Whence the CJ word for 'grizzly bear'? (fwd)

[Mike Cleven]

At 08:23 AM 11/2/99 -0800, David Robertson wrote:
>Lhush san, qhata mEsayka?
>
>Na tIki wawa Dell hayu masi pus ukuk...
>
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>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 11:00:30 -0500
>From: Dell Hymes <dhh4d at virginia.edu>
>To: David Robertson <drobert at tincan.tincan.org>
>Subject: Re: Whence the CJ word for 'grizzly bear'?
>
>Dear David,
>	Years ago Iwas going to publish a book on narratives involving
>grizzly woman in the Chinookan communities.  Wrote it but didn't persevere.
>At about the same time I did some lexical comparisons in Penutian, which
>included terms for 'bear'.
>	What I remember is that 'saim' is not readily analyzable within
>Chinookan, and is not really necessary as a Chinookan word.  Grizzly and
>Black Bear have other names of their own.  Almost surely a loanword in
>Chinookan.
>	I think the same about the occurrences in Kalapuya. Given the
>greater prominence of Chinookan, along the columbia, borrowing would likely
>have been from Chinookan to Kalapuya.  But no need for the Kalapuya to
>borrow.  They were contingent to the Coast range and elsewhere with bears.
>	So the most likely answer to the history of saim would seem to be
>that it got into Chinookan and Kalapuya from Chinook Jargon. Implying some
>other Native American language as ultimate source?
>	Of course someone may come up with a fact that derails such reasoning.
>All I have of Nootka is Sapir and Swadesh, Nootka Texts, which has a quite
>alot of Nootka-arranged lexicon. Didn't spot 'bear' under sh-, or nearby,
>but that's not much of a test.


Is there any possible relationship to the Halqemeylem 'siam' (chief)?
Something to do with kinship, the clan system, any ancient bear-cult or
other ursine signifier?

This is more of an anthropological question than a linguistic one, I
realize, and I know it's not easy to ask this kind of thing of native oral
history.  Since we're also looking for rational argument amid a landscape
whose whole history and geography is one of wonder and transformation, the
ancient past in this region is largely unseen and uninterpreted by
non-natives, save for those who "know where they are"; the history of the
"older times" can only be interpolated by the native communal linguistic
and legendary memory, which was unfortunately ravaged by disease and
colonization in the worst way.  How did people lead their lives here?  What
did the believe, and of what did they speak?  What were their songs?

I was very moved somehow at the end of the Mission Jargon workshop last
year when we went down to Xa:ytem Rock and one of our Sto:lo participants
(or was it the museum host?) who told us the story of the rock; about the
Transformers/Xa'xels and the three (four?) "siams" of the village, who did
not continue the craft of writing and were turned to stone by Xa'xels for
not obeying "his" previous commandments ("he" was four separate
Transformers on his first visit), and how if some people touch the rock or
listen the right way, you can hear them singing their lament for having not
preserved the art of writing, and for the destruction of their village.....

Anyway, a lost time and a lost world, even as the legend says.

I know that I've heard bits of Sechelt and Lillooet legend that the
old-time old-time people (doubling intended) believed differently, and that
there were also other beings in the world in those days; this latter esp.
among what's left of the Sechelt "epic memory" of the ancient past and the
great cataclysms.  What was mentioned was very sketchy though; just bits
based on a tale about this waterfall or that mountainside or that peak.  In
the Lillooet, there is less of the ancient oral memory, and much of it is
kept from sama7 like me anyway, I think; but there was so much disease in
that country for over a century and a half that it is hard to imagine that
elders and others learned in the oral history would have been able to tell,
to transmit, to educate in their craft, or even live to think about it.
Some has survived, but given the large populations there (and throughout
BC) before Contact there must have been some large pool of collective
memory and identity between the many large communities and clans of the
region; more than family history, I mean, although that's elemental to the
whole.  There are tantalizing tidbits in Stl'atl'imx legend concerning lost
peoples and great magics and great beings, and as it happens there are
rumours of a few strange archaeological things in the area (none recognized
by academic archaeologists; what I've heard is apocryphal).  It's clear
that the population centres at Fountain, Lillooet, the Lakes, "Old
Lillooet" (Lil'wat; Mt. Currie) have been populated for a long time, and
their tales contain references to things in terms of "thousands of years
ago" (which I don't know exists even in St'at'imcets or not as a term),
such as the visit of the "one who was so good people said he was God" 2000
years ago (?) and various volcanic and riverine cataclysms known to
geologists in the same timeframe; the era of Coyote and the Transformers
would be, if the legend is literal in some way, something like 6000 years
ago, when the flank of the Cayoosh Range crashed down on the 45-mile lake
that is now Anderson and Seton Lakes, becoming the "Short Portage" (Seton
Portage now) and the long-time home to one of the largest quiggly cities in
the Interior of BC; nearly completely plowed up during the 1858 Goldrush
and since by development and settlement, unfortunately for archaeology, to
say nothing of the remaining Seton Lake First Nation themselves, of course.

Has me wondering how many of the various eruptions and tsunami and
lake-dammings in Northwest history are accounted for, at least by
suggestion, by native legend.  Temlaham/Dimlahamid, I think, can be dated
fairly accurately, as can be the dates of volcanic activity in the Nass and
Bella Coola valleys.  Are there any equivalent more-or-less "datable"
'legendary' events in WA or OR or ID that are the same kind of thing?  If
there were, it would be interesting to compile a map of placenames or
events that can be chronicled and mapped in this way; kind of like the
Matthews map of Squamish/Musqueam placenames and others, but covering the
whole Coast  and Plateau as appropriate.....

Been meaning to add a map of the "Chinook Illahee" to my site, when I get
around to editing/rebuilding it.  Would like to show the "working wawa in
use" region, "outer wawa", "Klondike wawa", "peripheral wawa" on the map,
with of course the lower Columbia/Grande Ronde "mamook kloshe wawa" and the
trade/language routes and relationships.  Input more than welcome, of
course; I've got fairly good basemaps.

Mike