What is the Joe Peter Chinook Transcription Project about?

The Joe Peter Chinook Transcription Project (JPCTP) is a project whereby a number of individuals dedicated to helping revitalize the chinuk wawa or Chinook Jargon as it is know to others get together to transcribe old Chinook Jargon audio recordings created in 1941. JPCTP consists of anywhere from 2-10 or more people that get together for an hour each week, listening and transcribing these recordings. Through this we create a better understanding of the language, Chinook Jargon, and how it was spoken by those that spoke it when it was still being used. And, maybe best of all, we create lasting relationships with other team members.

John P Harrington – Image From Smithsonian

Guide to the Harrington Papers – Smithsonian

Harrington Chinook Resources

Revisiting Joe Peter’s “Chinook” — Twenty Years Later* Henry B. Zenk

Who is John P. Harrington?

From the Smithsonian Institution: “Harrington was a Bureau of American Ethnology ethnologist involved in the study of over one hundred American tribes. His specialty was linguistics. Most of the material concerns California, southwestern, northwestern tribes and includes ethnological, archeological, historical notes; writings, correspondence, photographs, sound recordings, biological specimens, and other types of documents. Also of concern are general linguistics, sign language, writing systems, writing machines, and sound recordings machines.”

What Did John Marr & Joe Peter Do for Harrington?

John Marr at 16 was sent out with a recording machine to capture old Chinookan from an Indigenous person that could speak Chinookan, and he found Joe Peter. Together they, using stories from the Chinookan Texts by Franz Boas in 1894, made a number of recordings . The recordings consist of John Marr reciting a portion or sentence from the Chinookan Texts in English and quickly followed up by Joe Peter translating in Chinuk Wawa/Chinook Jargon. The title of the recordings the pair produced for Harrington is “1st V Continuation Stories from Boas’ Chinook Texts”. According to Henry Zenk Joe Peter was recruited to give a translation in “pure Chinook” but what John Marr actually recorded from Joe Peter was Chinuk Wawa or Chinook Jargon. The pair recorded 30 Aluminum disks at approximately 20 minutes per side giving us 10 hours of recorded gold for Chinuk/Chinook language revitalization and knowledge.

Who is Joe Peter?

From Henry Zenk (Revisiting Joe Peter’s “Chinook” — Twenty Years Later*): “Joe Peter (1894–1959) was born at Olequa, Washington, into a family that had both Cowlitz proper (Salishan speaking) and Upper Cowlitz (Taytnapam Sahaptin speaking) connections; he grew up in the Cowlitz River region of western Washington. In about 1919, in common with other Cowlitz identified individuals of his generation, he took up residence at Yakama Reservation (Rick McClure, personal communication, 2021).”

What Has Our Group Accomplished So Far?

This team rocks it! Great work is being done here!
If you ask us, we think we have done a lot, and still going strong! Over the course of a little over a year we have been able to transcribe 3 full recordings with videos of the additional completed transcriptions is in progress. We as a group also wrote a paper for 59th annual International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages (ICSNL 59). One of the members of the group then attended the conference and presented our group to the conference. Watch our video and don’t forget to download our paper and give it a read!