"siskiyou" horses < Cree?

[David Robertson]

LhaXayEm,

Do we know anybody who speaks Cree, or just as well, Michif or Ojibwe?

I agree, the word "siskiyu" has a Cree feel to it (basing my view on just
the smattering of the language that I've ever seen in print).

Could this word have given us the root -/kiu, as in (i)-/kiu-tan?

It would be odd for a language having a structure like that of Cree to
have provided a loanword in such a "bare" root form, however.

Yet I remain healthily skeptical about Spanish "caballo" > Chinookan
-/kiu.

By this I mean, I don't doubt the evolution, but I don't see proof.

By contrast, the Californian indigenous languages' forms presented by Phil
are clearly loans from Spanish.

These horse terms in ChInuk Wawa are indeed fascinating in terms of the
insight they provide us into the patterns of interacting populations,
among other things.  They also demand that we look for and make use of
knowledge of such historical interactions.  /kayus/, /lEkay/, /sIskiyu/,
/khiyutEn/ and others are food for much thought.

I'd love to read that article by W. Bright!

We've got an excellent conversation going on this subject.  Thanks.

Dave





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