More on "camas" (fwd)

[Dave Robertson]

Lush pulakli, kanawi-Laksta,

[Here's a forwarded message from Scott Byram.  The best address for posting right to the CHINOOK list is <chinook at listserv.linguistlist.org>, but I'll always be glad to help with things like this! -- Dave]

 rsbyram at darkwing.uoregon.edu
To:   TuktiWawa at NETSCAPE.NET

Dave-

I'm not sure how to post my correspondence to the listserv, but I just sent
this note to Alan.  Would you  mind forwarding it to the others?  I'd be
interested in their comments.

Thanks,
Scott Byram



Alan-

Thanks for sending the text of your article.  I find your argument for a Nez
Perce origin for "camas" convincing, much more so than Gibbs' attribution to
Nootka.

However, I wonder about the suggestion that the word made it into CJ via Lewis
and Clark's crew and the French-speaking traders who came later.  There's
plenty of evidence that camas/quamash/quawnoose were widespread variants of a
word for an important Northwest trade item that was most abundant on the
Plateau and in the valleys near the lower Columbia, but traded to the north
and west.  Couldn't these reflect a precontact CJ or some sort of CJ
antecendent?

There are several other trade-related words that seem to have been widespread
in the Northwest at the time of earliest Euro contact - wapato, sapollel,
clamon (hide armor), other hide-related words, !kaynul (tobacco), the money
and metal related words. Many of these words, like camas, ended up in CJ.  But
should these be considered the antecedents of CJ, or simply widespread words
for trade goods?

--Scott

Scott Byram
Eugene, Oregon
--
"Asking a linguist how many languages she knows is like asking a doctor how many diseases he has!" -- anonymous



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