"Eulachon" among the Kwakwaka'wakw

[Sally Thomason]

I have no views on the etymology of Oregon, but the passage
quoted by Alan Hartley from Love & Goddard has one statement
that's worth reacting to on this list: "...it is virtually
impossible that Chinook Jargon would have been heard in 
the Great Lakes area by 1763...even if, against all
evidence, it was by then already in existence."

I don't know about Love, but (one of) Goddard's main
reason(s) for arguing that Chinook Jargon didn't exist
as early as 1763 is a belief that it emerged out of the
Nootka Jargon that arose several decades later, and
that is arguably attested earlier than the earliest
attested (i.e. documented) Chinook Jargon.  But there
is a problem with that belief, in my opinion a major
problem: the admittedly central & basic Nootka words
in Chinook Jargon have to have been transmitted to the
Columbia region by Whites, not by Natives, because they
are ALL pronounced the way Whites but not Natives would
pronounce the words; and in this respect they contrast
sharply with the Chinook words that make up the bulk of
the early Chinook Jargon vocabulary.  My memory is vague
on the subject of the Nootka Jargon's grammar, if it was
"solidified" enough to have a grammar; but at least the
Chinook Jargon grammar, from the beginning of significant
documentation (for instance in Horatio Hale's 1846
account), is clearly Native, not White.  So the scenario
for a Nootka-Jargon-to-Chinook-Jargon origin would have
to be something like a stimulus diffusion: let's take
these weird Nootka words & phrases and turn them into
our own lingua franca, with our own words and sound system
and grammar.  Possible, of course.  But the hypothesis 
that Chinook Jargon already existed when the Nootka Jargon
got to the Columbia, and that the White-transmitted Nootka
words were simply borrowed into Chinook Jargon, is at
least equally possible -- I think more likely, but without
documentation there's no proof.  So the strength of the
Nootka-Jargon-to-Chinook-Jargon origin theory would have
to rest primarily on a belief that earliest documentation 
= earliest language.  And that's a mistake, as I argued 
recently on Language Log:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003591.html

   None of this has any bearing on the question of whether
Chinook Jargon was known in the Great Lakes area in 1763,
of course.

   -- Sally Thomason

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