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Re: Translation of French fur trader slang



I'd bet it's an idiom, and a curse, that's probably misspelled by today's standards.  "Sacca" could be "sacre" ("sacred" or "holy") and "je" is quite possibly short for "Jesus" -- even though "je" means "I."
 
Try contacting the Museum of the Fur Trade in Chadron, NE: http://www.furtrade.org/  If they don't have an answer, they might be able to refer you to additional resources.  Good luck.

Paul R. Bergeron
City Clerk
229 Main Street
Nashua, NH 03060
Telephone: 603/589-3010
Fax: 603/589-3029
http://www.gonashua.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friedman-Shedlov, Lara [mailto:lara.friedman-shedlov@MNHS.ORG]
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 10:56 AM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Translation of French fur trader slang

This is slightly off topic, but I have been helping some folks in our museum exhibits department translate some French documents related to an exhibit they are preparing on the fur trade.  Apparently, a favorite profanity of the voyageurs was "saccaje chien" (with an acute accent over the "e" at the end of saccaje).  I know that chien means dog, but I have no idea what saccaje means.  I wondered if it was perhas a corruption or running together of some other french words along the lines of "ca que je" or "chaque" or something like that.  Any French speakers or experts on the voyageurs have any ideas how to translate this _expression_?
 
--Lara Friedman-Shedlov

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Lara Friedman-Shedlov
lara.friedman-shedlov@mnhs.org
Minnesota Historical Society