Chinook fire? Another "Chinook" expression

[David Robertson]

Thanks to information received in off-list emails, and to the wonderful
research tool Google, here's a bit more about "Chinook fire" etc.

Apparently "Bengal fire" was and is an established term for a variety of
fireworks, in both the English-speaking world and the French.

"Chinese fire" turns out to be another pyrotechnic term.

I suspect the torches or lanterns that the procession members were carrying
in the Chinuk Wawa passage I quoted were known locally as "Chinese fire".
It's not unlikely that Father Le Jeune absent-mindedly wrote "Chinook fire"
because it's this that he was thinking of.

You learn plenty of history reading this stuff!

It's interesting to have read so much of Kamloops Wawa C.W. that slips like
this leap right out at me.  It helps that the apparently perfectionist Le
Jeune made surprisingly few mistakes in writing, so any slips are so
surprising that they're pretty salient.

--Dave R

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