Reyes, Lawney L. "White Grizzly Bear's Legacy" and Chemawa

[David D. Robertson]

Seattle:  University of Washington, 2002.

A good read of a memoir by Reyes, a distinguished artist whose mother was
Sin-Aikst ("Lakes" Salish people of the modern Colville Reservation) and
father Filipino.

Without ever explicitly mentioning Chinook Jargon, the author repeats a bit
of folklore that I suspect couldn't exist without CJ.  On page 118, Reyes
discusses the meaning of "Chemawa", where the residential Indian school is
located in NW Oregon, and says the name

     'came from the Calapooia Tribe [and] originally meant "desolate", but
     the name later came to mean "happy home".'

Chemawa has been discussed on CHINOOK before (check the archives online),
and as the memory seems to me, there's been a notion bandied about for many
years that the name was a version of "chee wawa", "new [way of] talk[ing]"
in Jargon.  From a scientific standpoint, that theory is shaky at best,
since the supposed naming of the school in Jargon, and the mistaken
pronunciation of "wawa" as "mawa", would have occurred in the mid-1800's.
The school has had the same name since its founding, and in the middle 19th
century Chinook Jargon was at its most widely known, particularly in
Oregon; "mawa" is not a likely error, except perhaps if it were due to
typesetters' error in the preparation of printed materials relating to the
region.

The name probably is Calapooia (some K'alapuyan language), as others on
this list can verify more easily than I can.  The claimed semantic shift
from "desolate" to "happy home" also sounds like fanciful folk linguistics,
but equally surprising things have probably happened in every language
that's ever existed.  The actual etymology and meaning of "Chemawa" can be
determined by someone with the proper knowledge, but it seems safe to say
it's not a Chinook Wawa word.