Chinook

name for a group of related native people in the Columbia River region of Washington and Oregon, from Salishan /činuk/, name of a village site [Bright]. The name was extended to a type of salmon (1851) and a warm spring wind in that region (1860). Chinook jargon was a mishmash of native (Chinook and Nootka), French, and English words; it once was the lingua franca in the Pacific Northwest, and this sense is the earliest attested use of the word (1840).