"Clark, how are you?": Seeking sources to help in research on Paul Kane [fwd]

[Dave Robertson]

[Dave R. prefaces this forward:  I defer to whomever can find the answer to this question more quickly.  We're still unpacking and organizing my files.  Your answer can go to the list, if you like, or privately through Henry or me, who'll be glad to forward it to Ian.  Thanks!]


From:    zenk at uswestmail.net

Dave,

I had an interesting conversation with this fellow this
AM.  He's researching the Paul Kane travel narrative
that I'm familiar with as the OHS publication subtitled
The Columia Wanderer.  According to him, it wasn't
written by Paul Kane (or at least, not in the form in
which it was published; this however is commonplace for
these mid-19th c. travel narratives).

Anyway, he's trying to track down the sources and dates
of the narrative as published.  A clue might be
provided by the hoary old "etymology" of "Clahowya"
from "Clark! How are ya!" (this actually appears in
this narrative, which I believe was published 1853).
Do you or anyone else on the list perchance have other
references for this quaint bit of folk etymology?

(By the way, I wrote back to Ian correcting the garbled
info on phonetics of the word LaXayam, for which I was
source in a phone conversation with him.)

Wel, aLqi ntsa wawa.  Henry


------- Start of forwarded message -------

Subject: Clark, How are you?
From: MacLaren <ian.maclaren at ualberta.ca>
Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 12:03:14 -0600
To: Henry Zenk <zenk at uswestmail.net>

Thanks very much for speaking to me this morning,
Henry.  I would be
grateful to you for an address of the Chinook
listserve, to which I can send
my question regarding antecedents to Kane's book (1859)
of the folk
etymology of  what, according to the article that was
published under his
name first in 1853, and then, subsequently, his book,
was the salutation,
"Clark, how are you?"

The note that I have drafted about the expression so
far reads as follows:
The passage in the book centres on "Clak-hoh-ah-yah,
originating, as I
believe,² the book states, ³in their having heard in
the early days of the
fur trade, a gentleman named Clark frequently addressed
by his friends,
'Clark, how are you?' This salutation is now applied to
every white man,
their own language affording no appropriate expression"
(first edition,
183).  In his own writings (fieldnotes and portrait and
landscape logs),
Kane makes no claim to have mastered Chinook Jargon.
He probably would have
known that the man referred to in his book as Clark was
not a fur trader but
the USAmerican explorer, William Clark.  But Kane's
writings make no mention
of this matter; it first appears in the four-volume
draft manuscript of
*Wanderings of an Artist*, where the spelling is given
as "Clach hah ahye."
The three versions of the article, "The Chinook
Indians," include this
derivation but use slightly different spellings: "Clah
hoh ah yah" ([1855]
274; [1857] 14); and "Cha hoh ah yah" ([1855 Rpt] 7
Aug. [1]).  Botanist
David Douglas, for whom the Douglas Fir is named,
recorded his being hailed
in 1825 by the salutation, clachouie, which he
understood as meaning
"friend" (Wilks and Hutchinson, eds. 138), but he did
not make the
association that the draft manuscript, the article, and
*Wanderings of an
Artist* make with the English salutation, "Clark, how
are you?"  No earlier
instance of this definition of the expression in
Chinook Jargon has yet come
to light, but it is bound to exist in one or another of
the many volumes
published about the Oregon Territory before the draft
manuscript was
completed, probably in or around 1853.

I will digest your description of the original Indian
word, meaning "poor,"
and of the phrase's probable derivation from it,
including its replacement
of the back-uvular (?) lateral fricative with the hard
C and K of "Clark."
I am out of my depth in doing so, but am grateful to
you for heading me in
the right direction.
Sincerely
Ian


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