What Did You Say?

Alexandra Harmon explores the language that helped form Indian identities in Indians in the Making – Ethnic Relations and Indian Identities around Puget Sound.   Harmon makes a concentrated study of the historical world of language and how it was interpreted between the indigenous people of the Puget Sound area and the Hudson Bay Company fur traders.  Communication between people that have the same language is sometimes fraught with misinterpretation, misunderstanding and vagueness.  Ian Ruskin mentions the confusion that can arise in his class lecture on April 19, 2007, when he quips: “We are divided by a common language.” This communication problem would prove to be a major stumbling block in trader/Indian relations. 

There was no universal language that united the separate native tribes in the area.  The natives did not understand other dialects that were spoken in the region and many of the natives were enemies of each other or simply did not know each other.  Rather, “What they shared was a system of communicating and conducting relations with outsiders – a system that drew them all into a region wide social network (6).”  The several diverse bands, tribes, villages and groups of Puget Sound natives maintained communication by multiple liaisons.  For economic as well as social reasons, natives were known to marry outside of their local villages and even into villages where a different language was spoken.  This social link enabled a local community to incorporate outsiders into their tribe while broadening their web of ties to other villages.  The intricacies and societal mergers that were formed helped unite them as a common people and provided the network needed to deal with an ever increasing influx of non native people into the Puget Sound area.  

Natives and non natives were never quite sure of how they were being interpreted.  The traders spoke in English to translators; if they were available, but no one could be certain if the other party knew what the other was discussing.  A crude jargon known as Chinook sprang up between the natives, the traders and their translators.  Described as “a vile compound of English, French, American and the Chenooke dialect (33)” it was considered a terrible standard of communication.  The lack of people that had a grasp of all four of the basic elements of the Chinook dialect compounded the difficulties in communication.

Eventually, a form of etiquette emerged which eased tensions and improved the lines of communications between the traders and natives.  The two sides incorporated the “exchange of gifts and favors, shared pipes and libations, interpreters and the Chinook jargon, bluffs and bargains, Sunday sermons and dances (34)” as a means to communicate.  These methods helped an individual to remain intact with their original set of standards while being exposed to a completely different set of ideas and principles.  The different levels of communication were very much left up to interpretation, but the confusion was lessened.

Language and all that it represents is overwhelming at best.  Combine a few elements such as multiple languages, different interpretations, and diverse cultures and communication can be quite complicated.  Despite these odds, amiable associations were established and relations between dissimilar people were made possible.