Siwash — Racist Insult

Still Proudly Displayed

in Vancouver's Stanley Park

A demeaning double insult here with the putdown word squaw and the insulting siwash or sauvage tossed in together to help sell white man's apples in the 1930s

 

Chinook jargon was a lingua franca, a trading language based on the speech of the Chinook Indians, with words from French, English, Salish, Nootka and other local tongues thrown in as needed. Chinook jargon was used for over a hundred years until the turn of the century by aboriginal peoples and the white traders who plied the Pacific coast. Some Chinook Jargon words have persisted, first in the English spoken in British Columbia, then across Canada and south in the states of Washington and Oregon. To learn a few more of these words, click here.

Siwash is a word in Chinook Jargon. Siwash began its verbal life as an insulting voyageurs' term for a native person, and it is still an insult. It is a slurry jumbling up in Chinook Jargon of sauvage, the voyageurs' French term for any member of an aboriginal people, equivalent to savage or wildman.

Although siwash is vile and derogatory, or perhaps just because of its swinish bigotry, it gained wide use. Here's a partial list.

1. Siwash tongue was a synonym for Chinook Jargon.
2. To siwash once meant to travel quickly, deftly, and lightly, making use of natural shelters on the trail, or sleeping in the open as a First Nations person might do.
3. Siwash wind is a Pacific Coast localism for any fresh gale that blows up briskly.
4. A Siwash blanket is low cloud cover that portends weather warmer than if the ceiling were higher.
5. R. D. Symons, a splendid writer about our western provinces and territories, states in Many Trails, his 1963 collection of tales, that “most ranchers in the interior (of B.C.) loosely refer to all Indians as Siwashes.”
6. A British Columbian synonym for a beach-comber is Siwash logger.
7. Antkiti Siwashes were legendary native giants of Chilko Lake, well southeast of Redstone, British Columbia who were said to return to track and haunt those living in the interior of the province who have sinned against the spirit of the land.

 

Has this racist insult disappeared then from Canadian speech and place names? No. It is still proudly displayed in Vancouver's Stanley Park.

Siwash Rock , an offshore monolith near Prospect Point in Vancouver's Stanley Park. The Squamish people who once lived in Stanley Park believed the rock to be a symbol of ‘clean fatherhood.’ They may well believe that but the word siwash is a Chinook Jargon insulting put-down of aboriginal people. It was a synonym for ‘wild Indian.’

It is NOT an intrinsic word in the language spoken by the Squamish people. Vancouverites, at last report, have not the slightest intention of changing the name of the rock. So, when you are visiting the friendly shores of Lotusland North, you can point this ugly little meaning out to them. There are other fanciful meanings attributed to the rock's name. Check out this one:

Note that the word siwash appears nowhere in this wee mythlet. Some reward, eh? Being petrified for being unselfish!

 

Historical Revenge in a Flip-Flop Change of Meaning

Alaskan pilot Alex Clark sends me a neat update:

“The word "Siwash" is still very much alive in certain Alaskan villages. It is still used by almost the entire population of Fort Yukon, Alaska and by much of the population of Eagle, Tanana and Galena.

While it may have originally been a derogatory term used by the trappers who inhabited the area back in the 1800s, it is now used by the indigenous villagers to describe a no-good white man.

Although one must keep in mind that in villages like Fort Yukon almost nobody is a full-blooded Indian.  Most of the residents have Scottish-Irish or English last names and the mix of green and blue eyes, along with the occasional red-head, indicate that the old Hudson Bay Trading Company left more than a little language behind them.

I worked in public safety for a few years before moving to other parts of the State. Witness statements would often start like this:

“That guy is a real one!” 

My retort would then be, “A real what?”

Answer: “A real siwash”

Alex Clark, Dragonfly Aero
Floatplane and Tailwheel Instruction
Homer, Alaska, USA

www.floatplanealaska.com

 

And here's an email note received in the summer of 2009:

Hi Bill,

 

I'm not sure if "siwash"was used in Canada the way it was used ubiquitously in Oregon from way back up to at least the 1970's and probably later, but around here it was possible to be "siwashed" at the local bar. That simply meant you misbehaved and were summarily kicked out and barred from buying liquor at that establishment until if and when the ban was lifted.

 

I'm sure that if you asked people who frequented taverns and night clubs in the 1950's & 1960's, especially the more rowdy establishments, you could verify if the term was used in this manner in Canada.

[ Casselman footnote: In Ontario, when I was a very small boy in the late 1940s, drunks to be barred from taverns and beverage rooms were "put on the Indian List" and could not be served any alcohol. ]

 

Interesting web site.

 

John Davis

Elgin, Oregon

 

 

Any comments, additional word lore or book orders?

Please email me at wordguy@shaw.ca

 

 

 

© 2012 copyright William Gordon Casselman