‘That’s a Rubbaboo’: Slavey Jargon in a nineteenth century Subarctic speech community

A contact language called Broken Slavey or Slavey Jargon flourished among the Gwich’in in the nineteenth century. Slavey Jargon absorbed elements of at least five source languages: French, Gwich’in, South Slavey (Dene-Tha’), Chipewyan, and English. Analyzing historical sources and recorded ethnographic texts from fluent speakers of Gwich’in, I offer an explanation of how the lexicon and grammar of this kaleidoscopic language converged regionally in the small subarctic communities of Fort McPherson, La Pierre’s House, and Fort Yukon. I also conclude that there is no internal textual evidence that Slavey Jargon was used as a trading pidgin. The polyglot form of most Slavey Jargon texts represents a curious inseam of linguistic democracy, suggesting that a measure of social equality was negotiated between the speakers of its diverse component tongues.