CJ use among Interior Salish ...was... Re: CJ phonemes

[Jeffrey Kopp]

On Sun, 25 Apr 1999 14:49:28 -0700, Lisa wrote:

>from my mother.  It was a bit muddled but it was a phrase she had learned
>from her grandfather, who had brought his family to Washington state from
>Idaho in a covered wagon sometime during the late 1880s/early 1890s.
>IIRC, what *she* said was "Klahowya, klat-ta wat-ta klum stuk" but it had
>been a number of years since she had heard it from her grandfather; he
>died in 1957.  I now know that the "klahowya" part was right, but I'm
>still puzzling over the rest of it ... perhaps a variation of "khata
>mika, sihks"...?

It looks to my eye like "klatawa" is the second word, which leaves
the rest a bit of a puzzler.  "Klatawa taghum/tahtlum stick?"  Go six
(ten) trees?  ("Head for the woods"?  Or perhaps, in the context of
your story, "We're just passing through"?)  It could well be an
apocryphal reference to an actual event or place in the family's oral
history.

Regards,

Jeff
Regards,

Jeff