Athapaskan & Chinook

[hzenk at PDX.EDU]

>   On all maps describing the ethnic situation before the European
> colonization, the direct neighbors of the Lower Chinook appear to be two
> Salishan tribes: Chehalis at N and Tillamook (the Nehalem group) at S, and
> two Athapaskan tribes: Kwalhiokwa at NE and Clatskanie at SE.
>   Chehalis has considerably influenced the Chinook Jargon. But I don't know
> about any single word of Athapaskan origin in CJ. Why this absence?

Curiously, Charles Cultee, Boas's source for both Lower Chinook and Kathlamet
Chinook (and hence, source of almost all that has been preserved on these now
dead languages), was part Kwalhiokwa Athapaskan:  according to Boas, Cultee's
FaMo was Clatsop, his FaFa an upper Willapa River Athapaskan; while his MoMo
was Kathlamet and his MoFa "Willapa" (but in this case evidently a Lower
Chinook from lower Willapa River).  According to Michael Krauss's sketch
"Kwalhioqua and Clatskanie" (Handbook of N American Inds vol. 7), one of
Cultee's myths in Kathlamet Texts (Boas 1901) is actually Kwalhioqua (albeit
told in Kathlamet): "The TkulXiyogoaikc" (the name is a Chinookan form for
"Kwalhioqua"), p. 187.  It's difficult to say much about these groups now,
since they were evidently small and had pretty much disappeared by the time
anthropologists and linguists arrived on the scene.  One gets the impression
that although they cemented relations with neighboring groups by marrying into
them, they remained a people of basically interior (vs. coastal/riverine) type,
and were peripheral to the Lower Columbia social networks within which Chinuk
Wawa developed.  Not unlike the Molalas farther east, perhaps (hunting bands of
the Oregon Cascades who intermarried with Columbia River Chinookans, but
apparently contributed next to nothing to Chinuk Wawa--not counting borrowings
from CW INTO Molala).

>   Furthermore, among the CJ words of Salishan origin, none is from Tillamook.
> Again, why?
>

That may not be quite true, though it does indeed appear that Tillamook has
contributed precious little.  I'm just now working on a report for the
Thompsons on Chinuk Wawa and Tillamook, so should have more to say about this
later.  Henry

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