Some background information:

Philip Placity wrote this letter, and is mentioned in another Indigenous-written letter that we have

found in the archives.

The death of ‘Indian Placide’, probably Philip, at Shuswap is noted in Kamloops Wawa #197, June

1901, page 20:

Placity family, including Pierre, his wife, and Baptiste, makes a number of appearances in the

Indigenous letters and Kamloops Wawa.

1 Enderby, BC is on the border area between historically Secwépemc (“Shuswap”) and Syilx (“Okanagan”) Salish

lands.

• For the moment, I’m placing a notation /// to show the ends of written lines in this letter; do you think the writer

tended to end sentences at the right edge of the paper?

• If you see [SIC] in square brackets it shows possible mistakes in the writing; other material [in square brackets] is

inferred and added by me.

• *Asterisked* material shows an uncertain reading of the Chinuk Pipa writing.

• Underlined material is in other languages than Chinook Jargon.

• Anything < in angled brackets > is non-Chinuk Pipa, i.e. written as standard English in the original document.

• The notation (Ø) shows that you can understand a clause to contain either “silent IT”or a “silent preposition”.

• I have put line breaks between every clause-containing sentence, and added punctuation, to help the reader. (But

I’ve preserved the writer’s own “=” punctuation marks.) I’m experimenting with extra indentation to show the

existence of subordinate clauses. (And to reflect the flow of the speaker’s thoughts.)

Placity family, including Pierre, his wife, and Baptiste, makes a number of appearances in the

Indigenous letters and Kamloops Wawa.

1 Enderby, BC is on the border area between historically Secwépemc (“Shuswap”) and Syilx (“Okanagan”) Salish

lands.

• For the moment, I’m placing a notation /// to show the ends of written lines in this letter; do you think the writer

tended to end sentences at the right edge of the paper?

• If you see [SIC] in square brackets it shows possible mistakes in the writing; other material [in square brackets] is

inferred and added by me.

• *Asterisked* material shows an uncertain reading of the Chinuk Pipa writing.

• Underlined material is in other languages than Chinook Jargon.

• Anything < in angled brackets > is non-Chinuk Pipa, i.e. written as standard English in the original document.

• The notation (Ø) shows that you can understand a clause to contain either “silent IT”or a “silent preposition”.

• I have put line breaks between every clause-containing sentence, and added punctuation, to help the reader. (But

I’ve preserved the writer’s own “=” punctuation marks.) I’m experimenting with extra indentation to show the

existence of subordinate clauses. (And to reflect the flow of the speaker’s thoughts.)

< 1895 > Siptimbir < 30 >

‘1895, September 30.’

Halo2 Pir Lshyun,

‘Hello P.re Le Jeune,’

Naika tiki wawa kopa maika.///3

‘I want to talk with you.’

Alta naika piii iht tala kopa pipa.

‘I’m now paying one dollar for the newspaper.’

Naika tiki///komtaks kansih tala naika sha-bon4 kopa maika,

‘I want to know how much money my debt is to you.’

pus naika komtaks///kansih naika sha-bon.

‘so I can know how much my bill is.’

Pus maika mamuk-pipa kopa naika, < X >///

‘If you’ll write to me,’

naika [SIC],

‘me,’

pus naika tlap chikmin,

‘when I manage to get some money,’

naika aiak piii (Ø) kopa maika,

‘I’ll pay it to you right away,’

///kopa naika pipa.

‘for my newspaper.’

Naika tanas kwash* pus […]*5 lost, ukuk///chikmin;

‘I was kind of afraid that this money might get lost [i.e. loose coins in the mail?];’6

pi kakwa, naika ilo mash aiak maika chikmin kopa///pipa.

‘and so, I didn’t send your money for the newspaper right away,’

Naika tlap alta iht tala;

‘I’ve managed to get hold of a dollar [coin?] now;’

2 A common word in the Northern Dialect of Chinook Jargon.

3 ‘I want to talk to you’ doesn’t seem to me like a standard Settler way of starting a letter. Instead, it seems to reflect the

fact that the Chinuk Pipa writers wrote the way they talked. So, this is another of the many, many ways that Chinuk

Wawa can be understood as a highly Indigenous language.

4 Sha-bon, from Settler English slang ‘jawbone’ and meaning ‘credit; debt; account; bill’, is extremely frequent in

Northern Dialect, and essentially unknown in Southern Dialect.

5 There is a very short word faded out, or scratched out, here.

6 My [bracketed comments] here are my extra interpretation of why Placitty is talking about lost money.

Naika mash (Ø) kopa maika.///

‘I’m sending it to you.’

O, naika tanas-tlus-tomtom7 kopa naika pipa;

‘Oh, I’m liking my newspaper (even) a bit more;’

Kakwa,///naika mash chikmin kopa maika.

‘So, I’m sending the money to you.’

Pus ilo tlus,///naika tomtom, kopa naika pipa, wik naika mash tanas-///chikmin8 alta kopa

maika.

‘If I weren’t (so) happy with my newspaper, I wouldn’t be sending coins now to you.’

Tlus drit maika///wawa kopa naika

‘Please tell me straight’

pus-kansih9 tala naika sha-bon,///kanamokst naika kluchmin.

‘how much money my debt is, along with my wife.’

Kopit-kakwa naika wawa///kopa maika.

‘That’s as much as I want to say to you.’

Gud bai10 papa Pir Lshyun.

‘Goodbye father, P.re Le Jeune.’

Naika tlus;///

‘I’m well;’

Naika, ilo naika sik.11

‘Me, I’m not sick.’

Naika nim Filip Plasit///kopa Indirbi.12

‘My name is Philip Placide* at Enderby.’

7 Tanas-tlus-tomtom, literally ‘little-good-heart’, is the Diminutive form of tlus-tomtom ‘happy’. In actual talk,

Northern Dialect speakers often use descriptions as if they meant (in this case) ‘relatively happy; a bit happier’. See also

the tlus-tomtom a couple of lines later. All of this is one reason why we don’t very often find Northern talkers saying

Comparative expressions such as ilip-tlus-tomtom, literally ‘more-good-heart’!

8 Tanas-chikmin is a pretty frequent expression (literally, ‘a little money’) that seems to strongly connote ‘coins’.

9 Pus-kansih is an example of the Northern Dialect habit that treats questions as being very hypothetical, by putting pus

‘if’ before the question word.

10 Gud bai is a nice example of how Northern Dialect speakers brought spoken English words into their Jargon, usually

with a more precise meaning than the previously existing Jargon words had had. Here, ‘goodbye’ has a more restricted

meaning than the Jargon’s klahawiam ‘goodbye; hello’. By the way, if you look closely at the original letter, Placitty’s

spelling seems to be kot pai, which would reflect a Salish “accent”.

11 The repeated naika is a super-frequent feature of Indigenous people’s Jargon in the Kamloops area. It may reflect how

their Indigenous language (Secwepemc) “reduplicates” the verb in the 1st person singular (“I”) form, as if to show

humility.

12 Ending a letter with ‘my name is…’ is another non-Settler way of writing. Virtually ever Indigenous-written letter ends

this way. We have to class this as another Indigenous feature of Chinuk Wawa