No Chinook for Me.
From the first I refused to have anything to do with Chinook, and when the people would meet me on the road and commence to talk in it, I made them understand by signs that I wished them to speak their own language, in order that I might learn it.
So intense was my anxiety to get their language that I found myself, when asleep, dreaming in it, and dreaming that I was preaching to hundreds of people in their own tongue.
I attended the great feasts and heathen councils, and sat by the hour listening to the old chiefs and orators relating the stories of the chase, or recounting the tales of the bloody deeds of other days, when they went out on great war expeditions and returned with many scalps.
How the old orators would rise with the enthusiasm of the occasion and seem to make the ground tremble under their feet as they rejoicingly told of the names and deeds of their fathers, to fire the ambitions of the young princes and young men of rank—for it was only the high-caste who were permitted to sit in these councils. It was at these gatherings we got the proper sound of many words.
The children also were a great help to me in the study of the language. As I gave them the English name for the objects around them I would have them repeat it in their own tongue, and by earnest perseverance and the help of God I soon had the unspeakable joy of being able to preach to them in their own language the unsearchable riches of Christ.
In all my work since then I have experienced that in no way can one properly preach the truth to a people except in their own language. This knowledge of the language opened up my way to other tribes and bands of the same nationality.
On my first visit to the Fraser River, some years later, I came to a village early one morning, and, stepping out of my canoe, shouted out at the top of my voice in An-ko-me-num, “Why are all the chiefs sleeping like children so late this morning?” The old men rushed out to see the big Indian. I again shouted out the same words, and they cried out, “Listen to him! Where has he come from? We heard no white man speak like this. Has he come from above?”
On one of my canoe trips years ago around Burrard Inlet, when there was only one sawmill where now a beautiful city (Vancouver) and a number of thriving villages are situated, a white man, who had made me welcome to his home and treated me to dinner, said, as I was getting into my canoe, while a number of white men stood by, “Do you know what I was thinking, Mr. Crosby? That if you would put a blanket on and get into the canoe and commence to talk, nobody would know you from an Indian.”
I said, “I beg your pardon, sir; I didn’t know that I looked so much like an Indian.”
“Oh!” he replied, “I didn’t mean that; I meant to say, you speak the language so well that we could not tell you from an Indian speaking.”