Learn about the Chinook people here!

[Robert Moore]

LhaXayEm,

There--I've finally spelled it right, I hope (apologies for my last attempt).

Aron Faegre asks good questions, David Robertson makes useful suggestions,
and Jeffrey Kopp makes an excellent (and somewhat pointed--ouch!) point
when he says that
>The only way to combat misinformation or hackneyed information is
>with better information.  Indignation and criticism won't cut it. [...]
>The price of holding back is the risk of being forgotten.

I haven't meant to "hold back," and have felt some guilt about not
responding sooner, but I've been too tied up with finishing the semester
here to have time to respond until now.  I might as well say that I have a
bit of guilt also about the fact that my very first foray into the glare of
electronically mediated public discussion was a contribution that fits so
well into that already overworked internet genre, the "flame."  But I guess
when I read that purple prose, I saw some other color ('pIlpIl' in Jargon,
if I remember right, 'dalhbel' in Wasco).  I may be colorblind, but I hope
I'm not tone deaf--nor deaf to the kinds of good questions and comments
that this discussion has already generated.  So much for
preliminaries--down to business.

It seems to me that the obvious starting points for someone wanting a
fairly broad overview of Chinookan peoples and languages, cultural
traditions, and the like, are two pieces from the current Smithsonian
_Handbook of North American Indians_.  The defects of the (otherwise often
useful) "culture-area" principles that Handbook editors used to organize
material into this series of volumes are never more apparent than here,
where the Lower Columbia River Chinookans are in the "Northwest Coast"
volume, and the culturally quite similar upriver Cascades and Wasco-Wishram
are in the "Plateau" volume.  But that's life, I suppose.  Here are the
items:

Silverstein, Michael.  1990.  Chinookans of the Lower Columbia.  In W.
Suttles (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 7, Northwest Coast,
pp. 533-546.
Washington, DC:  Smithsonian Institution (GPO).

French, David, and Kathrine S. French.  1998.  Wasco, Wishram, Cascades.
In D. Walker (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 12, Plateau.
Washington, DC:  Smithsonian Institution (GPO).

Both of these have copious illustrations, cover every aspect of traditional
culture (language, technology, houses, religious beliefs, songs,
canoe-types, etc.), and both also contain meticulously detailed MAPS
precisely locating every known pre-contact village site and giving the
Chinookan name (and analysis and translation, where possible) of each in
transcriptions that can utterly be trusted (the maps and info. on villages
is in each case a significant new contribution to knowledge).  Both also
are exhaustively referenced, and can point the interested reader to
virtually everything written on the respective peoples (up to and including
the publication dates, of course).

I'd also recommend the NW Coast Handbook volume for other reasons; first,
because it also presents really excellent overviews of the NW Coast area as
a whole in its introductory sections--a wonderful "Introduction" by Wayne
Suttles (pp. 1-15), who I imagine needs no "introduction" to people on this
list, as well as an excellent overview on "Languages" (by Laurence C.
Thompson and M. Dale Kinkade; pp. 30-51).  These, together with histories
of ethnological research in the area (by Suttles & Jonaitis; pp. 73-87),
and of linguistic research (Kinkade; pp. 98-106), and finally Cole and
Darling's outstanding "History of the Early Period [of contact]" (pp.
119-134), are essential reading for anyone with an interest in the Indian
people of the Pacific Northwest.  Notice I am not even mentioning the many
comparable articles/entries on the other peoples/languages of interest to
students of Chinook Jargon such as the Chehalis, Nootkans, etc., all of
them prepared by the pre-eminent scholars in the respective (sub)fields.

These (and all other volumes of the _Handbook_) are available at POWELL's
in Portland, I am quite sure, and also at that little-known treasure-trove,
the "Government Printing Office Bookstore" located somewhere in the Federal
Building in every major city in America (in Portland, it is a few blocks
from PSU).  They are not cheap (in the $50.00 range, if I remember), but
they are huge, well made hardback books--these are reference works you will
consult, and treasure, for decades to come.

Like David Robertson, I've found Spier & Sapir's "Wishram Ethnography"
useful, but problematic.  I've done a bit of archival research to try to
figure out how this thing was assembled--blending Sapir's notes & data from
his 1905 fieldwork (and subsequent correspondence with Peter McGuff) with
various material collected by Spier in 1924 (when he was working on other
matters in the area), and even some scraps of data from Spier's then-spouse
Erna Gunther--and discovered that the thing is exactly what it seems to be:
a hodgepodge, assembled mainly by Spier, to whom Sapir seems to have sent a
bundle of notes along with a suggestion that Spier put it together, and not
bother him further with it (this is an inference on my part; but for
connoisseurs of the "flame" genre, there is some truly blistering
correspondence around this time between Sapir and others, in which Sapir
paints his co-author in a none-too-flattering light, to say the least).
The point is that this was at best a long-distance "collaboration" done
through the US Mails, that Sapir obviously exercised little or no editorial
or linguistic oversight during the crucial final stages of the project, and
that, as a result, the material in it is quite uneven.  If you spend some
time with it, it quickly becomes obvious which parts represent Sapir's
work--impeccable transcriptions, careful and evocative prose--and which
Spier's (lousy transcriptions [Chinookan does NOT have anything resembling
an 'r' sound!], turgid prose).  Readers should know, for example, that the
list of "Wasco kin terms" contributed by Erna Gunther is irretrievably
messed up, transcriptionally and otherwise (the much longer list
contributed by Sapir is typically excellent); the list of personal names
contains both the impeccable renderings of Sapir, and the garbled
mistranscriptions of Spier (but the latter, again, are fairly easy to
spot).  So, my opinion on this item is, proceed with caution.  But for
people less interested in issues like reliability of transcriptions, the
thing can be read as a kind of synopsis of the culture-as-remembered, and
can have some usefulness in that way.

