Chinook Jargon ( or , also known simply as Chinook or Jargon) is a language originating as a pidgin trade language in the Pacific Northwest. It spread during the 19th century from the lower Columbia River, first to other areas in modern Oregon and Washington, then to British Columbia and parts of Alaska, Northern California, Idaho and Montana. It sometimes took on the characteristics of a creole language. The contact language Chinook Jargon should not be confused with Chinookan languages.
Reflecting its origins in early trade transactions, approximately 15 percent of its lexicon derived from French. The Jargon also acquired English derived words, and it has a written form in Duployan shorthand. The written form is commonly called "Chinuk Pipa" in the language itself.
Many words from Chinook Jargon remain in common use in the Western United States and British Columbia. It has been described as part of a multicultural heritage shared by the modern inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. The total number of Jargon words in published lexicons is in the hundreds. It has a simple grammatical system. In Chinook Jargon, the consonant is rare. Such English and French words as rice and , for instance, have changed after being adopted to the Jargon, to and , respectively.
Name Most books written in English still use the term Chinook Jargon, but some linguists working with the preservation of a creolized form of the language used in Grand Ronde, Oregon, prefer the term Chinuk Wawa (with the spelling 'Chinuk' instead of 'Chinook'). Historical speakers did not use the name Chinook Wawa, but rather "Chinook" or "Chinuk"Robertson, David Douglas. (2024, September 24). Hyacinthe letter, Hlawt. Snass Sessions..
History
Origins Whether Jargon was a post-contact or pre-contact language has been the subject of debate among scholars.
The pre-contact hypothesis claims that the language developed prior to European settlement as an intra-Indigenous contact language in a region marked by divisive geography and intense linguistic diversity, and that only later on in its evolution did it gain European derived words. There is some evidence for a Chinookan-Nuu-chah-nulth lingua franca in the writings of John Jewitt and in what is known as the Barclay Sound word-list, from the area of Ucluelet and Alberni.
Some scholars believe that an existing trade language began "morphing" into the more familiar Chinook Jargon in the late 1790s, notably at a dinner party at Nootka Sound where Capts Vancouver and Bodega y Quadra were entertained by Chief Maquinna and his brother Callicum performing a theatrical using mock English and mock Spanish words and mimicry of European dress and mannerisms. There evidently was Jargon in use in Queen Charlotte, but this "Haida Jargon" is not known to have shared anything in common with Chinook Jargon or with the Nootkan-Chinookan "proto-jargon", which is its main foundation.
The post-contact hypothesis claims the language originated in Nootka Sound after the arrival of Russian and Spanish traders as a means of communicating between them and Indigenous peoples. It eventually spread further south due to commercial use. University of Ottawa linguist George Lang has argued for this conclusion.
Linguist Barbara Harris suggests a dual genesis, positing that both origins probably have some legitimacy and that the two varieties eventually blended together.
In 2016, linguist John Lyon studied the word lists collected by Francis Drake and his crew on the 1579 voyage that took them to the Oregon coast. Lyon compared the seven words and phrases found on the Native vocabulary list recorded by Drake and his men with the vocabularies of Native languages on the west coast (Lyon 2016)."Francis Drake's 1579 Voyage: Assessing Linguistic Evidence for an Oregon Landing", Anthropological Linguistics 58, no. 1.
Of the five single words on the list, Lyon found that the word petáh, which was the Native word for a root that can be eaten raw or made into cakes called cheepe, were meaning matches for the Jargon words 'wapato' (a root that tastes like a potato) and 'chaplill', the word for the bread cakes made from this root (Lyon 2016:41). The word recorded for 'king' by Drake was 'hióh' (recorded also as 'hioghe'). Lyon thought it was a match for the Wawa word hi-yú, meaning a gathering, or much, plenty. Lyon was not able to conclude whether Drake encountered people of the Northwest Coast.
In 2021, Melissa Darby studied the ethnographic records and the records left by Francis Drake's expedition. She found new evidence that the people Drake met were speaking some Jargon words to Drake and his men.Melissa Darby, "New Light on the Antiquity of Chinook Jargon (Chinuk Wawa) from Francis Drake's Exploration of the Northwest Coast", Journal of Northwest Anthropology, Fall 2021, Vol. 55 No. 2. Use
In the Diocese of Kamloops, British Columbia, hundreds of speakers learned to read and write the Jargon using Duployan shorthand via the publication Kamloops Wawa. As a result, the Jargon had the beginnings of its own literature, mostly translated scripture and classical works, some local and episcopal news, community gossip and events, and diaries. Marah Ellis Ryan (c. 1860–1934), an early Native American activist and novelist, used Chinook words and phrases in her writing.Squaw Elouise, Chicago; New York: Rand, McNally, 1892; Told in the Hills, Chicago; New York: Rand, McNally, 1891, 1905.
