Cayoosh/Cayuse/Kiyoose again.....

[Mike Cleven]

I'm reposting this idea from long ago, hoping that Terry or another BCer
or someone from Interior Washington (Hi Dave) might provide the
etymology and to what degree this word is Jargon, or what it is.  As the
Cayoosh spelling it stands in BC as the name of a prominent (and lately
much-disputed) mountain range running from Lil'wat (Mt. Currie) to
Lillooet, as well as the name of the stream forming that range's
southern boundary (well, from Duffey Lake downstream, anyway) and in
local parlance the name of the basin/country the stream forms - i.e. "up
in the Cayoosh".  Older maps show the stream as "Cayoose Creek" and this
is similar to what AFAIK is also the DIA name for the Cayuse Creek
Indian Band, who have chosen the more Native-looking Kiy-oose spelling
for their new HQ.  And it is, of course, under the spelling "cayuse" the
appellation for a particular variety of mountain pony favoured in the BC
plateaux.  It seems that the word must have come to BC with American
goldminers (?) and there seems to be some connection to the Cayuse War,
if not the Cayuse Nation.  I'm wondering if Terry or another someone
might have some idea as to the provenance of the Cayuse mountain pony
(actually most Cayuse today are quarterhorses or other blends with some
Cayuse in them) and how the range actually got its name; it wasn't A.C.
Anderson, was it, who named the range?  And if so, why?

Irene Edwards, one of the only local historians in print, attributes
"cayoosh" to be a Jargon word.  This has turned out to be "not" the
case, at least in "official" Jargonology where "kiuatan" is what there
is.  I've never been able (so far) to pin down aural and oral records of
Canyon Jargon, so I don't really know if this word was used for "horse"
locally, or whether it was always in specific reference to the
particular line of horseflesh; another take on it is that the Range and
Creek (and therefore the Indian Band) may have been named after the
original name for Lillooet (Cayoosh), which was eventually found
distasteful by town residents and the name "Lillooet" adopted..........

Does this word look Salishan, i.e. Cayuse/Central Washington - or could
it be even ultramontane?

MC