Coho Falls (was origin of coho and chum)

[Alan H. Hartley]

> On a tangential note, while searching for "coho" online I ran across
> this page about the Cohoes Falls on the Mohawk River in New York
> http://www.infotech-maine.com/CohoesNY/abcohoes/falls.html , which
> includes this line:  "The Tribe mourned its loss and all Red Men
> marked this place, for a princess...daughter of a warrior, died
> there. All called the place Coho, the place of the Falling Canoe."
> I presume it's coincidental, as it's a long way from Salishan
> territory.

This is in Mahican territory and is a word/name occurring in many
variants in English (cohoes, coos, cowass, cohos, etc.) and meaning
'white-pine land'. It is common in Vermont and New Hampshire as well,
where its etymon is Abnaki goas 'white pine'. (Mahican and Abnaki are
both Eastern Algonquian languages.) And cf. the Coweset subdivision of
the Narragansett people in R.I., and Cohasset, Mass., which show the E.
Alg. locative suffix -Et [E = schwa].

The word has cognates elsewhere in Algonquian, e.g., in Ojibway, where
(with a suffix meaning 'evergreen tree') it means 'white spruce'.

Apparently because of its occurrence at the falls of the Mohawk, the
word also came to have the sense of 'waterfall' in English.

All of which is more than anyone on the Chinook list wanted to know!

Alan