Saya (Athabaskan) people in California

[David Gene Lewis]

Check the list archive but i wrote several years ago about the use of
the word Aliqua-chick in Northern California, meaning Dentallium or
Money. Also I wrote about the fact that George Gibbs learned Chinook
Jargon at Astoria, then travellled to Sutters Mills (Sacramento) was
hired by the Indian Agent McKee to travel to the north and help
translate treaty negotiations with the Northern California Tribes in
1851. This Gibbs did, successfully. Gibbs also took down a Chinook
Jargon Vocabulary in Northern California from an Indian boy. The
manuscript is in the SWORP collection and was originally labeled
athabaskan. The first page is athabaskan but the rest is Jargon. This
is all from memory so some details may be slightly different, Search
the listserve archives for the several posts I made about this issue.
David

-------------------
> David Robertson wrote:
> 
> > John P. Harrington's 1943 article "Pacific Coast Athabaskan
discovered to 
> > be Chilcotin" [sic!] is in the J Wash Acad Sci 33(7):203-213.
> > 
> > In it he implies the Saya people (another name for the Nongatl in
NW 
> > California, related to the Hupa) got that name from Chinook
Jargon's word 
> > for "far off".
> > 
> > Anyone here know if that's true?
> 
> The Hdbk of N. Amer. Indians (8.203) says "Powers (1877:124) stated
that 
> Noan'-kakhl was a Wailaki name for the Sai-az (Nongatl) while
Merriam 
> (1923:276) asserts that the Wiyot gave him the word Si'-az as the
name 
> "for a Wilakke tribe in the Middle Eel River region". The Hupa used
the 
> term Saia (sa:ya:) for the Nongatl when speaking to Whites (Goddard 
> 1910:410); alternative spellings from nineteenth-century sources are

> Siaws, S-yars, Siahs, and Sians."
> 
> Alan
> 
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> 
David Lewis
University of Oregon
Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde

To respond to the CHINOOK list, click 'REPLY ALL'.  To respond privately to the sender of a message, click 'REPLY'.  Hayu masi!