Tired of Pain Court yet?

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 3 Apr 2004, Michael Mccafferty wrote:
> No, no. I've been misrepresented!! Where's my lawyer?!

Vacationing in St. Louis.

> No, "pain" and "pin"  ARE homophonous in Canadian French and French
> in general. In Canada speakers will either say [pe~] (tilde
> over the e) for both of them, or [pI~] for both of them.

OK, I had missed that when the pain went lower, the pin also shifted.

> There was a note from Marc Picard forwarded to the Siouan list yesterday
> that showed a place name near Montreal for Pin(s) Court(s).

I am sorry.  I took his second post as implying that he had misremembered
Pain Court as Pin Court and was now advocating Paincourt, albeit believing
that -court referred to a farm.

> > The question has been raised as to whether there is any evidence of pains
> > courts in the neighboorhood of St. Louis.

Oops - typo on my part for pins courts.

> There are six species of "evergreens" native to Indiana and I suspect that
> some of those are native to Missouri.

I couldn't relocate it last night, but at least one comment on forts in
Houck or Nasatir mentions a tower built of cedar.

It did occur to me after I signed off that what I needed was an ecological
survey of St. Louis and that for this it would suffice to have an typical
archaeological investigation of the American Bottom (in the midst of
which, I note without further comment, St. Louis may be found).
Fortunately, I happen have a copy of American Bottom Archaeology, ed. by
Chas. J Bareis and Jas. W.  Porter, U. of Ill. Press, 1984.  The essay on
'The Environmental Setting' by White, Johannessen, Cross and Kelly does
list the vegetation, classified according to 9 zones.  The investigation
here is specifically concerned with the Illinois shore, but I imagine it
covers the Missouri shore fairly well, too.

Not to keep you in suspense, no evergreens are mentioned, and the lowlands
zones feature ash (including green ash), black walnut, boxelder,
cottonwood, elm, hackberry, hickory, honey locust, mulberry, oak
(including pin oak), pecan, persimmon, silver maple, sycamore, and willow
(including black willow).  The slopes and upland zones feature ash,
basswood, black walnut, butternut, cherry, dogwood, elder, elm, hackberry,
hazel, hickory, mulberry, oak, pawpaw, persimmon, and sugar maple.  The
area is characterized by a climax forest of black oak, white oak, and
hickory.

There are, however, very few places, if any, in North America, where
evergreens do not occur, even in hardwood forests, so that this account
does not permit us to conclude that there was not a clump of shortish
pines near the future site of St. Louis back when it was founded.
Knowing the early settlers, or at least their descendents, these were
promptly cut down to build either towers of forts, or, perhaps, outhouses.
In spite of this possibility, it does not appear that pines or other
evergreens are prominent components of the local vegetation.  There don't
seem to have been stands of them everywhere, unlike Colorado, where our
state motto is "Pins courts toujours!"  Evergreen and Conifer, for
example, might both well have been named Pinscourts.