"Cultus" in de Laguna 1991

[David D. Robertson]

In Frederica de Laguna's superb redaction of George Thornton Emmons' "The
Tlingit Indians", published in 1991 by the University of Washington Press,
Seattle, she explains a note by Emmons that the Raven moiety/phratry is
generally known by either of two names, one of which he spells <Thlar-a-de-
nar>.

De Laguna says, "In a notebook...Emmons wrote:  'Thlar-ho-na tee meaning
of? a cultus [secret?] term means place from which water comes
(privates).'  The feminine form L~ay.i-s^a: was explained at Yakutat
as 'sitting down (Raven) ladies,' evidently meaning 'urinating Raven
women'...."

Without questioning the "urination" etymology, I'd like to point out that
de Laguna here misses Emmons' intent in using the word <cultus>, by which
he seems to mean the Chinook Jargon sense "worthless" or "improper".
(Compare <cultus-wawa>, "talk nonsense", "slander" or "use foul
language".)  Her reading of the word as Latin is by coincidence marvelously
near the correct sense, though, in that both foul language and ritually
secret language substitute a code term for another more prosaic one.

Note, tangentially, that my 3-volume Webster's 3rd New International
dictionary of English has only the Latinate sense for the word spelled
<cultus>, but has separate entries for <cultus cod> (lingcod, < Chinook
Jargon> and for <cultus image> or <cultus statue> (an image that is a
direct object of worship, < Latin).  The latter phrase, seen as a pun, may
have entertained a few of the hypereducated Jesuit and Oblate missionaries
in the Northwest!

Spose wake nika cultus-wawa!

--Dave