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

[Mike Cleven]

"David D. Robertson" wrote:
>
> 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.

I don't think so.  I seem to recall somewhere evidence that suggested
that the word was in the region before the HBC fur trade penetrated
here; and that it came meaning "buffalo" as much as "cattle", with or
without the "hyas" on the lexicons' customary "hyas moosmoos" for
buffalo.  And that there was no mistaking the word for "moose", which of
course is of Algonkian origin (Cree, actually) but perhaps not of the
same pedigree; moosmoos might have reached the Jargon from
native-to-native contact, or if by the Metis then with them as
intermediaries, but the geographic relay must have been somewhere back
in the area of the Continental Divide at least; but such an intermediary
role could have been played by any number of groups in between the
Algonkian world and the Jargon's.  One take on "moosmoos" is that it's
onomatopaeic, but that seems a stretch; or why not "moomoo"?  I'm not
sure what the slang for "cattle" and "cow" is in Metis French, or in
Mitchif, but it strikes me that if the Metis were to have been the
agents of a word for such beasties into the Jargon, you'd think it would
be French, like words for horsemanship and trade goods; but it seems to
have been around before they got to the region.  I think this premise
had something to do with its early provenance; perhaps it's in the Lewis
& Clark journals or some other very early source.
>
> 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)?

Many Metis were of Cree and Ojibway and Assiniboine ancestry (I'm not
sure if the Assiniboine are Algonkian or not; the Ojibway are, aren't
they?); and some of these might have travelled "as natives" rather than
"as HBC employees", i.e. the latter being "official contact", the
previous being "personal adventurte".  But such a traveller need not
have been Metis, albeit he could have been.  But like I said, if I'm not
mistaken the word was in the Northwest before imported four-footed
grazers were introduced......somehow at least the tribes of the mid to
upper Columbia might have known of buffalo, long before dairy cattle
were brought to Fts. Nisqually, Vancouver, Camosun and Langley.


>
> 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?

Hopefully Terry G, who always seems to come up with something
interesting when posed with such obscurities.

MC