Lewis & Clark article in Names

[David Robertson]

The newest issue of Names: A Journal of Onomastics has just one article, by
William Bright, and it's "A Glossary of Native American Toponyms and
Ethnonyms from the Lewis and Clark Journals".  This will probably interest
a number of you who subscribe to the CHINOOK list.

One of the names in the article is <Lar-ti-e-lo> for the Spokane Indians.
Bright says "no etymology is known".  I've wondered in the past, and still
am curious, whether there's a connection between the name Lar-ti-e-lo and
the Nez Perce name of Latah (Hangman) Creek, which runs through quite a bit
of Spokane territory and empties into the Spokane River.  (Latah is often
said to be Nez Perce for 'jumping fish'.  That <-e-lo> bit has a certain
resemblance to the way people have sometimes written the Salish{!} lexical
suffix meaning 'place'.)

A number of other questions could be asked, inspired by Bright's article.
Certain names are attributed to Chinook Jargon, like <Wappato>, without
reference to the aboriginal languages they ultimately come from; would it
be more appropriate to call Wappato a CJ term (at Lewis & Clark's time) or
to say it's from a tribal language?

At any rate, the article is great reading for the student of names.  It's
also interesting in the light of language contact, for example in compiling
lots of terms that came to Lewis & Clark via French, sometimes resulting in
pidgin-looking items like <Zottoa> as an alternate name of the Oto Indians
(from French, les Otos).

--Dave R.

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