"Chinook wind" misetymology perpetuated

[coyotez]

Hi Dave,
The translation of Chinook winds as Snow eater may be mythologized but it
makes sense. The meaning of Chinook Winds as being warm winds, would have an
effect of melting the snow, thereby creating a "snow eating" phenomenon. So
some Indians may indeed have translated the term as snow eater.
David

===== Original Message From "David D. Robertson" <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU> =====
>In an episode of the National Public Radio (USA) show "Living on Earth"
>that I heard on January 6, 2003, it was claimed in passing that the
>word "Chinook" in the phrase "Chinook winds" means "'snow eater'...in some
>Native American languages".
>
>This is an old romantic myth.
>
>"Chinook" is the name of one of the villages inhabited by Chinookans on the
>lower Columbia River at the time of contact with Euro-Americans.  (And I
>don't know whether any etymology of the word is believed in with
>confidence.)  The word was applied by outsiders to all of the Chinookan
>ethnic group(s) and their languages, as well as to the interethnic language
>Chinook Jargon.  Thence the term came to label that general region of the
>world, as when folks from approximately the Cascade Mountains eastward into
>Montana and Alberta labeled warm wind currents by their supposed place of
>origin.
>
>The fuzzy concept emerges repeatedly in materials written by non-
>specialists about virtually any part of the Northwest coast from Oregon
>through Southeast Alaska, that "the Chinook Indians" lived throughout that
>region, since "Chinook" or "Chinook Jargon" was spoken there.
>
>Another old romantic myth, roughly equivalent to labeling me as English
>since I speak English, though I'm actually Boston.
>
>--Dave

David Lewis
Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde
Department Of Anthropology
University of Oregon