Mountain Beaver & Jargon & Chehalis & ... ?

[Mike Cleven]

"Alan H. Hartley" wrote:
>
> Bates, Hess & Hilbert's _Lushootseed Dictionary_ (1994) (Puget Sound
> Salish) has:
>
> s^áw'kwL [s-hacek, a-acute, laryngealized w, labialized k, barred ell]
> 'mountain beaver'; also recorded as s^aw'L and s^Ew'L [E = schwa]

What I'm really not figuring out here is why the term "mountain beaver";
don't y'all Yankees and Hiyu Bostons have the word "muskrat" in your
vocabulary or am I missing something here?  It would strike me as odd
that HBC posts south of what became the 49th would ever confuse real
beaver with muskrat; sure they both have smelly tails but the fur
quality's quite a bit different IIRC.  What I mean here is you'd think
that fur-bearing animal terms would relate more either to HBC usage or
to the local argot (eena and nenamooks etc.); where the heck did
'mountain beaver' come from?  East of the Rockies, or is it a NW
invention?

MC