Chilcotin CJ-English mix, from another source

[John Lutz]

Hi Dave,

There is a new history, just fresh of the press of the Chilcotin Plateau 
in William Turkel, The Archive of Place: Unearthing the Pasts of the 
Chilcotin Plateau, which is really the first scholarly history. There 
are several "pioneer histories" by the Witte sisters, Vera Bonner and 
others, and a critique of the pioneer histories in Elizabeth Furniss, 
The Burden of History.

As for Henry Alexis, "Me kipem" I think is " me keep him" here.

John

Dave Robertson wrote:
> Thanks for this contribution, John.  
>
> So both CJ & English would've been late introductions among Chilcotins?  
> And therefore both known only imperfectly for several decades?  Despite 
> whatever patterns of outsider presence surrounded these folks' 
> territories?  Makes more sense than my first stab at it.  
>
> My thinking about language contact in the Chilcotin would benefit from a 
> historical refresher course.  Maybe a timeline of sorts.  What's been 
> published?  
>
> I'm curious what sort of Chilcotin use of Jargon or English is quoted 
> before about 1890.  It's definitely interesting that the sources for a CJ-
> English mix start at that late date, and continue for so long.  
>
> Bostock's 1925 quotation below raises questions for me.  Was the English 
> part of the mix pretty variable?  ("Heap" here is like 
> stereotypical 'Injun talk'; Symons conveys a South Seas pidgin flavour; in 
> Kamloops Wawa we see something more like informal regional English.)  
>
> And what's "kipem"?  Surely not from slang "kipe" = "to steal"?  
>
> --Dave R
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 2 Jun 2007 17:23:17 -0700, John Lutz <jlutz at UVIC.CA> wrote:
>
>   
>> Hi Dave;
>>
>> I am really interested in the language of communication in the Chilcotin
>> too and this is my hypothesis:
>>
>> The jargon is for most of BC a fur trade and language of work introduced
>>     
> >from the Columbia River and then flowing north with white settlement.
>   
>> The Tsilhqot'in (Chilcotin) pretty much drove the Hudson's Bay Co out of
>> their territory in the 1840s, and the Fort journals there speak of
>> having Baptiste, an interpreter, which I presume means he could speak
>> their Athabaskan language.
>>
>> When Chartres Brew went into the Chilcotin area during the Chilcotin War
>> he found that on the western edges anyway no one spoke CJ and as you
>> have noted Livingstone Farrand made the same complaint in 1900 when he
>> tried to do anthropology.
>>
>> White settlement was late in the Chilcotin and I think that the
>> introduction of CJ was late too. Formal education was also late get into
>> the Chilcotin, few went to the residential school at Williams Lake and
>> local schools were not established until the 1940s. As a result English
>> did not become a second language to the Tsilqhot'in until later than
>> elsewhere so CJ stayed the medium of communication longer than most
>> places. Does that fit?
>>
>> Here is more fuel for your theorizing from the central Chilcotin:
>>
>> *Geological Survey of Canada, June, 1925*
>>
>> When we got back to camp I was delighted to find that Henry Alexis and
>> his wife had arrived with 14 horses, 12 rented to the survey ... Henry
>> had killed a deer along the way and about the first thing he said to me
>> was “Me saddlem horse, me see’em mowich, me shootem, me kipem, heap
>> fine” ... Henry liked to talk and told us many useful things in his
>> mixture of broken English, local Indian and Chinook
>>
>> Hugh Bostock
>>
>> “Pack Horse Tracks,” Geological Survey of Canada, Open File, 650, 19
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> David Robertson wrote:
>>     
>>> This is getting interesting.  I've just stumbled across a book some of 
>>>       
> you
>   
>>> must already be familiar with.  It's "Many Trails" by the well-known, 
>>>       
> and
>   
>>> enjoyable, Canadian writer R.D. Symons.  It was published in 1963 by
>>> Longmans Canada Ltd.  This book has been mentioned a few years ago on 
>>>       
> the
>   
>>> CHINOOK list, but in a totally different connection.
>>>
>>> Today is the first time I've read it, and I find Chapter 7 is devoted to
>>> the Chilcotin Indian neighbours of Symons.  The time is unspecified, but
