north & south

[Mike Cleven]

At 01:42 AM 2/8/99 -0500, Christopher Schindler wrote:
>KLAHOWYA KLAKSTA KONAWAY!
>
>The recent mention of the CJ words for north & south, including those in
>Duane Pasco's dictionary - stopilo=north, stehwa=south - got me running to
>my Lushootseed dictionary (Dawn Bates, Thom Hess & Vi Hilbert, 1994).  There
>I found s.tubElE (accent on u, E=shwah) glossed as "northwest wind" and
>tEgwaaq'w (note no s., w's should be superscribed, accent on first a) for
>"south wind".  Besides wondering about these words in CJ, I also noted
>Duane's word for river, "stalo", which made me think of Lushootseed,
>"s.tulEkw" (accent on u, w superscribed) for river (seen also in
>Stillaguamish, lit. people of the river).
>Just thought this might be of interest for the discussion.

It is.  "Stalo" in a variety of forms seems pretty constant for 'river' in
Salishan languages; isn't it also the "name" for the Columbia as well as
the Fraser?  It shows up in Kamloops Wawa's wordlist as "stalo" (I may have
the spelling wrong), which must be from either Okanagan or Secwepemc, and
in the name of today's Sto:lo Nation.  I think in St'at'imcets, though, the
word is 'xwisten (adopted by the Bridge River Band of the Stl'atl'imx
Nation), and I'm not sure what the Nlakapamux is.

As far as north-south goes, I'd thought there were references to these in
Kamloops Wawa; I was wrong.  But I remembered where I'd seen them - in
Lorraine Harris' reproduction of the 1858 word list in Alexander Caulfield
Anderson's 1858 "Handbook and Map to the Gold Region of Fraser's and
Thompson's River......".  They "points of compass" are given as:

Stowbelow......North
Stegwaak.......South
Sun chako......East
Sun midlight...West

Which, if not for Christopher's citation above from Lushootseed, raises the
interesting idea that the word for "north" was somehow related to where the
stowage was in water craft (astern).....

Actually, the wordlist is quite interesting, and I guess I'll scan it and
add it to my site; I guess as http://members.home.net/skookum/anderson.html
once it's done.  The title of the wordlist per se, by the way is "Language
used by the different Indian Tribes, French and Half-Breeds, of Frazer's
River, Puget Sound, and surrounding country, as the means of Conversation
with Americans."

Don't see a word for tortoise, but "Jargon" words for porpoise (quiceo),
grouse (smock smock), and mole (skad, which seems similar to St'at'imcets
"skeil" for "rock rabbit", i.e. pika) are given.....also some variants for
duck (mauk), eagle (yakolla), hawk (shakirk), owl (waugh waugh), and mouse
(soolee)......also "hyas Kolon" for mule (????).  I'll scan it tomorrow for
y'all and forward it directly to whoever asks for it......