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

[Mike Cleven]

At 08:17 AM 11/3/99 -0800, David Robertson wrote:
>LhaXayEm, qhata mEsayka?
>
>Mike asks if there's any relation between /sayEm/ and [Coast Salish]
>/si7am/.  In a word, nope.  I myself am not aware of any possible
>connection, and several facts work against such a linkage.  The basic
>meaning of /si7am/ is something like "upper-class person", and it's only
>vaguely similar in shape (by linguists' standards) to /sayEm/.

Again, I'm not looking for a _linguistic_ link; rather an anthropological
one, i.e. that 'upper class person' might have been at one time somehow
associated with 'bear', and that this linkage is long forgotten.  Of
course, as one of the other contributors points out that siam also means
bluejay........btw I think the Halqemeylem word is not pron. /si7am/ - more
like /sayam/.......