mystery "French" in Wawa

[Robert Kentta]

hzenk at PDX.EDU wrote:
> I was wondering whether anyone out on the list has a clue about the 
> following three words, all collected as Wawa by John P. Harrington on 
> the lower Columbia and Oregon Coast in 1942 (these are from the 
> Harrington Papers, mf rolls 17 and 18):
>
> lident 'dandelion' (given by Louis Fuller, who also spoke Salmon R 
> Tillamook).
>
> labins 'beans' (also Louis Fuller).
>
> lapeyl 'can (for cooking in)' (Joe Peter, a Cowlitz living at Yakima 
> Res).
>
>
> All three words appear to have French articles, but I don't find 
> anything like them in my French dictionary.  Are they Canadianisms?  
> Local coinings?  (Since so many nouns for introduced items are from 
> French, there may be a tendency to adopt the French article as a sort 
> of noun-classifier for such words).  Henry
>
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Louie Fuller was from here at the Siletz Reservation, and was the son of 
John Fuller, a Salmon River Tillamook headman. There were Clatsop 
connections in the family (his mother?, grandmother???). There was 
rumored to have been french ancestry, but that may have been a mistake - 
or based on conjecture. Louie had a brother named 
Michel/Michael/Machelle - I've seen all spellings. Michel LaFramboise of 
HBC may have been familiar to the family in the early days. Louie 
married a SW Oregon Athapascan woman from Siletz (Daisy Collins-Fuller), 
and their children learned both Tillamook and Tututni languages - as 
well as CJ. Harry Fuller lived to be fairly old, and passed here 6 or 8 
years ago. He didn't speak any English until he went to school....said 
he "had a hell of a time" trying to learn English.

Robert Kentta
Siletz

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