"Eulachon" among the Kwakwaka'wakw

[Alan H. Hartley]

David Lewis wrote:

> Dear all, Yes but did Love and Goddard prove their point? I have read
> their essay and I don't believe they really have proven their point.
> Also, their theory does not really discredit the Byram and Lewis
> theory. In fact, the two theories may work in conjunction with each
> other in areas of Indigenous trade networks.

Goddard & Love's brief discussion of the oolikan-theory is on p. 240: 
"Scott Byram and David Lewis made an ingenious proposal that ooligan, a 
Chinook Jargon term for an oily fish widely traded in coastal British 
Columbia, found its way across the Rockies to the Great Lakes region. 
They suggest — though they have no direct evidence for this — that 
Rogers may have heard the term and connected it with the River of the 
West. Although theirs is a valuable ethnographic account of the regional 
grease trade, they do not engage Elliott’s argument or address the 
central questions: Where did Rogers learn the term, and why would he 
have used it to name the River of the West? Tantalizing as their 
suggestion may be and while it would not defy the laws of physics, we 
agree with anthropologist Yvonne Hajda that it is virtually impossible 
that Chinook Jargon would have been heard in the Great Lakes area by 
1763 — when Rogers was last in Michigan — even if, against all evidence, 
it was by then already in existence. We concur with their main point, 
however: that complex trade networks extended across vast reaches of 
North America before and after European arrival and that Indians 
sometimes had knowledge of distant places. Rogers clearly drew on Indian 
geographic knowledge both before and after 1765, as we will show."

On p. 245, they say: "In his letter of September 12, 1766, giving 
instructions to James Tute on how to conduct the search for the 
Northwest Passage, Rogers used the name five times, spelling it 
successively Ourigan, Ourgan, Ouregan, and again Ourigan (twice) — all 
of which are different from the Ouragon of his London petition the 
previous fall." These look like pretty good precursors to "Oregon", and 
it's highly unlikely that Rogers would at that time have been influenced 
by a Chinookan word.

Alan

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