Ebook: Attestations of American Indian Pidgin English in Fiction and Nonfiction

Duke University Press: American Speech, Vol. 42, No. 2 (May, 1967), pp. 142-147.The Indian is the enigma of American letters, taciturn in contrast to the American Negro, difficult to analyze linguistically. There is undoubtedly historical evidence for his silence in fiction, but part of it is because the Indian language of the campfire was not his contact language with the white.
With the Anglo-Saxon settler, trapper, or scout, he spoke a much reduced jargon sometimes based on Indian vocabulary and structure, such as the Chinook jargon, but more often based on English structure. This language, stripped of inflections and of much of its power and subtlety, became the language of communication when Indian and Englishman met, although neither spoke it elsewhere. It was a pidgin.