"sewellel" redux; "Cenaqua"

[Alan H. Hartley]

Dave Robertson wrote:

> A little more about "sewellel", also known as the "mountain beaver":  In the Hilbert-Hess-Bates Lushootseed Salish dictionary (University of Washington Press, 1994), we find indexed under "beaver" (not under "mountain" or any other main entry) the forms /shaw7kwL/, /shaw7L/, /shEw7L/.  Note that I've adapted the spellings to an email version of current Grand Ronde CJ writing.

The main entry (i.e., that in the Lush.-Eng. part) is shaw'kL, which is
glossed 'mountain beaver'. The word should probably have been indexed
under MOUNTAIN as well as BEAVER in the Eng.-Lush. part.

The w' represents a pharyngealized w, so the apostrophe should not be
taken as a glottal stop (which I take the 7 in Dave's transcription to
mean).

Yes, shEw'L is a good match with Lewis' sewelel (1806) which was
presumably current in CJ near the mouth of the Columbia. According to
Gary Moulton's note in VI.355 of the _Jrnls. of the Lewis & Clark
Exped._, the word refers to a robe made of the animal's skins rather
than to the animal itself, though this doesn't accord with the gloss as
the animal in the Lush. Dict. Anyway, we still don't know where the word
originated. No Lush. etymology pops out of nearby entries in the Dict.,
though that doesn't prove anything. The existence of 3 variants might
suggest the Lush. word is a borrowing.

Alan