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Making Wawa: The Genesis of Chinook Jargon
A two-edged sword of reconciliation and betrayal, Chinook Jargon (aka Wawa) arose at the interface of “Indian” and “White” societies in the Pacific Northwest. Wawa’s sources lie first in the language of the Chinookans who lived along the lower Columbia River, but also with the Nootkans of the outer coast of Vancouver Island. With the arrival of the fur trade, the French voyageurs provided additional vocabulary and cultural practices. Over the next decades, ensuing epidemics and the Oregon Trail transformed the Chinookans and their homeland, and Wawa became a diaspora language in which many communities seek some trace of their past. A previously unpublished glossary of Wawa circa 1825 is included as an appendix to this volume.
216 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
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September 12, 2012
The whole time I read this book I felt like I ought to be really daunted or bored by all the linguistics terminology I don't understand, but I wasn't, not for a second -- the story of Wawa is far too interesting.
Lang begins this history with the Nootka Jargon, a simplified language spoken by the people on Vancouver Island (whose languages are known as Nootkan and who are today called Nuu-chah-nulth) to European traders.
In the early 1800s, the northwestern center of trade shifted to the Columbia River, where Chinook civilization was dominant. Because the Chinook languages were very difficult for outsiders to learn (due to linguistic complexity and social exclusivity), the many different language-speakers who met here to trade used not only words from Chinook but Nootka Jargon, English, French, and other Native languages to communicate. This speech became the Chinook Jargon, or chinuk wawa. However, within a couple of decades, mainly because of death from disease, Chinooks fell out of political and cultural dominance. If I understand correctly, it was at this point (in the 1830s) that chinuk wawa became more widely used, not just for communications between white traders and the Chinooks, but among all different language-speakers in the region.
In addition to the trade of material goods, Native women also crossed cultural and linguistic boundaries. Women were objects of trade to many white merchants and sailors, and French-Canadian and Metis voyageurs married Native women to gain advantage in trade, politics, and communication. In the Columbia River region, many of these women communicated with each other in chinuk wawa, and their children grew up with it as a first language. In this way, chinuk wawa became a complete language as well as a trade pidgin.
The arrival of settlers on the Oregon Trail in the late 1840s disrupted the communities in which chinuk wawa was necessary for communication. However, it persisted so that in the 1870s, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce was able to use it diplomatically to attempt to change white settlers' relationship to his people and avoid war. Wawa still exists as a heritage language, for example on the Grand Ronde reservation, where it is taught in classes.
George Lang's writing is precise and efficient, allowing him to include a great deal of linguistic information in such a way that the ordinary non-linguist reader (I anyway) can understand the basics of what makes the languages discussed linguistically interesting, without laborious explanation of linguistic terms.
I loved that in addition to the white explorers, traders, and priests who contributed to our knowledge of historical Wawa by writing memoirs, guides, and glossaries, Lang pays attention to the facts that can be known about some individuals among the Native women I mentioned above -- women whose lives and communications made Wawa what it was and is, even though they left no direct written records.
There are also funny parts in this book. Lang describes several situations in which, not realizing that their Native contacts were speaking to them in Nootka Jargon or Chinook Jargon, white travelers and administrators thought they were learning actual Nootka or Chinook. These language groups are much, much more complicated, and are particularly difficult for English and French speakers to learn because they include glottal stops and other sounds that English and French speakers have never had to listen to. I can't find it again but I'm sure there was an example of a white guy who complained that the Native language he was learning didn't have personal pronouns, when in fact he simply didn't register them as words. As for grammar, the Chinook language does more with inflections than I realized was possible.
Anyway, Making Wawa is full of white people who, having learned enough Nootka Jargon or Chinook Jargon to carry out basic professional functions, explain to their friends back home that the Indians are a very primitive and simple-minded people who are incapable of thinking about abstract ideas or complex emotions because of the limitations of their language ... unaware that, having previously found white travelers incapable of even beginning to understand their languages, their interlocutors have very carefully been using, essentially, only baby-talk with them.
After numerous such examples, the couple of Protestant missionaries who failed to learn enough Wawa to preach in it are also pretty laughable!
I felt quite superior to them because Grrlpup and her wife (who recommended Making Wawa to me) were able to teach me some wawa in just a couple of days when I visited them in Oregon. At the time, I thought I was having difficulty with the words that don't share any morphemes with the Indo-European langauges I'm familiar with. But I did learn enough so that reading Making Wawa was full of delightful recognition -- "Hooray, there's wak again!" "Huh, chikəmən is from the Nootka Jargon." That was fun.
One thing I wish Making Wawa had done/done differently:
Lang makes a point of saying that the Nuu-chah-nulth people are still around today and have preserved their language. I knew that before starting this book, but I didn't know anything about the Chinook people, and Lang, in describing the linguistic effects of their "demographic collapse," left me with the impression that they aren't a people anymore. In fact, they are, despite not being a federally recognized tribe. Lang says that Franz Boas' interviews with Charles Cultee in the 1890s are "the basis of our knowledge of Lower Chinook." This implies that the Chinook language didn't survive, but maybe not? I wish Lang had said something about the Chinook people today. That would have given him a chance to be clear about whether the Chinook language is still in use at all.
Lang begins this history with the Nootka Jargon, a simplified language spoken by the people on Vancouver Island (whose languages are known as Nootkan and who are today called Nuu-chah-nulth) to European traders.
In the early 1800s, the northwestern center of trade shifted to the Columbia River, where Chinook civilization was dominant. Because the Chinook languages were very difficult for outsiders to learn (due to linguistic complexity and social exclusivity), the many different language-speakers who met here to trade used not only words from Chinook but Nootka Jargon, English, French, and other Native languages to communicate. This speech became the Chinook Jargon, or chinuk wawa. However, within a couple of decades, mainly because of death from disease, Chinooks fell out of political and cultural dominance. If I understand correctly, it was at this point (in the 1830s) that chinuk wawa became more widely used, not just for communications between white traders and the Chinooks, but among all different language-speakers in the region.
In addition to the trade of material goods, Native women also crossed cultural and linguistic boundaries. Women were objects of trade to many white merchants and sailors, and French-Canadian and Metis voyageurs married Native women to gain advantage in trade, politics, and communication. In the Columbia River region, many of these women communicated with each other in chinuk wawa, and their children grew up with it as a first language. In this way, chinuk wawa became a complete language as well as a trade pidgin.
The arrival of settlers on the Oregon Trail in the late 1840s disrupted the communities in which chinuk wawa was necessary for communication. However, it persisted so that in the 1870s, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce was able to use it diplomatically to attempt to change white settlers' relationship to his people and avoid war. Wawa still exists as a heritage language, for example on the Grand Ronde reservation, where it is taught in classes.
George Lang's writing is precise and efficient, allowing him to include a great deal of linguistic information in such a way that the ordinary non-linguist reader (I anyway) can understand the basics of what makes the languages discussed linguistically interesting, without laborious explanation of linguistic terms.
I loved that in addition to the white explorers, traders, and priests who contributed to our knowledge of historical Wawa by writing memoirs, guides, and glossaries, Lang pays attention to the facts that can be known about some individuals among the Native women I mentioned above -- women whose lives and communications made Wawa what it was and is, even though they left no direct written records.
There are also funny parts in this book. Lang describes several situations in which, not realizing that their Native contacts were speaking to them in Nootka Jargon or Chinook Jargon, white travelers and administrators thought they were learning actual Nootka or Chinook. These language groups are much, much more complicated, and are particularly difficult for English and French speakers to learn because they include glottal stops and other sounds that English and French speakers have never had to listen to. I can't find it again but I'm sure there was an example of a white guy who complained that the Native language he was learning didn't have personal pronouns, when in fact he simply didn't register them as words. As for grammar, the Chinook language does more with inflections than I realized was possible.
Anyway, Making Wawa is full of white people who, having learned enough Nootka Jargon or Chinook Jargon to carry out basic professional functions, explain to their friends back home that the Indians are a very primitive and simple-minded people who are incapable of thinking about abstract ideas or complex emotions because of the limitations of their language ... unaware that, having previously found white travelers incapable of even beginning to understand their languages, their interlocutors have very carefully been using, essentially, only baby-talk with them.
After numerous such examples, the couple of Protestant missionaries who failed to learn enough Wawa to preach in it are also pretty laughable!
I felt quite superior to them because Grrlpup and her wife (who recommended Making Wawa to me) were able to teach me some wawa in just a couple of days when I visited them in Oregon. At the time, I thought I was having difficulty with the words that don't share any morphemes with the Indo-European langauges I'm familiar with. But I did learn enough so that reading Making Wawa was full of delightful recognition -- "Hooray, there's wak again!" "Huh, chikəmən is from the Nootka Jargon." That was fun.
One thing I wish Making Wawa had done/done differently:
Lang makes a point of saying that the Nuu-chah-nulth people are still around today and have preserved their language. I knew that before starting this book, but I didn't know anything about the Chinook people, and Lang, in describing the linguistic effects of their "demographic collapse," left me with the impression that they aren't a people anymore. In fact, they are, despite not being a federally recognized tribe. Lang says that Franz Boas' interviews with Charles Cultee in the 1890s are "the basis of our knowledge of Lower Chinook." This implies that the Chinook language didn't survive, but maybe not? I wish Lang had said something about the Chinook people today. That would have given him a chance to be clear about whether the Chinook language is still in use at all.
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January 31, 2023really interesting. i have to say i had no idea colonial BC/Cascadia had an Indigenous-based lingua franca preceding english, never mind one that is still a living language today. really happy i stumbled on this book and i’m definitely going to seek out more info on Chinook Wawa (apparently there was a handwritten Wawa newspaper out of Kamloops and its full archives are online??)
September 22, 2017
A great and must have resource for anyone interested in linguistics and the revitalization of endangered indigenous languages.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews