help re poem

[Mike Cleven]

At 05:51 PM 2/8/99 -0800, terry glavin wrote:
>the poet's name is lawson fusao inada, a japanese-american poet. the name of
>the poem is 'kicking the habitat.'
>
>in the poem is a line -
>
>`chemawa? chinook?
>
> `the pines said 'clackamas. siskiyou.'

Looks to me like he's just citing Oregon placenames, rather than trying to
"use the Jargon".  Maybe even county names?  (Don't know about chemawa as a
county name, or chinook - but clackamas and siskiyou certainly are).  Just
names for "local colour" ("what pines might say").

Actually, this raises the interesting issue of "how did the Siskiyou
Mountains" get their name (presumably Siskiyou County was named for them,
rather than the other way around).  Was it because the fashion among
horse-owners in this area was to bob their horses' tails?  Was it because
of some mysterious siskiyou mustangs?

Which takes us to another point, which I've always wondered about when
typing out the equine husbandry words in any of the wordlists?  What
language does "siskiyou" come from?  Of all the horse terms (other than
lepishemo) this one doesn't come from French......why?