Terms for chickens in NW indigenous languages

[Sally Thomason]

   As Mike Cleven says, it makes sense that an imported word would be
used for an imported animal.  But not always; and in fact some languages
in the wider Northwest conspicuously *don't* borrow many words, at
least from English and/or French -- instead, they invent new words
from native parts, like Montana Salish (Flathead) p'ip'uySn `auto',
literally, `it has wrinkled feet'.  Nez Perce, too, does surprisingly
little borrowing from non-Native languages.  I don't know how widespread
this feature is in the NW, though.

   Borrowing from CJ is another matter, of course.  Even Montana
Salish, where (as far as I can discover) CJ was never spoken -- they
used the Plains Indian Sign Language as a lingua franca -- has
some CJ loanwords, presumably borrowed from other Native languages,
not CJ itself.  Both likak `rooster' and lipul `hen; poultry' occur
in Montana Salish.  But the most common word for chicken is
skwiskws, which also means pheasant (another imported bird) and
(ruffed) grouse; Spokane also has skwiskws, and so do some other
Salishan languages, though not always in the reduplicated form.

   Shaw too says that likok is "not strictly CJ, or only local",
like LeJeune; but though it's not as widespread as some other CJ
words, it's well attested in both the 19th century and the 20th-
century sources (Demers et al., Swan 1857, Allen 1855, Pinart
1849/1876, Stuart 1865; also Harrington has it in the earlyish
20th c.  And it's attested pretty widely as a loanword in the
Native languages too -- Squamish, Cowlitz, Yakima, Shuswap,
Colville, Kalispel, and (as I said) Montana Salish, at least.

   Lipul is more widely attested in the CJ sources than likok;
it occurs in all the above sources and also in Winthrop 1863,
Palmer 1847, Lionnet 1853, and Phillips 1913.  Shaw lists this
word too as "not strictly CJ, or only local".

   Both likok and lipul are better attested in the CJ sources than
tSiken is, though.  shaw glosses it as "grouse, siwash chicken".
Otherwise I have found it only in Durieu 1879, Lejeune 1924, and
a 1900 wordlist from a man named Robinson (somewhere in Wakashan
territory -- I forget what language community he came from); the
most recent attestation I have is in a 1957 (or so) tape recording
by Jimmy John, and again I forget which tribe, but I think he was
recorded in or near Vancouver (by Wayne Suttles -- it's his tape).

   Finally, moosmoos seems fairly unlikely to be a loanword from
Michif, because almost all the nouns of Michif are French, and
"moose" isn't one of the four or five exceptions to this rule.
It could still be from a Metis French dialect word, but since
it's attested as early as Hale 1846 and Palmer 1847, this doesn't
seem too likely, given the history of the Metis population.  The
English word "moose" is said to be of Algonquian origin, and it's
conceivable that CJ moosmoos could be directly from Algonquian.
Various etymologies have been suggested for hte CJ word: Shaw
gives Klikatat Musmus and Chinook Emusmus; Father Pandosy says it's
from Yakima; someone else, acc. to Shaw, says it comes from Cree.
It's glossed variously as "buffalo" and "cow".  Silverstein says
that it has been borrowed by every lg. in the former CJ area, and
certainly it's widespread in the Native languages from California
to BC.

   -- Sally Thomason
      sally at thomason.org