Neweetie...was...RE: Re: Jones,Robert F. (ed.) =?iso-8859-1?Q?=C3=A2=C2=80=C2=9CAnnalsofAstoria?=" ( 1stmsg)

[Mike Cleven]

Dave Robertson wrote:
>
> Thank you, Alan,
>
> And thanks to any of you with more Algonquian than I can muster.  As to the second point in your message, I note on page 28, footnote 65 in Jones' edition the following:  "Neweetie was a village located on Templar Channel of Clayoquot Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island; see Ross Cox, 'The Columbia River'...Thus, 'Neweetians' means the Nootka Indians who lived there; these were the Indians who attacked the _Tonquin_..."

Somewhere I've seen the name Nahwittie over that way somewhere.
There've been lots of various spellings of many local native words
everywhere in BC; Clayoquot/Tla-o-quiaht; Nitinat/Ditidaht etc. to name
a couple of Nuu-chah-nulth examples, Yuculta/Euclataws/Legwildok to name
a Kwakwala one; I've got to have seen seven ways of spelling
Kwakiutl/Kwagyuilh and a dozen of Nlaka'pamux over the years.

Something I've always quietly wondered is whether there was any more
distinction between the Makah and who are now associated together as
Nuu-chah-nulth than there is between the respective Nuu-chah-nulth
domains of each of the Island's nations; AFAIK the various Mowachaht,
Muchahlat, Tlo-o-quiaht, Ditidaht and others were never a single unit,
but rival domains; where the Makah equal members/rivals in this
community or were they further distinct from the Vancouver Island groups
than they were from each other?
>
> Whether Kwakiutl or Nootkan, the 'Neweetians' and Chinookans apparently made some highly impressive voyages to trade with one another, if the record in "Annals of Astoria" is to be relied on.

I've gotten the impression, somehow, that the Chehalis played an
important part in the formation of the Jargon because of the portage
route via their territory from Puget Sound, as much as to their close
relations with the Chinookans to their south.  Yet this doesn't seem a
likely route for Nootkan (short for Nuu-chah-nulth) to travel to the
Columbia; the Nootkans especially were seagoing people used to the high
oceans, like the Haida, so perhaps the trip down the Olympic Peninsula
coastline wasn't as arduous as it might seem to us; after all, they
regularly navigated the waters of the western shores of Vancouver
Island, the formal and one and only "Graveyard of the Pacific", so many
whitemen's wrecks litter its broken, storm-hewn shores; the trip to the
Columbia was equivalent to a run from Kyuquot down to Ditidaht, or
around Cape Scott to their Kwakwala-speaking cousins; Cape Scott seems
to me much worse of a navigational terror than anything from Cape
Flattery southwards.

MC

> -- Dave
>
> "Alan H. Hartley" <ahartley at D.UMN.EDU> wrote:
>
> >> Page 27:  <Hyquo(y)as> and other spellings:  “…a…nation called the Culewits
> >> [Quileutes] …kill a great many Beaver & dispose of them…to the Neweetians
> >> [Nootkans] for Hyquoyas, etc.”
> >
> >The Nuwitti are a subdivision of the Kwakiutl residing on northwestern
> >Vancouver Island.
> >
> --
> "Asking a linguist how many languages she knows is like asking a doctor how many diseases he has!" -- anonymous
>
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