"God" in Tsimshian (fwd)

[James Crippen]

On 2/28/07, Dave Robertson <ddr11 at uvic.ca> wrote:
> [I forward this from the SSILA Bulletin, received today, partly because of
> the CJ tie, and partly because there are ethnographers and historians on
> this list who may be able to help Chris.  --  Dave R.]
>
>
> * "God" in Tsimshian
>    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >From Christopher Roth (cfroth at earthlink.net) 7 February 2007:
>
> I am interested in the Tsimshian (Coast Tsimshian, Sm'algyax) word
> for (the Christian) God, 'Wii Sm'oogit ts'm Laxha, literally Great
> Chief in the Sky.  This to me is suspiciously similar to the Chinook
> Jargon term Saghalee Tyee (variously spelled), with the same literal
> meaning.  The ethnographic record is ambiguous as to whether or not
> the Tsimshian were monotheists before contact, and one hears
> conflicting opinions on this point from contemporary Tsimshians as
> well.  Certainly that term does not appear in any of the hundreds of
> Tsimshian narratives collected by Barbeau, Boas, etc., nor does any
> other term for a Deity.  I am curious whether other languages in the
> areas where Chinook Jargon was used as a medium of missionization
> (i.e. Alaska, BC, Washington, Oregon), and especially languages of
> peoples geographically and culturally close to the Tsimshian, contain
> similarly constructed words for "God" or whether they use other forms
> entirely, such as loanwords, unanalyzable terms, etc.  Secondly, if
> respondents happen to know, is the ethnohistorical evidence for or
> against precontact monotheism in these cases?

In Tlingit, the northern neighbor of Coast Tsimshian, the term for
"God" is "Dikée Aankháawu", loosely translated as "Far-above
Rich-man". "Aankháawu" denotes a wealthy or influential person in a
village, perhaps a clan or house chief or one of their close
relatives. "Dikée" is a directional meaning "far above, far upward",
compare with "déikee" meaning "far out (to sea)" as in "Déikeenaa" for
"Haida" or "Far Out People".

It seems to me and to other linguists who have worked on Tlingit that
this is a calque taken from Chinook Jargon. I have no information on
what the Russian Orthodox missionaries used in Tlingit to mean "God"
("Bog" in Russian) before the 1890s, at which point they are recorded
as using the "Dikée Aankháawu" term in some of their written
translations. It is possible that the Russians invented the term,
although it is so close to the CJ term that I am led to believe in the
CJ source hypothesis.

I have heard this term contracted further into "Dikaankháawu", which
is a typical Tlingit contraction formation.

In Tlingit the term for "spirit" or "god" in the shamanistic sense is
"yéik". Monotheism does not appear to have been practiced by ancient
Tlingits according to both historical sources and modern Tlingit
people. Instead the belief system was primarily animistic with
shamanism practiced in the animism framework by a few specialists. One
informant for Swanton (1907) constructed a narrative in which a
creator being was a sort of monotheistic principle but the narrative
rapidly switches to a more traditional Tlingit view. Swanton himself
felt that this was due to Christian theological influence.

Tlingit people have historically been recorded as speaking Chinook
Jargon, and some today attest to their parents or grandparents being
fluent in it. There are a number of loanwords clearly from CJ which
have undergone changes to fit Tlingit phonology (which is quite
different from CJ). Use of CJ between American whites and Tlingits is
also recorded, and was probably begun around the time of the Boston
fur traders and continued through the various gold rushes (Cassiar,
Klondike, etc). I don't believe that CJ was used by the Tlingit at all
amongst themselves, nor do I feel that they used it much in contact
with neighboring Indians (Tagish, Tahltan, Haida, Coast Tsimshian). It
was probably viewed as an instrument for communication with whites and
"Down South" Indians. The population of Tlingits who migrated to
Victoria probably spoke CJ fluently and brought it back with them to
other Tlingit people.

James

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