Tatoosh Island = a Makah man's name?

[Mike Cleven]

Dave Robertson wrote:
>
> Do I understand right that there was a Makah headman by the name of Tatoosh, and that that island is so called after him and his family?
>
> Somewhere along the line I've gotten the impression that the name has nothing to do with Chinuk-Wawa.

It's worth considering that a Chinook name may have simply been used for
the Makah chief, or he may have gone by it for some reason of
association or earning.  A Makah headman would have had a panoply of
titles like Nootkan and Kwakwalan chiefs, wouldn't he?  Names were
earned, conferred, bought and otherwise acquired and added; and of
course there'd be the day-by-day name that he commonly went by, or was
referred to as for one reason or another, which is possibly the case
with Tatoosh.  If this were of Makah etymology, surely that would have
been apparent by now.........perhaps it's a short form of a Chinookan
title or appellation that makes more sense for a chief; certainly
fecundity and wealth are inferred by the image of the milk-bearing
mammary glands (to get anthropological about it).

Tatoosh is always translated "breast, mammaries" but I'm wondering if
there's a male equivalent, or if this might have been used for a
barrel-chested man, perhaps styled "Hyas Tatoosh" (big chested) or
"Skookum Tatoosh" (strong chested); maybe there's an inference of
"great-hearted", especially in the latter, something like 'skookum
tumtum'.  Yahkwatin is certainly belly, or the whole torso; perhaps
"tatoosh" might carry the concept of prosperity or wealth in such a
frame of reference also (like high muckamuck - one who gives out food).
If tatoosh is only ever female, then my guess is wrong, but it was worth
a stab, I thought.

My apologies to any Makah present for conjecturing about their history
and chieftaincies if I have caused any offence or made error; but was
there a Makah name for this chief that the tribe still knows.  And am I
right about titles once having been complicated matters of ceremony and
politics.  I know Maquinna and Callicum and Wickaninnish all had long,
complex full titles; these names that history knows them by are only
part of much grander chiefly grandeurs.  I don't know if
Nuu-chah-nulthan potlatch name-making got as overwrought as it did over
in Kwakwalan territory (from reading "Chiefly Feasts: the Enduring
Kwakiutl Potlatch) but even if it was only partly as elaborate, chances
are "Tatoosh", like his neighbours Maquinna et al, had a more ornate
name, and this is simply the one by which he was known to the non-Makah
world, or at least was recorded only as such by non-native historians.
Do today's chiefs, hereditary or otherwise, still carry full traditional
titles BTW?  Is there any oral record of chiefly successions, as there
is in Gitksan country?

Breast-formations are often attributed to suitable parts of the
landscape; there is a conical peak high above Tsalalh in St'at'imc
country called in English "the teat" and which carries the same
reference in St'at'imcets.  Looking north from the slope above Gold
Bridge, where the road switchbacks up towards Bralorne, there's a far
peak in between the Dickson Range on the left and the Eldorados on the
right that has two small points atop a steep pyramidal cone; "Sheba's
Teats" is the actual name of the peak but IIRC govt maps show it as "Mt
Sheba".  The Lions, above Vancouver, have female associations of course
but AFAIK in this case they're a pair of sisters; I think Terry probably
knows a few around Vancouver Island and Upcoast.  I'm sure there are
scores of other such examples of tatooshage around the whole continent;
wootlat references are a bit rarer, although they do occur when suitable
landforms present themselves, so to speak; I've got a picture of a
c1000' marble column in Marble Canyon near Pavilion that was supposed to
be Coyote's very own......(g-rated, as best I could).

MC