From the southern Columbia Plateau (fwd)

[David Robertson]

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 08:50:55 -0700
From: "Scott E. Tyler" <styler at multicare.com>
To: 'David Robertson' <drobert at TINCAN.TINCAN.ORG>
Subject: RE: From the southern Columbia Plateau

Dave,
Nez Perce themselves say soyapo comes from the word for hat since the first
Europeons they saw wore hats.  This term goes all the way to Warmsprings
near Madras, Oregon and is pronounced shoyap which is very similar to shahpo
or seahpo in CW.
I suppose being a hat is as flattering as calling a woman a skirt.  Or an
Indian Siwash.  I believe the original term for Indian would have been
tilikam or tilXam as many tribes decsribed themselves as people.  While
Siwash was a term brought in and imposed onto the Language as Whites and
Indians traded.
Scott

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	David Robertson [SMTP:drobert at TINCAN.TINCAN.ORG]
> Sent:	Tuesday, June 22, 1999 9:33 PM
> To:	CHINOOK at LINGUIST.LDC.UPENN.EDU
> Subject:	From the southern Columbia Plateau
>
> Lush pulakli ukuk, wigna?
> (Kloshe polaklie okoke, wake-nah?)
>
> From Theodore Stern, "Chiefs & Change in the Oregon Country:  Indian
> Relations at Fort Nez Perces, 1818-1855"  (volume 2)   Corvallis:  Oregon
> State University Press, 1996.
>
> page 334:  'They oppose the settlement in their country of any American,
> by circulating rumors of hostile intentions on the part of certain
> Indians, and thus alarm them, and in several instances where the claim has
> been thus abandoned by our own people (or what they call Suyapp[o] or
> Boston) it has been taken by Canadian Frenchman, old servants of the
> Hudson Bay Company, without any opposition from the Indians.  Even now
> among those Tribes with whom we are at war, Alima, which means any person
> other than an american[,] may pass unmolested through their country; the
> Father with his household who has resided for several yars at the Yakama
> Mission still remains secure in the heart of the enemy's country'
>
> page 391, note 24:  'Soyapo today [1996!] is Chinook jargon for "white
> man", as is Boston for "American".  Alima, says Josephy (1965:  334, n.
> 3), originally meant "American", inconsistent with its use here.  Samuel
> Black, in his trilingual vocabulary in Black 1829 (fo. 26) -- I cite only
> the Nez Perce entries -- gives for "White People" Allay Man and for
> "Americans" Shouiwapo.  Narcissa Whitman (Chapter 11, p. 97) uses Suiapus
> for "Americans", consistent with Black's understanding.  Hale 1990, a
> handbook of Chinook Jargon, lacks a general term for "White Man", while
> for "American" he gives Boston.  A possible cognate for Alima is the
> entry, "Other, another, different" Alloima, huloima, while for Soyapo, the
> term often cited is "Hat, cap" Seahpo, seahpolt (fr. Fr. Chapeau), thus
> "hat wearers".'
>
> Dave's note:  You can tell a book that wasn't written by a linguist.
>
> First, 'soyapo' is Nez Perce, and not part of any version of Chinook
> Jargon I've learned of, though conceivably the Nez Perce used it when
> speaking Chinook Jargon, and 'soyapo' was a bit of a pan-regional term
> (having been adopted in the Salishan languages north of Nez Perce).
>
> Next, 'alima' may be a variant representation of a Nez Perce word "allay
> man".  I don't speak the language so I don't know.  But it looks very
> likely to be a version of Chinook Jargon 'huloima' (Xluwima) instead.
>
> Last, I strongly doubt both the etymology of Chinook Jargon 'seahpo /
> seahpolt' from French and the interpretation of 'soyapo' as meaning 'hat
> wearers'.  On the latter point, may I say that hats weren't a remarkable
> item among the Plateau cultures, who wove plenty of them from beargrass
> and such, long before contact with non-Indians.
>
> But this extract from Stern's book is very interesting, whether his
> linguistics is solid or not.
>
> Best,
> Dave
>
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