<shabon> ... this gets kind of technical ...

[Mike Cleven]

>From: David Robertson <drobert at TINCAN.TINCAN.ORG>

>LhaXayEm, shiks,
>
>I've had a new thought about the _Kamloops Wawa_ CJ word <shabon> "debt".
>
>Could it be from "j'abonne" (literally, "I make [it] good") < "abonnir"?
>
>Its origin would still not be entirely clear, however.  French was not a
>major vehicle of communication for mundane matters in the BC Interior,
>except for in-group speech among certain Me'tis, past the middle of the
>19th century, I believe.  _KW_ was publishing ca. 1895.  While the
>/lipret/ were contributing many, er, technical terms to the CJ they used
>for preaching, I hardly expect that "debt; to owe" was a concept
>innovated by Catholicism!

Definitely "debt: to owe" can be associated with the Company, i.e. with the
Metis voyageurs, just as "huy-huy" (ouai-ouai) may be.  And they were in the
Interior of BC far before the middle of the 19th Century; who do you think
Fraser's and Thompson's and Mackenzie's crews were, anyway?  The employees
of the New Caledonian forts and Fort Langley, etc. made frequent trips
through the Interior; I'm not sure when Fort Kamloops was established but it
was pretty early on; and don't forget that it was the Metis who named the
great chief of the Sce'exmx "Nicholas" (Nicola) in the 1820s or 30s (can't
remember the proper Nlaka'pamux name).  In fact, the Metis influence on
Interior life in BC (meaning Metis proper, not 'mere' half-breeds of any
origin as the term can mean now) declined markedly after the foundation of
the Mainland Colony in 1858, as the role of the HBC declined and the
still-present Metis were greatly outnumbered by immgrants from other
nations.....


>Moreover, I do not imagine that a majority or any sizeable percentage
>of the shopkeepers in Interior BC were francophone-dominant, as the towns
>were almost certainly anglophone-dominant from an early date.

NO.  They shopkeepers did not even come into existence until the END of the
Hudson's Bay mercantile monopoly in 1858; and after that they could just as
easily have been Portuguese or Jewish or Chinese as anglophone; typically
merchants weren't American, though, more likely British.    During the
Company's monopoly, not all trading/bartering was done at the forts or other
company stores, but often "on the trail"; and it would have been the
voyageurs who had this role, even if their commanding 'officer' was a Brit
(most likely a Scot who also spoke the voyageur patois).

>shopkeepers, as *traders* were not likely to allow, or be able to allow,
>anyone to owe them and pay later!

Actually the HBC was notable for advancing credit as a way of generating
business.

  Rather, I might expect any
>European-derived loan [heh heh, sorry!] term for this concept to have
>entered CJ via frequent, and perduring, contact between Indians and
>cheechako -- i.e. in and near permanent settlements.

There were no permanent settlements pre-1858.

>So perhaps this French term for "debt" entered BC CJ at some time before
>the English language became dominant, and at some time after relations
>with people of European ancestry were characterized by only sporadic
>trading sessions:  By about 1850, let us say, and in the milieu of native
>or mixed-ancestry settlements growing around Hudsons Bay Company forts.

Just encampments would have been enough.

>The presence of Blanchet or Demers or Durieu in the vicinity of Biktoli
>(Victoria BC) at that time might explain how the term in question became
>an eventually, via _KW_, somewhat widespread CJ lexeme.   Didn't Durieu
>provide the group of new missionary priests including Le Jeune with
>"flying sheets" containing CJ vocabularies from Vancouver Island?

Even Victoria was founded a couple of decades after the voyageurs were
present in the province; Demers himself was a relative latecomer by this
standard.
>
>Finding an alternative etymology for <shabon> in an indigenous BC language
>would only be plausible if we could find such a language having both /b/
>and /n/ in its phonemic inventory, and having speakers who were in
>extensive enough CJ-mediated contact with outsiders to have contributed
>items from their native language to ChInuk.  There are instances of the
>latter condition having been fulfilled, e.g. with _KW_ <hpai> "cedar" <
>generic Coast Salishan /XEpay'/,

cedar?  or "je paie" (I pay)?



MC
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