Towees

[Alan H. Hartley]

"janilta at j.email.ne.jp" wrote:

> My (excellent) 'lexique du tahitien contemporain' by Yves Lemaitre, has
> indeed :
> 'to'i : hache; autrefois herminette'
> (ie axe, formerly adze).
> And my 'illustrated Hawaiian dictionary' also has :
> 'axe : ko'i (also means adze)'.

As to the Polynesian variation /t/ ~ /k/, I just ran a cross a couple of
interesting examples in _Fur Traders from New England_ (Busch & Gough,
eds., 1997), both ca. 1812:

p. 75 Tamaahmaah (known to us as King Kamehameha)
p. 77 Atovi, Atooi, Atoui (variants of Kauai)

Also, ship's logs cited in the same book show that crews of Kodiak
Islanders were commonly engaged on Russian ships to hunt seals and sea
otter along the American coast, at least as far as California. And not
only Russian vessels: the Boston ship O'Cain (1805-8) carried about 150
Kodiak hunters and their 70-80 canoes.

Alan