shanti man <=> Sunday man

[David Robertson]

One of the ranks or offices in the system that the Catholic Oblate 
missionaries devised to control local government in the Native communities 
they served was (in Chinook Jargon) "shanti man".

Literally that's the "song man".

This person was a prayer and hymn leader.

The Jargon term is probably a translation of "cantor" or French "chanteur".

That may be why Duane Thomson (1990) refers to these people as "chanters".

Fiske and Patrick (2000:151), though, call them "Sunday men" among the 
Babines or Northern Carriers.  Jan van Eijk's Lillooet grammar also uses 
this translation.  

The shanti man's association with the church led people to reanalyze the 
Jargon term in English.  This could only have happened in conditions where 
Jargon was no longer widely used, and English was just coming into general 
use in the community.  

More reanalysis may have happened in Babine country.  Fiske and Patrick 
seem to say that the "bell ringer" (< Chinook Jargon "tintin man") was the 
same position and same person as the shanti man.  

Only in an extreme situation would that be true, I suggest.  Existing lists 
in CJ shorthand show that separate people were bell ringers, shanti man, 
watchmen, etc.  But in a community where Native people were in many ways 
resistant to the church, as we know Babines were, there might have been so 
few volunteers that a single person might have had to fill two or more 
positions.  

I can't conclusively say this was the case.  But it's intriguing that in 
the more southerly communities where Oblate influence was stronger and 
arguably more welcomed (Shuswap territory in particular), these CJ words 
lived on in local Salish languages and even English with their original 
meanings still understood.  

More data to test this idea might come from Chilcotin country, between the 
Salish and the Babines.  Not that there's much linguistic information on 
Chilcotin published, but UVic is currently the centre of significant 
research on that language.  Maybe I'll be able to ask a speaker.

--Dave R

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