Whiskey jack, the bird, and high muck

[David D. Robertson]

Klahowyam,

WARNING:  High muck.  The farther down you delve, the murkier this post may
become.  Hit DELETE now.

A cite from a vocabulary of Alaskan English recently stirred my interest.
The term in question is "whiskey jack", referring to the proverbially
bold "camp robber", the Canadian gray jay (Perisoreus canadensis).  Looks
like this has quite the etymological story behind it.  For those interested
in shifts of meaning as words enter English from indigenous North American
languages, here's a brief sketch.  My apologies for its crudity.

Original CREE dialectal form (according to the American Heritage
Dictionary):
"wiiskachaan" ~ "wiss-ka-tjon" ~ "wis-ka-chon"

===>  which was reinterpreted in ENGLISH as
"whiskey John"
                                    <=== somewhere in the top of this chart,
                                         we can fit in the alternate
                                         ENGLISH name of the bird,
                                         "whiskers" (perhaps < "whisker
                                         John/Jack"?)

===>  which could then be nicknamed in ENGLISH
"whiskey Jack"
                                    <===  which could've been influenced by
                                       "whiskey Jack", the trickster figure
                                    <===  "wesakechak"/"wesakaychak",
                                       which also comes from CREE

===>  and since this bird is often attracted to human activity, like that
of lumberjacks, who willingly or unwillingly shared their lunches with it :-
), an associative development was possible, into
"lumberjack".

Other synonyms for this bird are Canada jay, grey/gray jay, venison hawk,
grease bird, and meat bird.

It's said to have a call of "whee-ah, chuck-chuck", for which I know of no
plausible Chinook Jargon etymology.  That's a joke, incidentally.

Though I'm posting this for more or less recreational purposes, I could
point out that the processes that led to this bird being called "whiskey
jack" and "lumberjack" in English are not unlike those that have influenced
the course of Chinook Jargon "hiyu muckmuck" ===> "high muck((et)y)muck" in
Pacific NW English.  I mean that the Jargon term, which perhaps was coined
by non-indigenous people (but who knows?) may itself have been the semantic
equivalent of a folk etymology:  A way of explaining both *who*
gave "potlatches", and *why* (that person had "lots of food").  Whatever
its precise origin, the CJ term was certainly reanalyzed once it entered
regional English usage, and as a lifelong Northwesterner I've only heard it
said and written starting with "high", and usually ending with "muckymuck"
or sometimes "muckety-muck", both of which sound more English to my ears
than "muckmuck" does.  This reanalysis has become firmly enshrined in the
English usage, I feel, as widespread knowledge of Jargon recedes into the
past...

A final association:  Though the word "potlatch" is fairly widely known
still in NW English, probably less so in Oregon and Washington than in BC
and Alaska, it too has become ever less recognizably Jargon, if not
less "Indian".  Subjectively, this word also feels (in my native Washington
English) somewhat like a compound of "pot" and "latch", conveying a mental
image of someone controlling who gets food and who doesn't.  Maybe it's
just me who thinks that way, though.  If any other Northwesterners have
read all the way to this point in the message, I'd be keenly interested to
see your replies -- Do you also have a particular mental image that's
always come to mind when you hear either of these terms in our English?

Thanks for your indulgence.  Here are some websites with more information
on the whiskey jack:

http://www.bartleby.com/61/33/W0123300.html
http://www.pathcom.com/~wgbz/frameup.htm
http://www.bcadventure.com/adventure/wilderness/birds/greyjay.htm
http://www.cws-scf.ec.gc.ca/hww-fap/hww-fap.cfm?ID_species=15&lang=e
http://www.sifc.edu/Indian%20Studies/Publications/Videography/religion.htm
http://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/vol2/no23/bears.html

-- Dave