Kamloops Wawa

The Kamloops Wawa ("Talk of Kamloops") was a newspaper published by Father Jean-Marie-Raphaël Le Jeune, superior of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kamloops in British Columbia, Canada, beginning May 25, 1891, and continuing into the 1900s. The contents of the Kamloops Wawa were near-entirely written using Le Jeune's adaptation of the French Duployan shorthand writing system. Most of the texts of the Kamloops Wawa were composed in the local variant of Chinook Jargon with some passages and articles in Nlaka'pamuxtsin, Secwepmectsin, St'at'imcets and other traditional languages. Some series of articles, however, included translations into Chinook Jargon of classical texts from Latin, such as the Seven Kings of Rome, though most content was either community news or translations of the mass or other liturgical materials.

During a meeting of the Oblate missionaries in June 1890 at New Westminster, the missionaries discussed the unsuitability of the highly successful Carrier syllabics to writing the native languages in British Columbia, at which time, Father J. D. Chiappini suggested the use of shorthand to teach literacy to First Nations people, which would have the advantage of being suitable for European, as well as native languages. In August, Father LeJeune had traveled back to the Kamloops area, and began his first attempt at teaching writing to the native peoples. His efforts remained unsuccessful until a visit to Coldwater (near Merritt), where a lame native, Charlie Alexis Mayous, began studying in earnest. Father LeJuene left Mayous shortly thereafter with a notebook of lessons on the alphabet and common prayers. Upon returning in December, LeJuene found that Mayous had completely learned the shorthand, and deciphered and memorized all of the prayers, and could read French and English with equal proficiency to his native tongue, and began to instruct other natives in the Chinook writing.

...
Wikipedia