In Oregon, Chinook Jargon was widely used by natives, trappers, traders, employees of the Hudson's Bay Company, missionaries, and pioneers who came across the Oregon Trail from the 1830s to the 1870s. In Portland's first half century (1840s–1890s), there were frequent trade interactions between pioneers and Indigenous peoples. Many Oregonians used Jargon in casual conversation. By 1840, Chinook Jargon had creolized into a native language for some speakers.Jones estimates that in pioneer times in the 1860s there were about 100,000 speakers of Chinook Jargon.Jones (1972), p. 97. It peaked in usage from approximately 1858 to 1900, and declined as a result of widespread deaths from the Spanish flu and World War I, and the Canadian Residential School System.
As late as the 1940s, Indigenous children were born in Tiller, Oregon, who grew up speaking Chinook Jargon as their first language. But by 1962, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) estimated that only 100 speakers were left.
According to Nard Jones, Chinook Jargon was still in use in Seattle until roughly the eve of World War II, especially among the members of the Arctic Club. Seattle was the last city where the language was widely used. Writing in 1972, Jones remarked that "Only a few can speak it fully, men of ninety or a hundred years old, like Henry Broderick, the realtor, and Joshua Green, the banker." Quotation is from p. 97.
In the 2000s, Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, started a three-semester university program teaching Chinook Jargon.
In 2013, it was reported that there was one native speaker of Chinook Jargon (specifically the Grand Ronde variety). An estimated 1,000 people had oral or written knowledge of Chinook Jargon as a second language. In 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated based on the self-reported American Community Survey that around 45 people (with a margin of error of 25) spoke Chinook Jargon at home in the period 2009–2013.
Evolution There is some controversy about the origin of the Jargon, but the consensus is that the pidgin peaked in use during the 19th century. During this era, many dictionaries were published to help settlers interact with the First Nations people living in the Pacific Northwest. Local settler families exchanged communiqués that were stylishly composed entirely in "the Chinook." Many residents of the British Columbia city of Vancouver spoke Chinook Jargon as their first language, even using it at home in preference to English. Among the first Europeans to use Chinook Jargon were traders, trappers, voyageurs, coureurs des bois, and Catholic missionaries.Goulet, George and Terry Goulet.
The original Jargon was a pidgin, originally used as a second language by speakers of other Indigenous languages in the area. It had sentence-initial negation, which is atypical of regional languages, and also had no typical complex morphology. It had an SVO structure, while Chinookan and Salishan languages were VSO. However, local Athabaskan languages were SOV, so this was probably a result of contact—a cross-language compromise. Only later did Chinook Jargon acquire significant English and French lexical items.
The Jargon is influenced by individuals' accents and terms from their native languages; as Kanakas married into First Nations and non-native families, their particular mode of the Jargon is believed to have contained Hawaiian words or Hawaiian styles of pronunciation. In some areas, the adoption of further non-aboriginal words has been observed. During the gold rush, Chinook Jargon was used in British Columbia at first by gold prospectors and Royal Engineers; as industry developed, Chinook Jargon was often used by cannery workers, hop pickers, loggers, fishermen, and ranchers. It is possible that, at one point, the population of British Columbia spoke Chinook Jargon more than any other language, even English. Historian Jane Barman wrote:
A heavily creolized form of Chinook Jargon is still spoken as a first language by some residents of Oregon, much as the Métis language Michif is spoken in Canada. Hence, Chinuk Wawa, as it is known in Oregon, is now a creole language, distinct from the varied pronunciation of the Chinook Jargon. There is evidence that in some communities (e.g., around Fort Vancouver) the Jargon had become creolized by the early 19th century, and that would have been among the mixed French/Métis, Algonkian, Scots and Hawaiian populations, as well as among the natives around the Fort. At Grand Ronde, the resettlement of tribes from all over Oregon in a multi-tribal agency led to the use of Chinuk Wawa as a common tongue among the linguistically diverse population. These circumstances led to the creolization of Chinuk Wawa at Grand Ronde. There is also evidence that creolization occurred at the Confederated Tribes of Siletz reservation paralleling Grand Ronde, although, due to language revitalization efforts being focused on the Tolowa language, Chinuk fell out of use.
No studies of British Columbia versions of the Jargon have demonstrated creolization. The range of varying usages and vocabulary in different regions suggests that localization did occur—although not on the pattern of Grand Ronde where Wasco, Klickitat and other peoples adopted and added to the version of the Jargon that developed there. First-language speakers of the Chinook Jargon were common in BC (native and non-native), until the mid-20th century. After 1850, the Wawa was still used in the United States portion of the Chinook-speaking world, especially in wilderness areas and work environments. Local creolization's probably did occur in British Columbia, but recorded materials have not been studied as they were made due to the focus on the traditional Indigenous languages.
Contemporary status
Many words are still used throughout Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska. It was the working language in canneries on the British Columbia Coast. Place names throughout this region bear Jargon names and words that are preserved in various rural industries such as logging and fishing. Linguist David Douglas Robertson and others have described Chinook Jargon as part of the shared cultural heritage of modern inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest.