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Klahowya, Sikhs! 500 Words Unite the Pacific Northwest

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In the days when a traveller's well-being depended on the hospitality of strangers, a hearty "Klahowya!" opened doors all over the Pacific Northwest. For a century and a half, the Chinook Jargon bound together vastly different cultures in an area encompassing seven American states and two Canadian provinces. Virtually extinct today, vestiges of this hard-working pidgin persist in colourful expressions and place names.

Pacific Coast tribes invented Jargon before European contact, probably around 1730. Whites later called their trade lingo "Chinook" Jargon, because Chinook tribes were the first coastal peoples to trade with the newcomers on a contract basis. This label was often shortened to "Chinook," a source of much confusion. The native languages of Chinookan-speaking First Peoples are as complete, as complex and as evocative as any true language. By contrast, Jargon has only rudimentary grammar and a 500-word vocabulary. (Some authorities claim as many as 800 words.) Jargon must not therefore be compared to true Chinookan languages.

The entry of the great fur companies into the Northwest economy brought Eastern tribal tongues, English, Canadian French and even Hawaiian into Jargon. The mountain men promulgated Jargon far afield, to such distant points as Alberta, Alaska and California. As Jargon settled into new climes it inevitably picked up local vocabulary and pronunciation, to the point that speakers from distant edges of Jargon's empire must have had some difficulty understanding one another. Jargon's limited vocabulary presented another challenge. In practice, speakers used sign language, facial expression and vocal intonation to convey subtleties. This was precise enough for trade, but US courts have ruled that the terms of some treaties drawn up in the last century were not clear to all signatories, since they were negotiated in Jargon.

To circumvent this problem, speakers pressed poetic license. A touching example is "opitsah sikhs," or knife friend. A backwoodsman survives by his knife, therefore his "opitsah sikhs" is someone he can't live without. It might mean partner, best friend, or lover. Electricity has been expressed as "kwass saghalie piah kopa lope," or tame sky-fire [lightning] in a rope. Jargon is therefore concept-based, relying on cultural references more than true languages generally do.

In its waning years, Jargon became heavily anglicised. Uniquely Native grammar and pronunciation faded. Few trained linguists devoted attention to the subject, so much Jargon pronunciation and syntax have been lost to history. Melville Jacobs, a University of Washington anthropologist, is an important exception. Jacobs traveled the Northwest in the 1930s, transcribing into Americanist phonetics stories elderly Natives related in Jargon. Jacobs' monograph provides rare, authentic examples of living pronunciation, grammar and syntax, with regional differences intact.

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