Chinook Wawa pe Alaska Boston Wawa

[Henry Kammler]

Dave kindly reminded me of a message of mine that had bounced back
(May 25th). So here I go again. Please ignore it if it turns out to
have been delivered for some mysterious reason previously.

Cheers.

(original msg. follows)
*****************************


LaXayEm kanawi-Laqsta,

another *brash* msg. from Henry

> ?-hoochinoo, hooch

This is probably Tlingit. It refers to the Hutsnuwu (xucnu:wu) people
of
Angoon. They were the first ones to set up a distillery and for a
while all
the locally produced booze poured out of the Hutsnuwu community, hence
"hooch(inoo)".

> Exceptions to the latter rule prove it, I feel.  For example, among some
> Indian groups (interestingly including Athapaskans, it seems to me) in
> Alaska, there were traditions equivalent to the "potlatch" common farther
> south on the Pacific Coast.  Thus that term was used in Alaska as well,
> and in fact extended for specific local usage e.g. among the Athapaskans
> where the "stuff potlatch" (giving away of gifts proper) became
> distinguished in regional English from the "food potlatch" (distribution
> of quantities of food).

This is interesting because it also reflects ethnolinguistic reality.
Probably
all NWC languages distinguished "feast" and "potlatch". Only the
latter served
as a channel of transmission of hereditary rights/titles and
accompanying
wealth. While the Whites put both events under the generic term
"potlatch",
from the native point of view these gatherings fell into quite
different
categories, though both shared the feature of giving away great
quantities of
food. Interior nations as the Ahtna, Tahltan and Wetsuwet'en came to
be
involved into the potlatch system and thus probably also developed the
two
categories of give-away gatherings.
Sorry if I stated the obvious...


> Furthermore, I suspect that use of Chinook Jargon was never even attempted
> by whites for communication with Aleut and Inuit people.  Guidebooks of
> the time of the American and Canadian influx to Alaska routinely propose
> the Jargon for use with "Indians", as an "Indian" language.  It seems to
> have been implicitly understood that these other two groups were not
> Indians.

This is what keeps puzzling me. The somewhat arbitrary distinction
between
Eskimo/Inuit/Yuit and "Indians" seems to have a very long tradition.
As if the
Saami ("Lapps") where not Europeans...

Lush San,

Henry K.