[Ads-l] Postids
Benjamin Barrett
gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM
Fri Dec 19 04:45:03 UTC 2014
In a letter to the Skagit Valley Herald today (http://bit.ly/1GXxYYA),
Walter A. Johnson, Sr., mentions the Postids, which he glosses as invaders.
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George Vancouver’s appearance near Padilla Bay in the Salish Sea in 1797
set the stage for hordes of Postids (invaders) to invade the Skagit
River Delta beginning about 1825....
There, they were abandoned on reservations, chosen only because the
Postids considered the land to be worthless.
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This is presumably derived from the Lushootseed word pastəd < Boston, a
term for white people as some of them came from Boston. The speaker is
in a caught/cot merger area, which would account for the first vowel.
(According to the Bates et al. "Lushootseed Dictionary" (1994), the
plural form is formed, as is normal, with reduplication: paspastəd.)
According to jlawler (http://bit.ly/1w4yca1), the form "bastən"
preceded "pastən" and then the current canonical term pastəd.
Benjamin Barrett
Formerly of Seattle, Wa
Learn Ainu! https://sites.google.com/site/aynuitak1/home
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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