A comprehensive lexicon, including notes on pronunciation, for the Pacific Northwest trade language known as Chinook Jargon.
The Chinookian language group is a family of distinct and fully developed Native dialects from the Columbia River region of present day Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. Chinook Jargon however represents no single Indigenous culture. Developed in the nineteenth century as a lingua franca with which diverse communities could communicate in the trading posts of British Columbia and the wider Pacific Northwest, it was not only an important tool for commercial negotiations between First Nations, Native Americans and organisations like the Hudson’s Bay Company, but was also “the working language of canneries and mills, and was often learned by early Chinese immigrants” (Canadian Encyclopaedia). Bibliographer J.C. Pilling notes that it is an amalgam of Salishan, Wakashan, Shahaptian, English, and French, with onomatopoeic additions. Unsurprisingly, it was enthusiastically picked up by missionaries and was used variously by Catholics, Protestants and Shakers for both proselytising and worship. It was estimated in 1875 that 100,000 people spoke the language.
The introduction includes an extensive bibliography of other publications on the language, and the lexicon proper is replete with additional information on etymology, idiom, and grammar.
The author, George C. Shaw (1877-1953), described himself as a “Bibliophile and Bibliopole”, and was a dealer of rare Americana, based in Seattle.
A hardback version of this first edition was also published at the same time.
This copy is signed by Clarence B. Bagley (1843-1932), publisher, author and book collector. His book Indian Myths of the Northwest was published in 1930.