The less said (by me, anyway) about the seemingly endless series of books
by RUBY & BROWN the better, perhaps, given my proclivity for intemperate
criticism already well-known to the esteemed subscribers; again, these are
compilations and reorganizations of material published elsewhere (with some
archival data included, haphazardly), done by a couple of amateur
historians (one or the other is a dentist, I believe)--on the whole, I'd
rather be in Philadelphia, as W.C. Fields is rumored to have said in
another connection entirely.

Stephen Dow Beckham, a historian from Lewis & Clark College, has produced
more than one book on the Indian people of the region (one, I think, is
called _This Land Was Theirs_), and these I guess I will damn with faint
praise by saying that I have found them mostly unobjectionable.  Useful,
and "user-friendly," in fact, for the "general reader" with an interest in
the history of the region.  Of course, I am an anthropologist and linguist,
and as is typical, I suppose, for a member of that "tribe," my tastes run
much more toward hard, uncompromisingly "scientific" stuff, sharp little
bits of consonant-rich language accurately transcribed, discussions of
material culture in which hard things like arrowheads, mortars & pestles,
canoe types (and canoe paddle types), etc., are catalogued in assiduous
detail in prose that is often dry as dust.  But that's just me.

Finally, one other suggestion:

Boyd, Robert A.  1995.  People of Wascopam Mission.  Portland: OHS Press.

(Sorry the reference isn't complete, I don't have it right at hand.)  This
is an outstanding piece of scholarship that draws together the
astonishingly rich material gathered by the Methodist missionary Henry
Perkins and his colleagues (including Daniel Lee & JH Frost) between
1838-1845 (dates may be off slightly).  Boyd has combed ALL of the
published AND unpublished material produced by these missionaries, presents
meticulously edited selections from their journals, diaries, letters,
publications in obscure missionary periodicals, etc., leavening these with
chapter-length treatments of his own that bring out the really rich
ethnographic material, and contextualize it with what we already thought we
knew of these peoples.  Wascopam Mission, as most are probably aware, was a
somewhat short-lived enterprise located adjacent to the main Wasco village
on the south bank of the Columbia, near the site of the present-day city of
The Dalles (the village was called Wasq!u ['cup'], in fact, referencing a
"spring" that was really a round hole in the volcanic basalt, into which
river water would bubble up from time to time--communal dipping-cups were
kept beside it, and it is perhaps these that are the basis for the name;
see French & French 1998 [referenced above] and maps, etc. therein, for the
real story here).

Of course one can remain ambivalent, at best, about the broader agenda of
religious conversion and cultural change that these missionaries were
pursuing during their tenure along the Columbia, but still appreciate the
fact that they made some real efforts to document what they saw going on
around them (Daniel Lee, in fact, made some real headway in his own effort
to learn Wasco-Wishram, no mean feat), and left behind some really
priceless material.  Boyd is a true scholar who has few peers when it comes
to thoughtfulness and care in handling this complicated material, and had
had already contributed much to our knowledge (a series of articles on
disease epidemics, for example, as well as the "Demographic History
1774-1874" entry in the NW Coast volume of the Smithsonian Handbook [at pp.
135-148], a tour de force in which he documents the devastating impact of
the several epidemics in the region), before he took on this project.
_People of Wascopam_ is masterfully edited, Boyd's own sections are written
in a graceful, lucid prose that is "accessible" without being hackneyed,
and the whole is somehow more than the sum of its parts--a real
achievement.

So, in my last somewhat flaming message I discussed a book I haven't even
seen that I urged subscribers NOT to buy--and now I've discussed several
items that I have found incredibly useful, at least two of which (vol. 7 of
the Handbook, and Boyd) I would urge subscribers on this list to add to
their personal libraries.

I hope this is represents a start, then, in responding to the good
questions asked by Aron Faegre and others--sorry it went on for so long,
and sorry for the delay in getting it out to all of you.

dret lhush naiga wawa kanawi lhaksta [I think!],

Rob

Robert E. Moore
Department of Anthropology
New York University
25 Waverly Place
New York, NY    10003

212-998-8559 (tel)
212-995-4014 (fax)
<rem10 at is5.nyu.edu> email



>LhaXayEm;
>
>It's good to see a very interesting and lively thread like this on our
>list.  (Even if everyone's writing in English!)  :-)
>
>Not having seen the book, and not being a fan of that one written by Ruby
>and Brown (? right ?), I'd just like to say that one of the very best
>places to learn things about the Chinook people in writing is right here.
>Stay tuned.
>
>I also heartily recommend, though, Leslie Spier & Edward Sapir "Wishram
>Ethnography", as a splendid start on understanding something of the way
>the people used to live, a way of life that's importantly related to how
>things are in the present for them.
>
>There are also books by Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, and others, which
>collect large numbers of the ancient, inherited stories told by Chinook
>people.  You might specifically look for the words Kathlamet, Clatsop,
>Wasco, and Wishram, for example, to find these entertaining, illuminating
>"ikanEm".
>
>Now, as Tony and Bob have rightly more than implied, it would be best to
>learn about the people's past from the people themselves.  Until all of us
>are able to do so, I'm offering the above handful of suggestions.
>
>More references to particularly good magazine articles, for example, could
>be of great interest to folks on our list.  Anybody have some?
>
>Best wishes,
>Dave
>
>
>
> *VISIT the archives of the CHINOOK jargon and the SALISHAN & neighboring*
>                    <=== languages lists, on the Web! ===>
>           http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/salishan.html
>           http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/chinook.html