Interesting story

[Duane Pasco]

Tom......
	Thanks for sharing that very cool bit of history. I can add it to my  
vast, but not vast enough, archive of Chinook related info.
	That story just goes once again to show how important and ubiquitous  
The jargon was in those early days.
	There was a man from the Canton [Kwangtung now] of China who  
immigrated to Canada in the late 1800s, settling in the Hazelton area  
of British Columbia. He had worked in the mines up in that area. He  
was apparently a very industrious and imaginative guy with business  
skills and an astounding ability with language.
	His name was Lee Chong. He began trading with the local Gitk'san and  
Carrier Indians many of whom were trappers. There was a Hudson Bay  
post in town, which included a dock where the company stern wheeler  
could tie up after bringing freight and passengers to the frontier.
	Mr. Chong gave the "Bay" some very serious competition, for he was  
known far and wide as a very fair man and he was comfortable speaking  
to the Indians in either Carrier, Gitk'san, English, or Chinook Jargon.
	I lived in Hazelton and Taught Northwest Coast Indian Art fort a  
year and a little more.
It seemed as though everyone in the area was capable of sing the son  
entitled "Lee Chong" composed in the early 20th. century by the  
father of one of my students.
	I would liked to have known Lee Chong and talked Chinook with him.  
Unfortunately, he died some time before my arrival there.
Duane Pasco



On Aug 14, 2007, at 6:09 PM, Tom Larsen wrote:

>
> 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.
>
> -- 
>
> <psu_signature165x35.gif>
>
>
> 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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