Why the southern boundary of Chinuk Wawa use?

[Leanne Riding]

Here are some thoughts... abbreviated...then getting a little rambly...

Chinuk Wawa spread in a northward direction in the post-newcomer era. I 
think we can link this to geography, politics, the social relationships 
of native peoples and newcomers at the time they arrived.

Geographically, Chinuk Wawa can be linked to the Columbia River system 
and its tributaries. Within a decade of Lewis and Clark's visit was 
being used by traders as a transportation route along its full length. 
The Canadian and British traders would ascend the Columbia to the point 
where it reached the Rockies at Boat Encampment, which is now underwater 
in present Kinbasket Lake, in British Columbia. There the boatmen would 
leave the river and cross the Rockies via Athabasca Pass, coming out 
just south of Jasper, Alberta, Canada.

For the Americans in the south, there quickly arose the problem of 
control of the mouth of the Columbia. Shortly after Astoria was built, 
it was taken over by the British, and for a time the British Empire 
dipped down to include that part. The mouth of the Columbia became part 
of the northern infrastructure of the British fur trading companies and 
their ever-present rivals. In Canada, the Hudson Bay Company and the 
Northwest Company had already built up a network of posts and strong 
ties to Cree and Dene people that made for much safer travel, along 
established routes along the Churchill River or the North Saskatchewan 
River. They could connect the Columbia with both of these routes via the 
Athabasca Pass. On the west side of the Rockies, traders explored the 
Okanagan River into the Shuswap region, eventually crossing over to 
present-day Kamloops which connected them with the Fraser River system 
via the Thompson River. That would become key for them when Britian 
later lost control of the Columbia route, and when more southernly 
passes over the Rockies became viable choices.

The question might be asked, why would they travel so far north to the 
Athabasca Pass in order to cross the Rockies, especially when there were 
much easier mountain passes between? First, there is the political 
situation as described above, with the Columbia initially controlled by 
the British. Second, the southern passes were sometimes blocked by 
native people living east of the Rockies. The first known white man to 
cross the Athabasca Pass, David Thompson, only decided to use the route 
after his preferred route was barred by people who lived in the area 
(Piegan I think I read?). Anyways, Thompson descended the Columbia and 
the employees of John Jacob Astor learned of the Athabasca Pass from 
him. When Astor's employees, many of whom were Canadians, departed after 
the takeover the Canadians took this route back home. For years 
afterward, the pass served as a fur brigade route over the rockies, most 
likely to avoid the problem of encountering hostilities on the way.

Alliances were shifting, but I think I can generalize that the traders 
were not always on very good terms with the Blackfeet and their allies, 
who lived south of the Saskatchewan River. Pardon me as I have not got 
all their self-designations -- this included the Atsina (aka Gros 
Ventres of the North, Minnetarees of the North, Rapid Indians) and the 
Assiniboines, and I guess sometimes the Piegans. From what Lewis and 
Clark tell us, a lot of this tension arrived before Lewis and Clark did, 
because of the horse and gun. The horse allowed incursions into buffalo 
hunting grounds used by others, and retaliatory actions as well. It was 
these conflicts that brought their companion Sacajawea into their party. 
Thompson recorded the oral history of a man who described the first time 
his people saw the horse, and the conflicts that brought. The hostility 
to the northern traders, Daniel Williams Harmon explained, arose from 
the situation that while guns were in big demand by the Blackfeet and 
Atsina, the traders were reluctant to provide weapons to people who were 
sometimes at war with their allies the Crees -- this hesitance was 
strongly resented. The guns were apparently desired for warfare rather 
than hunting, in which their own technology should not be underestimated 
-- in several accounts it's noted that Assiniboine bows were so powerful 
that when they shot a buffalo the arrow would be sticking out the other 
side. This seemed to hold true in conflicts in the northern rockies as 
well, and anyways this is what the British and Canadian traders felt was 
true and that influenced their relationships.

As in the far north, the west of the Rockies was a fairly hostile 
terrain. Being able to communicate and not fight with whoever lived 
there was vital to survival. Food supply was the biggest problem west of 
the Rockies. There was not vast plains of buffalo or herds of caribou to 
allow the luxury (or laziness maybe) of not having to be on good terms 
with the locals, and what game there was tended to be scarce. The 
companies had developed social methods of adapting to the new terrains. 
HBC company policy in the west, as elsewhere, was to work very hard to 
build permanent alliances with peoples, even marrying their employees to 
local women and leaving men to live with the locals for many years. NWC 
tactics were similar, and often with even greater effect. So when the 
British and Canadian traders moved around, they often had a big impact 
on the cultures and movements of the peoples they found they could work 
with. One of these was the Salish peoples, who are associated with 
Chinuk Wawa.

Newcomers that are often left out are the Iroquois and Nippisings from 
Kaughnawaugha (spelling is wrong) who came west as boatmen, hunters and 
trappers -- I feel important because there were many and they were often 
roaming around with great independence. For example, a well-known 
Kamloops character called Lolo, who is thought to have been of Iroquois 
descent, was known to speak "a curious mixture of French, English & 
Indian" (Cheadle, 1863). Mary Balf (/*The Dictionary of Canadian 
Biography, 1861 to 1870.*/ Vol. IX. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto 
Press, 1976. (p. 473)) noted that Lolo first appears in Hudson Bay 
Company records in 1822, after a stint with the rival North West Company 
before that at Fort St. James. I can't elaborate too much but the 
Iroquois angle is worth exploring. They were zooming around, up and down 
passes and valleys that would not be "officially" explored for many decades.

By the time as the gold rush, two newcomer groups made use of Chinook 
Jargon (their version Chinuk Wawa). My feeling is that Chinuk Wawa was 
quite well developed by this time, and the newcomers were not adding 
much to it, but Chinuk Wawa was still on the move for economic reasons. 
One group of Jargon users was the Royal Engineers, whose job was to map, 
survey, chart, grid, plot, build roads and bridges, etc. etc.. For the 
engineers and sappers, speaking in Chinook Jargon enabled them to buy 
horses and food, and obtain employees for packing, etc. The other group 
is the gold rushers, who arguably didn't make much practical use of 
their Chinook Jargon books, though they did find opportunities to 
practice. By this time and into the cannery era which followed, Chinook 
Wawa had become attached to work as well as trade, and followed migrant 
workers wherever they went.

I suppose that Chinuk Wawa could have gone southward at this point, 
which leads me to wonder, was Chinuk Wawa as mobile on the Columbia by 
the gold rush era, as it was on the Fraser? Or had it become isolated in 
the south?

Maybe I can throw that last question back to you Dave? (or anyone?)



David Robertson wrote:

>To the best of my knowledge, Chinuk Wawa wasn't much used South of the 
>Oregon-California border.
>
>Why?
>
>Were intertribal relations of a different character from those farther 
>North?
>
>Was the economic situation different?
>
>Was there a different language of intercultural contact, e.g. was Chileno 
>(pidgin Spanish) widespread in northern California?
>
>Were Indian-newcomer relations different enough from those in Oregon, 
>Washington & BC to keep people from wanting an interethnic language?  Was 
>the anti-Indian violence or genocide that erupted very early in 
>California's history as a US state a factor, for example?
>
>Your thoughts are solicited.
>
>--Dave R
>
>To respond to the CHINOOK list, click 'REPLY ALL'.  To respond privately to the sender of a message, click 'REPLY'.  Hayu masi!
>
>  
>

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