Gwydir at Colville Reservation on CJ

[Dave Robertson]

As mentioned in Tina Wynecoop's message a couple days ago.  Gwydir uses some idiosyncratic spellings; maybe he essentially learned CJ 'on the ground' rather than from books.  His ability to quote speech in Jargon from memory tends to support this conjecture, wikna? -- Dave
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page 44-45:  “When [Colville Chief Tonasket] found a Chinaman on any of his ground or along the river bars, he would go up and catch him by the top of his head, and give him a kick and say ‘klatawa yyack’ (travel quick), which injunction the Chinaman would always obey and make tracks out of the country.”

page  51:  “Among the whites [Chief Spokane Garry] was considered kul-tus, which means of no account.”  [This conflicts with many Whites’ recorded views of  Garry!]  “I never met his knoochman (wife), but his daughter, Nellie, lived in Spokane for a number of years and is now on the Coeur d’Alene reservation.”

pages 56-57:  “In the year 1887, being the Indian Agent for the Colville Indians, I was visiting the different bands of Indians inhabiting the reservation, when I came across the ‘He He Stone,’ and its tradition told to me by my interpreter, Bob Flett, a halfbreed Colville Indians [sic].  The story as told me by him was corroborated by Chief Tonasket, head chief of the Colville Indians.
     “’That is the He He’ said my interpreter, pointing to a stone that stood about six feet above the ground.  It was covered with a miscellaneous assortment of pieces of buckskin cloth, empty cartridge shells, tin cans, matches and broken knife blades.  My interpreter placed a broken pipe on the stone, and each of the Indians with him deposited something.  On my inquiring as to the cause of their actions he said that it has always been the custom for the Indians passing the stone to deposit something, taking away anything on the stone they wanted.
     “One of my Indians said to me, as I dismounted to examine the strange object more closely:  ‘Spase mika potlach He He ten-as tobacco.  He He is kum hyre suiake P. He He Kimtux Mika hy-as Kloshe tillicum Kapa He He,” which in English would be:  ‘If you give a little tobacco to He He she will have a good smoke, and know you are a good friend to her.’”  [I think we might want to read 'hyre suiake' as 'hyas smoke' or 'hyue smoke', probably hard to read in his handwritten journal, especially for an editor who may not know CJ.]

--
"Asking a linguist how many languages she knows is like asking a doctor how many diseases he has!" -- anonymous



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