north & south

[Mike Cleven]

At 01:23 AM 2/8/99 -0800, David Robertson wrote:
>LaXiyEm, 'Klis',
>
>These Lushootseed words are the cognates, if not the sources, of the CJ
>terms mentioned.  What's interesting is the lack of 's-' at the beginning,
>as you mention, and the 'gw' instead of 'w'.
>
>The latter is a regular
>Lushootseed correspondence for Ancient (Proto-, that is) Salish 'w'.  The
>former is not a major difference in the meaning of the word; it's just the
>Salish ~ "Noun" prefix 's-' -- But it's extremely unlikely that this s was
>put onto the word by say white or nonSalish CJ speakers.  Rather it looks
>like an indication that the words came from another Salishan language.
>
>Probably that language was located farther north than Lushootseed.  I say
>this because I don't find any similar words in Upper Chehalis (down there
>neighboring Old Chinook), and I assume that the other quite similar
>Salishan languages in the "Tsamosan" group (Quinault, Lower Chehalis,
>Cowlitz) also lacked matching terms.
>
>BTW, Lushootseed is Puget Sound Salish.
>
>Anyhow, I'd roughly peg the source of these two CJ terms ("north" and
>"south") as being one *or more* of the Salish tribes in the vicinity of
>modern Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia.  I reckon that was the
>most vigorous coastal trading area at the time of Chinook Jargon's zenith.
>And the terms could be very similar in several of the Salishan languages
>of that area, reinforcing their usefulness in the CJ of that place.
>
>I don't see any words for "north" or "south" in Father LeJeune's "Chinook
>Rudiments", my favorite reference at the moment.  But I wonder what terms
>would have been used around Kamloops.  I see many Salishan words in the CJ
>of that region, many of them being evidently Coast Salish, e.g. "stolo"
>for "river", "lahal" for "gambling with beaver teeth", and "stiwilh" for
>"to pray".  Also, though, I do see "nort" used in the _Kamlups Wawa_
>newspaper, if only in the place name "Nort Bind" (North Bend).

Would have been meant only as the placename.....have you seen "Lytton" in
there, by the way, or is "Camchin" or "Kumsheen" used?  Of all the proper
native names, it's the one that remained the most resilient (unlike the old
names for Hope, Agassiz, etc.)

After editing the Anderson list tonight, it's funny that I would have
commented that his list most likely reflected the Jargon of what is now SW
British Columbia, and that the many unconventional words in the list
appeared to be of local Salishan-language origin.  I don't think it's
necessarily "Coast Salish" that's in play here; it could just as easily be
Secwepemc, Nlakapamux or St'at'imcets - these being the nations the
Kamloops mission concentrated its efforts on and whose languages the local
argot would reflect.  Upriver Halqemeylem (the language of today's Sto:lo
Nation) also interacted quite a bit with both St'at'imcets and Nlakapamux,
either through the medium of the Jargon or just through intercommunal
relations and intermarriage (I think Halqemeylem's pretty different from
the inland languages, though).

Maybe Anderson's list provides some clues as to these influences; I wish I
knew more of the local "old languages"......