camas / quamash

[Alan H. Hartley]

Henry,

> > I can think of one case in which it was clearly the opposite that
> > occurred: the origin of the Eng. word CAMAS has long been attributed to
> > Nootka, but it's evident that it came from Nez Perce and entered CJ from
> > the east.
>
> At least, indirectly from the east.  CW lakamas 'camas' is probably ultimately from Nez Perce qem'es (m'=glottalized "m"), but must have come into CW through French lips.  Not only the article la- argues so, but the replacement of NP q by k in the CW word:  a replacement that wouldn't make sense for Indian to Indian transmission (m' is different, as that is not normally a CW sound).

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True, but what I said was that the ENGLISH word (not the CJ) came from
Nez Perce. I believe the NP > Eng loan was direct, as evidenced by the
earliest records in English, e.g.

1805 Jrnls. Lewis & Clark Exped. IX. (1995) 228
these natives have a large quantity of this root bread which they call
Commass.

No accreted French article la-, and no reason to think the word came via
French.

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> Alan, while you're on the line:  the Gabriel Franchere reference for "Equannet, saumon" is from p. 204 of his Relation d'un Voyage

Thanks for the ref.

Alan