"potlatch" in English (another fwd)

[David D. Robertson]

Date:         Fri, 7 Jun 2002 14:25:29 -0400
Reply-To:     American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
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From:         Wendalyn Nichols <wendalyn at NYC.RR.COM>
Subject:      potlatch (was Re: dubious usages}
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Potlatches were (and in the odd case, still are) a custom of northwest
coastal tribes, stretching from Puget Sound and the Kitsap Peninsula all
the way up the coast of British Columbia to the entire Gulf Coast of lower
Alaska, including areas where both Juneau and Anchorage are today. The
Tlingit nation in particular had a huge geographic range and many
sub-tribes. Tribes would come from many miles inland to gigantic
potlatches, but there were also many smaller (relatively speaking, anyway)
local potlatches. Puget Sound actually lies toward the southern end of the
geographic range of the tribes that shared the potlatch culture, with the
Columbia River marking the more-or-less official furthest southern
boundary. Totem poles with clan histories were raised at potlatches, and
these meetings were so significant that the government saw them as a threat
and banned them.

--Wendalyn Nichols, northwest born and bred

At 08:53 AM 6/7/02 -0400, James A. Landau wrote:
>Already this morning I have encountered:
>
>1.  at a construction area the highway people posted signs showing how to
>get to businesses whose normal access to the main roads had been blocked
>off by the construction.  One such sign read "DINER".  If you follow it,
>you will find yourself at a McDonald's.
>
>2.  a porno spam message in my e-mailbox entitled "Napster of Porn !!!"
>
>Also some notes to Barry Popik:  I'm not sure but I think the "Potlatch"
>was a custom of American Indians in the Columbia River/Puget Sound area,
>not Alaska.
>
>As for "city Arab", that apparently was a well-known usage in England well
>before 1903---Conan Doyle in his Sherlock Holmes stories was found of
>referring to "street Arabs"
>
>in my experience, a pancake/hotcake/griddlecake is a "flapjack" ONLY if it
>gets turned by being tossed well up into the air
>
>"Emperor Norton" was a well-documented San Francisco character.  I have
>never seen him described as "half-witted"; from most descriptions he was
>an intelligent and well-educated man who had what was then probably called
>"dementia", his idee fixe being that he was the Emperor of
>something.  "blackmail" is an unlikely term in this context, especially
>considering the word "amused" in the same line.  "Levying taxes" is a
>plausible emendation.
>
>A "biled shirt" should be a starched shirt ("boiled shirt", as it is
>boiled in starch) rather than simply a white shirt.  I am told that
>"stuffed shirt" meaning a pompous man is a reference to the idea that men
>who went to the trouble of wearing "stuffed" or starched shirts were
>necessarily putting on airs.
>
>        - Jim Landau