Portagee

Portagee is a term often ascribed to persons of Portuguese ancestry. The term found usage during the major waves of Portuguese immigration to the United States, from the late 1870s until the recent wave, which began in the 1960s.
Initially, the term found usage by Anglo-Saxons of the WASP variety in describing the immigrants from Southern Europe that they encountered as fishermen and factory workers in New England and on farms in California. Although ethnically white Caucasians, at the time, the Portuguese faced the same discrimination and accusations of non-Caucasian heritage that befell Irish, Italians and Jews of that era.
While the term still carries a derogatory connotation in some parts of the country, in other areas of the United States, persons of Portuguese descent often call each other Portagee as a term of bonding and endearment. This seems more common in New England, where Portuguese from the Azores and Madeira Islands have settled since the late nineteenth century. More recent immigrants to New Jersey do not use the term as much.
In California, a portagee gate characterized the tightwad stereotype attributed to Portuguese immigrants. The gate involved flimsy construction, implying that the Portuguese who made it attempted to save money in purchasing materials. A 2004 biography by Charles Reis Felix, entitled Through A Portagee Gate, makes reference to the usage of portagee as an ethnic term in Massachusetts during the 20th century. Felix analyzes the term while examining his own Portuguese-American roots and those of his father.
The term Portagee (which sometimes, and more properly, appears in upper case) also denotes a type of beans typically eaten by the Portuguese, as well as a type of bread eaten with meals. The term supposedly originated from a mispronunciation of the word Portuguese itself. (This suffix also appears in Chinee, as in The Heathen Chinee.) Residents of Hawaii are also familiar with the term, which was also applied in a derogatory fashion to Portuguese workers from Madeira who harvested sugar cane on the islands.
Portagee, as used in the Hawaiian Islands, belongs to the extensive vocabulary of the Creole, or Pidgin English spoken there (please see Hawaiian Pidgin). It has several meanings, which largely parallel those used in other places, but additionally refers to the accent with which the Creole of the Islands is spoken. In this sense and usage, it resembles the term Cockney, which refers to several things, including an area of London, but in popular usage (esp. in America) often means the speaking accent of the Cockney people themselves.
The Portuguese comprised a large percentage of the Iberian immigrants to Hawaii (including many who came from The Azores), and their contributions to Hawaii and Hawaiian culture are many, especially in the field of music. The Ukulele, for example, is Portuguese in origin. Other cultural contributions are seen in the area of food. For example, Portuguese sausage (please see List of Hawaiian dishes), a highly flavored pork sausage similar to kielbasa, or German sausage, but seasoned and spiced in distinctive ways, is a local staple.
Further reading
*Felix, Charles Reis (2004). Through a Portagee Gate. Dartmouth: Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture, University of Massachusetts. ISBN 0-9722561-4-8.
*Monteiro, George (1968). "And still more ethnic and place names as derisive adjectives". Western Folklore (27 (1), 51.
Sakoda, Kent, and Siegel, Jeff (2003) Pidgin Grammar - An Introduction to the Creole Language of Hawaii , Bess Press, Honolulu
Da Jesus Book, Hawaiian Pidgin New Testament, Wycliffe Bible Translators (Translation of the Old Testament is underway at this time)

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