Here's one for ya....

[Mike Cleven]

Thought I'd throw this by the professional linguists as well as CHINOOKers.
 I had occasion to look up the Sto:lo Nation Curriculum Page whilst
researching something else (maps of now-vanished Sumas Lake) and in their
appendices came across their placename index.  So I looked up the village
sites where I was raised (Ruskin, on the lower Stave River) and came up
with the following:

Sxwòyeqs
"all died"
village

This was a village where all the people were wiped out by smallpox. It was
a disease
introduced in the late 1700's, and continued through to the end of the 19th
century.
Smallpox decimated at least 66% (some scientists estimate up to 90%) of the
total Stó:lo population. In a few cases, whole villages were wiped out.
Sxwòyeqs was one of these villages.

Xwéwenaqw
unknown meaning
village

Xwéwenaqw was closely related to the Sxwòyeqs village on the Stave River.
After the
smallpox epidemics (which wiped out both villages), some of the people from
Qw'ó:ntl'an moved east to this important resource area. The Qw'ó:ntl'an
people had many ties with Fort Langley, who also used this area to make
wooden staves for their barrels.

*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*

A little disconcerting to live in situ of a major plague die-out.  I'd come
across the name Skayuks before in the museum at Xa:ytem, but no one there
knew the etymology.  Given the 'uks' ending I'd thought people of "sxway"
or whatever.  Turned out to be a little grimmer.  Is what's given a literal
translation, does anyone know?

Any clues on Xwéwenaqw?  I don't know any Halqemeylem, but when I had a go
at pronouncing that I was instantly reminded of the hordes of geese and
gulls and other birds that swarm the lower Stave, and did even moreso in
the old days when the fishery was still rich and the river undisturbed by
industry.  Could Xwéwenaqw be onomatopaeic in some way, perhaps?