NY Times 1866 on Chinook Jargon

[Jeffrey Kopp]

At 07:32 PM 10/03/07, Dave wrote:

>Fascinating little article here on CJ in Harrisburgh (?), Oregon,

Most likely Harrisburg, between Corvallis and Eugene, 99W and I-5.

>from Wednesday, May 21, 1866 (page 8, 404 words): ...

Before posts appear from those sensitive to the casual racism in the writings of that era, note the pioneer storekeeper is ridiculed as well... if that helps any.

(As Steve Martin observed when the SNL audience failed to sing along with his "Ramblin' Man" folkie parody: "Oh?" [Quickly snoots.] "New York!")

>This discovery is a nice side-effect of the NYT opening up their archives for free recently.

Word search doesn't work within these .pdf's, so be prepared to squint a lot at squiggly scans of shopworn cold type, which I wish they'd laid out in single columns, so I wouldn't get seasick skimming back and forth across the image.

And it's not all free; it appears any post-1922 article costs non-subscribers $4 (thanks, Mickey Mouse), or 10 for $16.

A search thru 1940 on chinook oregon brings back 66, of which but a subset relates to language; chinook jargon gets 20, but will miss some.

Among the non-freebies, this looks interesting:

CHINOOK JARGON JUST HAPPENED; Indian Dialect Was Fruit of Necessity in the Northwest, A.M. BOUILLON. October 23, 1932, Sunday

To the Editor of The New York Times: I want to offer a correction as to the origin of the Chinook jargon, referred to in a letter by William McDowell in THE TIMES issue of Oct. 14.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20F10F63B5513738DDDAA0A94D8415B828FF1D3

Which is the reply to "Tillicum a Chinook Word" (located by date and author, no free summary available).

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0A17FA3B5513738DDDAD0994D8415B828FF1D3

J. 

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