Chief Andrew was literate in Chinook shorthand.

--Dave R

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