/wamusmuski/ in Upper Chehalis (Q'way'ay'ilhq')

[David D. Robertson]

Hello,

A very knowledgeable source once told me that the hardest word to analyze in
Upper Chehalis Salish (Q'way'ay'ilhq') is one that means "cow":

/wamusmuski/ -- stress is on the second syllable.

Anyone with a knowledge of Chinook Jargon can easily spot the CJ word
/musmus/ "cow" inside this U.Ch. item.

The question, though, is what are the /wa-/ and the /-ki/ doing here?  They
apparently aren't U.Ch. affixes.

If they aren't, then I have a wild hunch that I'd like to run by a student
of the Algonquian languages.  It goes like this:

a)  We agree that Chinook Jargon /musmus/ comes from an unspecified
Algonquian language.  (Or, from a pidgin or other contact variety thereof;
see e) below.)

b)  The speakers of that Algonquian variety were likely Metis employees of
the fur trade.

c)  These men often married local women in the Columbia River region, at the
time and in the locales where CJ as we know it was taking shape.

d)  One of the primary languages of that area, on the north side of the
Columbia, was Upper Chehalis.  ("Chehalis" is frequently if indiscriminately
cited as the source for many of the Salish words in CJ.)

e)  Might the CJ word for "cow" have originally come from an Algonquian term
shaped like /wamusmuski/?  And might that term have been preserved outside
of the intercultural melange of CJ, perduring instead through
Indian-to-Indian transmission (an Algonquian Metis husband perhaps to his
local Indian wife, thence to their descendants)?

I realize this is a sketchy idea, and I'm simply looking for an insight into
the formation of a term as strange-looking (within Salish) as /wamusmuski/.

Who might have ideas about this?

Dav