more Algonkian etymologies

[Henry Zenk]

Hi Sally.  Continuing from my previous reply to Alan about camas and
wapato, it comes to my mind that I told you quite awhile ago that I had
questions about other Algonkian etymologies.  In the meantime I found
(rediscovered) your "NEW" CHINOOK JARGON WORD LIST in the Salish
conference preprints from 1995, where you list assumed sources.  Checking
that, I see that we agree on one of the items I was going to ask about:
saplil 'flour, grain, bread', which you attribute to Chinook.  While it is
an obscure item in Chinookan, I think there is little to recommend the
etymology given by Kinkade in his Upper Chehalis dictionary:  a borrowing
of French la farine via Algonkian.  Especially persuasive to me is the
historical evidence of Lewis and Clark's original journals plus what else
we know about contact on the lower Columbia.  There had been direct
contact between Indians and maritime traders at the mouth of the Columbia
River before Lewis and Clark, but Lewis and Clark preceded the penetration
of the land-based fur trade into the lower Columbia.  As far as I know,
Algonkian speakers only came into the lower Columbia with the land-based
fur trade.  Yes, some members of the expedition must have known Algonkian,
and some clearly Algonkian terms appear in the journals.  But Lewis
and Clark are clear in identifying locally-used words:  in most such
cases, the words are unambiguously identifiable with more recent
recordings from local indigenous languages.  They are quite clear also in
identifying wapato and saplil (their Shapallel, Chapellel, etc.) as words
used by Indians on the lower Columbia:  it is just that in these cases,
unambiguous later indigenous recordings have not come to light.

Another one I have some thoughts on is not a Lewis and Clark item:
k!aynuL 'tobacco', which you attribute to Algonkian.  What is the putative
Algonkian?  What troubles me about this one is that the word appears in
phonetically identical form in both Kalapuyan and Chinookan (e.g. Santiam
an-k!aynuL, Clackamas i-k!aynuL).  Conceivably, it could have come from
Jargon where it in turn had been borrowed from Algonkian.  But then what
was the Kalapuyan/Chinookan for 'tobacco' before Algonkian speakers came
into the area?  For tobacco is surely indigenous (or pre-contact) in NW
Oregon.  I had occasion this summer to completely satisfy myself on this
point.  While visiting a friend at her family ranch near Winters, CA (on
the western edge of the Sacramento Valley), I came across some of the
local native tobacco in a dry creek bed by the ranchhouse.  This inspired
me to dig out Harrington's TOBACCO AMONG THE KARUK INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA,
which I have had for years but had never read.  The native tobacco
of Northern California is a botanically clearly distinct local variety,
type-specimen of which was collected by David Douglas during the early
1820s on a foray from Ft. Vancouver into the lower Willamette Valley.
Douglas's description of how tobacco was planted and grown in the
Willamette Valley matches exactly the ethnography from California (in both
areas, this was the only cultigen known before contact).  Also matching:
Harrington's (and other California sources') description of ritual use,
with what we know of Kalapuyan use.  I can even cite some family memorates
from my work in Grand Ronde on the latter point:  I heard the story from a
number of people about a poor guy who had become so intoxicated by smoking
the local mixture of tobacco and kinnikinnik (Jargon LARP) that he passed
out and fell into a fire, burning himself seriously.  Such stories are
encountered all over California.  Tobacco-use in both areas was quite
different from that to which we are accustomed (except for those of us who
may have, unlike Clinton, inhaled certain illegal substances during the
sixties):  the smoke was inhaled deeply ('swallowed' in glosses of some
native-language texts, which is not quite correct) and held in, the object
being not the mild CNS stimulation craved by our smokers, but a state of
overpowering intoxication.

So, what is the overpowering evidence of an Algonkian source for k!aynuL?

--Henry