Lingua Franca Native Americans

Ethan Shevin

Mr. Henderson

U.S History

10/22/2015

Lingua Franca between the Native Americans and the Europeans

In the 16th century, Europeans arrived onto the “New World”. This side of the World had never been discovered and was completely unknown according to the Europeans. This undiscovered world was soon to be colonized by the foreigners, but there was one discovery that interested and put perspective into the new comers. This discovery was human civilization on this land. These people had fascinating lifestyles, languages, and religions totalling into a completely different culture. These people are known as Native Americans. The Native Americans are proven to have been on the North American continent for close to 50,000

They communicated using lingua franca which is a common language used between speakers whose native languages are different. In this case the lingua franca was mainly used for trading and agreements amongst settlers and tribes as well as between tribes themselves. Trading was a very important part of common life in the “New World”, because trading created long alliances and would help resource the Europeans and tribes. The Europeans brought objects such as horses and firearms which the Native Americans had no access to and the Native Americans would return the trade by teaching the settlers to adapt to the land as well as providing local foods. There were many different variations of lingua franca throughout the continent mixing tribe languages with themselves as well as with French, English, and Spanish depending on the settlers’ background and the tribe’s location. Lingua franca was essential for trading between tribes and Europeans but also a very intelligent economical way to improve commerce and alliance between

Now and again alluded to just "Chinook," the dialect is all the more appropriately the Chinook Jargon, or the Jargon; the Oregon Trade Language; or Chinook Wawa. The dialect joined components of Chinookan, Nootkan, French, and English. Chinook is the second best recorded Native American exchange dialect after Mobilian. Not at all like Mobilian, Chinook Jargon did not have its own one of a kind sentence structure. Rather, speakers utilized the sentence structure of their local dialects to arrange and coordinate their utilization of interlingual Chinook vocabulary. At the point when European dealers initially touched base at Nootka Sound, they spoke with the occupants altogether by sound. Trade, intermarriage, and subjection encouraged the formation of a Chinook Jargon before the landing of Europeans. After contact, Chinook Jargon kept on serving both Native and European objectives, however the majority of its vocabulary was from Nootka. At its peak in 1860, Chinook Jargon secured immeasurable territories of the Pacific Northwest. It was the most widely used language for Indians and merchants as well as for Indians and preachers. Before the end of the nineteenth century, English had started to supplant Chinook Jargon as the most widely used language of the