Mystery Language Identified/SSILA Bulletin #89 (fwd)

[David Robertson]

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 1999 08:57:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: Scott DeLancey <delancey at darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Reply-To: ssila at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
To: ssila at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU

in the late 18th and early 19th century by a Franciscan missionary in
California.  Here is John's report on the replies he received.]

>>From John R. Johnson (jjohnson at sbnature2.org) 19 May 1999:

I was flabbergasted by the prompt response to my query of Monday morning!
Immediately my request to identify the mystery languages is transmitted
to all SSILA members via the online Bulletin and I am inundated with
suggestions.

The first unidentified vocabulary is Nootka.  Everyone agrees (Kinkade,
Robertson, Howe, Bright, Poser).  These respondents also noted that some
of the words became incorporated into Chinook jargon, as you first
mentioned.

The second word list turns out to be Hawaiian.  The missionary evidently
misunderstood the English name for the Hawaiian Islands to be "San Luis"
instead of "Sandwich."

Now that we have certainly identified the languages, I have now been able
to identify the missionary who compiled these vocabularies.  It was Fr.
Jose' de la Cruz Espi' who was in Nootka in 1789 and later served at
several of the California missions.  An English ship arrived from Hawaii
during that year, so presumably this is why a Hawaiian vocabulary was
recorded.  Subsequent inimical relations between the Spanish captain and
the English captain led to the "Nootka Crisis."  England and Spain almost
went to war over the ensuing dispute.  This is the larger historical
context of how these word lists came to be recorded.

                                                           --John Johnson
                                  Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History
                                             Santa Barbara, CA 93105-2998
                                                 (jjohnson at sbnature2.org)


The reply John received from Dale Kinkade about the Nootka vocabulary
was especially detailed:

>>From M D Kinkade (mdkd at interchange.ubc.ca) 19 May 1999:

First of all, the list is not Chinook Jargon, even though it includes
some of the words that ended up in Chinook Jargon.  I've now checked
all the words of the data you posted, and they are clearly central
Nootkan as written by a Spaniard (<tyy> is the only question; it's
clearly [tayi], but it now seems to mean `firstborn son'; it must have
meant something more earlier, as it does in Chinook Jargon).  Guessing
from the inclusion of words for `bear skin' and `otter skin', the vessel
from which this vocabulary was collected must have had some interest in
fur trade.

I do think it's of sufficient interest to have it published.  As far
as I know, it's one of the earliest Nootka word lists.  There are three
from Cook's voyage of 1778, one from Walker in 1785-86, one from Manuel
Quimper in 1790, and there is Mozino from 1792 (the transcriptions of
your new vocabulary are significantly different from Mozino).  I don't
know of anything else earlier.  If your deductions are correct, your
vocabulary had to have been collected before 1795, so it is surely one
of the earliest known Nootka vocabularies, and therefore important.

....Ideally, its authorship and date should be tracked down, if that's
possible.  It would be good to know just when during that early period
it was compiled, by whom, and from what vessel, although judging from
your description of where you found it those things may not be possible.

                                                        --M. Dale Kinkade
                                                    Vancouver, BC, Canada

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