U.S. [Native name of an Indian tribe on the Columbia river, N. America, with whom early intercourse was established by the Hudson Bay colony at Vancouver.]
A jargon that originated in the intercourse of the Hudson Bay Company’s servants with the Indians of Oregon and Columbia, and is used by the latter as a means of intercourse between different tribes and with the white man. Chinook wind: an ocean wind, warm in winter, cool in summer, which blows on the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains.
1840. H. Hale, Ethnog., in U. S. Explor. Exp., 636. Tshinuk jargon or Trade Language.
18[?]. Joaquin Miller, Memorie & Rime (1884), 134. All Indian [N. Am.] dialects, except the ‘Chinook,’ a conglomerate published by the Hudson Bay Company for their own purposes.
1884. Boston Jrnl., 6 March. Our cold weather … is tempered by the ‘Chinook’ wind from the Pacific coast.
1887. West Shore, 425/2. Snow … is frequently removed in short order by the chinook, as the warm ocean wind is called.
1887. Governor’s Rept., in Puget Sound Gaz., July 1888. The Chinook is the natural enemy of the odious east wind.
1889. Ill. Lond. N., 2 March, 266 (title), The Chinook.
