Linguistics
A trade pidgin let fur traders and dozens of nations do business for a century
Chinook Jargon blended Chinookan, Nuu-chah-nulth, French and English into a simplified trade language that spread from the Columbia River to Alaska and Northern California through the 1800s. Traders, missionaries and dozens of Indigenous nations with no other shared language used it daily. It faded in the 20th century, but words like 'skookum' outlived it in regional English.