Interesting story

[Tom Larsen]

I recently ran across a book called _Native Seattle: Histories from the 
Crossing-Over Place_ by Coll Thrush, Univ. of Washington Press, 2007.  I 
haven't read this book, but I thumbed through it a bit and it looks 
pretty interesting, talking about the history of native peoples, and 
their interactions with whites, in Seattle.  I looked in particular in 
the index for anything about Chinuk Wawa.  There were a few places where 
it talks about the use of Jargon by whites, by native peoples, in place 
names, etc.  Most of it seemed pretty much what you might expect and not 
terribly interesting.  But there was one story that I was worth passing 
on (on p. 64-65), so I quote it here:

Sometime in the 1870s, a Chinese man named Ling Fu was brought before 
Judge Cornelius Hanford in Seattle's courthouse, accused of not having 
the proper citizenship papers.  Facing deportation, Ling Fu argued that 
he did not need to carry papers: he had been born on Puget Sound.  To 
test him, Judge Hanford quickly shifted his inquiry into Chinook Jargon, 
which had become nearly as common as Whulshootseed or English in Puget 
Sound country.  "Ikta mika nem? Consee cole mika?" (What is your name? 
How old are you?), he demanded of Ling, who in turn replied, "Nika nem 
Ling Fu, pe nika mox tahtlum pee quinum cole" (My name is Ling Fu, and I 
am twenty-five years old).  Clearly surprised, the judge responded, "You 
are an American, sure, and you can stay here."  He then turned to the 
bailiff and decreed, "Ling Fu is dismissed."

Ling Fu's brief trial symbolizes the ways in which settlers--Boston, 
Chinese, and others--had been transformed by their life in Seattle 
Illahee.  Accounts of Seattle's "village period" are full of settlers 
speaking Chinook Jargon and sometimes even Whulshootseed; of white men 
and women learning indigenous subsistence practices form their Native 
neighbors and employees; and of people from places like Illinois and 
Ireland, Gloucester and Guangzhou, learning to accomodate Indians' 
insistence on participation in urban life.  Nearly thirty years after 
Seattle's founding, Native people were still in town, and their 
participation in urban life had changed the Bostons as well.  The mad 
house known as the Illahee might have been destroyed, but the larger 
Seattle Illahee, in which indigenous lives were woven into the urban 
fabric, remained, even as Seattle stood perched on the brink of an urban 
revolution.

-- 

Portland State University logo

*Tom Larsen*
Database Management and Catalog Librarian
Portland State University Library
PO Box 1151
Portland, OR 97207-1151

Phone: 503-725-8179
Fax: 503-725-5799

email: larsent at pdx.edu


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