Jewitt etc [addendum] (fwd)

[David Robertson]

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 06:23:35 -0800
From: Jim Holton <jim at adisoft-inc.com>
To: David Robertson <drobert at TINCAN.TINCAN.ORG>
Subject: Re: Jewitt etc [addendum]

I think the term "Pasiooks" comes from "Pasisi" plus "uks" or "the
blanket people."  This is what Gibbs gives as the most likely
derivation.  Also, some of the early literature, for instance Theodore
Winthrop, refered to people employeed by HBC as "blanketeers." I think
it was the hat that gave them away. LaXayEM, Jim



David Robertson wrote:
>
> Silly me, I'm getting into a habit of forgetting part of each message that
> I intend to send out...
>
> Call this a kimtah-tzum (a P.S.):  Methinks that "pasiooks"/ "pasayuks"
> was used equally well for the voyageurs of Me'tis extraction as for
> Frenchmen per se.
>
> In fact, a majority of French speakers in the NW would likely always have
> been Me'tis.  Among the rest, most were missionary priests, hein?
>
> Now let's note that "pasayuks" is, as someone just recently mentioned
> here, a combination of the word "franc,ais"* with the Old / Lower Chinook
> suffix for animate plural beings.  This alone very strongly suggests that
> the term originated among the Lower Chinooks themselves, i.e. about the
> mouth of the Columbia River.  In that particular geographic context, the
> "maritime" as opposed to the "overland" trade, it would have been a label
> for men from France.    But as the Jargon spread to new regions as a
> lingua franca (get it?)  :-) it's easy to suppose that this term applied
> to any who spoke French..  May I propose further that it was probably quite
> easy to spot a francophone:  He was probably in black robes or a furtrader
> married to a native woman.  You wouldn't have needed to know word one of
> the language to label 'em as such.
>
> (*I reject fairly firmly the suggestion that "pasayuks" is derived from
> "pasisse" i.e. "cloth".)
>
> In such a scenario, identity as an "Eastern Indian" might well have been
> submerged to that as "French".
>
> To leave you with a fun anecdote, I refer to L.V. McWhorter's collections
> of Indian stories, particularly those about the Stick Indians or
> stick-showers (i.e. those who show, or poke, sticks at you) which some
> whites appear to call Sasquatch.  LVMcW records a ?Yakama man saying in a
> Pidgin English, which is another fascinating subject entirely,
> something like "Him bad stick-shower ... Him not like citizen
> stick-shower!"  Had this man been speaking CJ, he might have used the
> phrase "Boston stik sawash" in this sentence.   Does anyone else here
> detect humor based on the idea that Stick Indians are unassimilated
> tribes?  This is from memory, so help me out if I'm shaky, please.
>
> Best wishes, friends,
> Dave
>
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