>>> may be the 1920s or 30s.  Like 1890s sources I've recently mentioned,
>>> Symons has the Chilcotins speaking a unique blend of Jargon and 
>>>       
> English...
>   
>>> ..And it's not just any English, but a variety that shares much in 
>>>       
> common
>   
>>> with pidgin Englishes of the Pacific and elsewhere.  Just as I've found
>>> among English loans in the Salish shorthand writers' Jargon, the 
>>>       
> Chilcotins
>   
>>> appear saying "stop" as a possessive (and other?) copula.  They
>>> say "bymbye" / by-and-by.  Their way of expressing knowing is "savvy".  
>>>       
> The
>   
>>> infamous suffix "-um" is on some verbs.
>>>
>>> The English part of the Chilcotins' speech participates in fascinating
>>> expressions I've not found elsewhere, which Symons points out and 
>>>       
> explains
>   
>>> at some length.  For example, he makes sure the reader knows the 
>>>       
> difference
>   
>>> between "cultus coulee" (traveling aimlessly) and "go klatawa" 
>>>       
> (traveling
>   
>>> to a particular place).
>>>
>>> Here is a sample of remembered speech as written by Symons:
>>>
>>> "One tam...me see um that Ankiti Siwash -- my hyu scare -- all he dlaid 
>>>       
> hyu
>   
>>> (extremely) tall -- he helo shirt his back; he helo mocassin his feet; 
>>>       
> helo
>   
>>> hat his head stop -- just plenty hair like bush.  Me no savvy see-um 
>>>       
> that
>   
>>> fellow before -- me hyu cumtux (guess) him Ankiti Siwash!  Me go way 
>>>       
> that
>   
>>> place all same cultus coulee."
>>>
>>> (Here 'Ankiti Siwash' is said to mean the 'stick Indians', apparently
>>> plural; note 'dlaid' = 'delate' / 'dret' for 'really'.)
>>>
>>> Just a few quick observations, if I may...
>>>
>>> * Symons had not spent time in the Pacific, as far as I know, having
>>> immigrated to western Canada from Britain circa 1914 and worked 
>>>       
> steadily in
>   
>>> ranching.
>>>
>>> ** He had a good ear for the way various groups of people around him
>>> spoke.  In his books he quotes quite a bit of Cree, French and cowboy
>>> Spanish as he heard it, for example, and he also makes many specific
>>> identifications of people's accents.
>>>
>>> *** The similarity of Symons' Chilcotin CJ-English mix to specimens
>>> recorded decades earlier in other sources suggests a fairly stable local
>>> variety.  (I have a hard time calling it either CJ or English, at first
>>> blush.)
>>>
>>> **** Symons' spellings of CJ are really idiosyncratic, so I don't get 
>>>       
> the
>   
>>> impression he was copying bits o' Jargon out of a dictionary for some
>>> journalistic colour.
>>>
>>> There's more research to be done on this subject.  For now I've got a
>>> hypothesis (why not) that the Chilcotin region's very early prominence 
>>>       
> as
>   
>>> an interior BC contact zone led to early introduction of Jargon, plus 
>>>       
> heavy
>   
>>> exposure to colloquial and foreigner-talk English.  Since the Chilcotin
>>> held onto its reputation of 'wildness' for a long time, standard English
>>> may not have made serious inroads until after Symons' time there.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> --Dave R
>>>
>>> To respond to the CHINOOK list, click 'REPLY ALL'.  To respond 
>>>       
> privately to the sender of a message, click 'REPLY'.  Hayu masi!
>   
>>>
>>>       
>> --
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>
>> John Lutz
>> History Department
>> University of Victoria
>> PO 3045 Victoria, B.C
>> Canada
>> V8W 3P4
>>
>> 250-721-7392
>> 250-721-8772 (fax)
>>
>> http:\\web.uvic.ca\~jlutz
>>
>> To respond to the CHINOOK list, click 'REPLY ALL'.  To respond privately 
>>     
> to the sender of a message, click 'REPLY'.  Hayu masi!
>
> To respond to the CHINOOK list, click 'REPLY ALL'.  To respond privately to the sender of a message, click 'REPLY'.  Hayu masi!
>
>
>   

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

John Lutz
History Department
University of Victoria
PO 3045 Victoria, B.C
Canada
V8W 3P4

250-721-7392
250-721-8772 (fax)

http:\\web.uvic.ca\~jlutz

To respond to the CHINOOK list, click 'REPLY ALL'.  To respond privately to the sender of a message, click 'REPLY'.  Hayu masi!