'Stick Indians' (was...RE: Re: The Stick Samish)

[Dave Robertson]

Hello,

Not that the Oxford English Dictionary will necessarily be interested in recording every nuance of every dialect of the language, but here's a further twist in the discussion.

'Stick Indians' would appear to be a current term in the English spoken by some Interior Indians, for example near Spokane, Washington.  The sense can be, I think, either 'quasi-mythical unacculturated tribes of Indians who live in the remaining wilderness areas', or else something verging on 'sasquatch'.  In the latter sense, the Spokane Salishan translation as I recall it is /sc'w'en'eyti/.

The sense 'Indians of the Interior', and the specificity of usage by coastal tribes, is unfamiliar to me.  Is the phrase still in use in that context?

It isn't hard to imagine CJ /stik sawash/ having spread from coastal to interior usage, mutating its sense as geographic and social surroundings shifted.  Once you're in the Interior, you might find no 'Other' groups who are much more geographically isolated than your own, and the term 'Stick Indians' could then shift toward a legendary sense.

(Note:  Isn't it in Melville Jacobs' "Chinook Jargon Texts" that one northwestern Indian narrator uses the term /stik injEn/?)

Dave

"Alan H. Hartley" <ahartley at D.UMN.EDU> wrote:

>> And although we haven't _proven_ that the regional English term "the
>> sticks" comes from the Chinook Jargon usage(s) of "stick", it _does_
>> seem pretty likely given the penetration of Jargonisms into English as a
>> whole.  (In fact, I'm not sure that "the sticks" is only regional
>> English, and not general English......Alan?)
>
>According to the OED, "the sticks" is a surprisingly recent expression.
>Here's the definition with the 3 earliest cites:
>
>THE STICKS: a remote, thinly populated, rural area; the backwoods;
>hence, in extended (freq. depreciatory) use, any area that is off the
>beaten track or thought to be provincial or unsophisticated; esp. in
>phr. in the sticks. orig. U.S.
>   1905 N. Davis Northerner 78 Billy is a cane-brake nigger; he'll take
>to the sticks like a duck to water when he's scared.  1914 R. Lardner in
>Sat. Even. Post 7 Mar. 8/1, I will have to slip you back to the sticks
>[i.e. the minor baseball leagues].  1921 Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.)
>22 Oct. 11/3 Judge Landis..has not yet consigned Babe Ruth to oblivion
>for+playing in the sticks for exhibition money.
>
>And the other entry of interest:
>
>STICK INDIAN: Canad. colloq., a member of the North American Indian
>peoples inhabiting the forests of British Columbia and the Yukon
>[properly a loan transl. of Chinook Jargon stick siwash forest Indian, a
>term used by the Coast Indians for those of the interior in this area.]
>   [1869 L. Smith Let. 30 Oct. in Rep. Indian Affairs 1969 (U.S.) (1870)
>567 Twice a year most of the Indians make a trip up the Stikine River to
>Talyan, at which place the Stick tribe reside.]  1885 F. Schwatka Rep.
>Mil. Reconn. Alaska 1883 76 The so-called ‘Stick’ Indians of the
>interior are seen in the villages near the trading stores.  1887 G. M.
>Dawson Notes on Indian Tribes of Yukon 14 They are classed with the
>‘Stick Indians’, by the coast tribes.  1963 R. Symons Many Trails vii.
>72 Snowshoes are known only as a strange accoutrement of the ‘Stick
>Indians’.
>
>And my small contribution:
>
>1889 G. DAWSON Indian Tribes Yukon in Ann. Rep. Geol. Survey Canada
>1887-1888 n.s. 3 (B), Pt. 1, 192B
>The interior Indians are collectively known on the coast as "Stick
>Indians"..this name is also applied to the Tagish
>note: to replace OED quot. 1887 which is misquoted
>
>Alan
>
--
"Asking a linguist how many languages she knows is like asking a doctor how many diseases he has!" -- anonymous



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