Affective suffix -- "Steelhead"

[Mike Cleven]

At 09:21 PM 11/9/98 -0800, you wrote:
>
>Sure, pass it along to them and perhaps one of them will put in the time
>informing you on what you don't seem to know about doing historical
>linguistics.  Good _really_ luck.

There's no need to get nasty.  I've _lived_ in a St'at'imc community and am
in regular correspondence with them.  _They_ refer to "clans", rather than
"local family groups", and have a strong sense of totem-animal identity
with their "cousins".  For instance, the valley has an annual bear
infestation due to the thousands of untended apple trees there; but no
member of the Band can patrol the bears, as they are not allowed to shoot
relatives; a conservation officer has to be called in - or a member of
another Band who is not a bear clan member.

Historical linguistics has nothing to do with the sociological implications
of clan-hood and clan-dom.  It may be that the Salishan peoples _you_ are
familiar with do not have clans, but have "local family groups" instead,
but it is a _for_sure_ that many of the Salishan peoples in my area _do_
have clan affiliations and clan identity.

And if I were to forward it on to them, I don't think they'd give a damn
about whether their own feelings are valid under the rubric of "historical
linguistics".  They are a living society, and do not like _at_all_ to have
external definitions imposed upon them; clumping them together with other
Salishan speakers for the purposes of sociological generalization - as if
linguistic families had uniform sociological characteristics! - just won't
wash.

The St'at'imcets-speaking people of the Seton Valley in British Columbia
are nearly all members (and proud ones at that) of the Bear clan, and many
are members of the Crane clan as well.  That may not fit your view of what
is "valid" for the "historical linguistics" of Salishan language family
peoples, but to my knowledge the English word "clan" is not a Salishan word
anyway.....

Sincerely
Mike Cleven
ironmtn at bigfoot.com
http://members.home.net/ironmtn/

The thunderbolt steers all things.
                           - Herakleitos