early spellings

[Alan Hartley]

A recent post to the Chinook listserv posed the question of what the
early English system(s) of transcription of Indian words was called and
how those spellings might be interpreted. Following is my reply which I
thought might be pertinent to some Siouan questions:

John Koontz calls it (or something like it) the "Lewis & Clark Phonetic
Alphabet" (http://spot.colorado.edu/~koontz/faq/orthography.htm#LCPA)

Most of the journalists of the Lewis and Clark expedition were nonrhotic
speakers of English, as I imagine was Dunn, so their nonstandard
spellings have a lot of dropped and added r's.

The question arises whether these added r's--as in warter and
musquetors--indicated a pronounced r or were simply a reverse spelling.
It's hard to say in the case of English words that in some dialects do
have an intrusive r (Warshington), but Indian words with no trace of r
and which the journalists would seldom if ever have seen written provide
pretty convincing evidence of simple reverse spelling. (In the following
list of L & C spellings, * marks words written both with and without r,
including the English 'exhaust' and French 'cache'.)

In stressed syllables: Ahwahaway [Amahami] (Ahwahharway), *cache (carsh,
cash), *camas (quarmash, quarmarsh, quawmash), Dakota (Darcotar),
*Kalapuya (Cal-lar-po-e-wah, Cal-lâh-po-e-wah), Mahaha (Mahharha),
*Nemaha (Nemarhar, Moha), *Omaha (Mahar, Maha), *Osage (Osarge, osoge),
pasheco (pashaquar), *pogamoggan (pog-gar-mag-gon, Poggamoggon),
Ponashita(Pâr-nâsh-te), *Sacagawea (Sâhcâhgâweâ, Sahcahgarweah), Shaha
(Sharha), yampa (yearpah [with deletion of the nasal in this dialect of
Shoshone]), *exhaust (exorst, exost, exhost), *Multnomah (Multnomah and
Multnomar, Multnomah, Moltnomar), *Nodaway (nordaway, Nodaway,
Nardaway), *Pawnee (Parnee, Paunee, Pania), pembina (Pembenar), Poncas
(Porncases), shapat [Arikara ‘woman’] (Char-part), twánhayuksh
[Chinookan ‘enemies’] (Towarnehiooks).

In unstressed syllables: *camas (quarmarsh), Dakota (darcotar), Kansa
(kansar), *Wetesoon (WauteSoon, Weter Soon), Tacoutche-Tesse (Tarcouche
tesse), *Wakiacum (Warkiacum, Wackiacum, warkiacome), *Watlala
(Warclellar, Wahclellar, Wahclellah)

There are many other peculiarities to watch out for in using English
spellings to deduce the pronunciation of native words. L & C, for
instance, very often switch short i and short e in their writings, and
it's difficult to say just what pron. was intended in each case. (In
modern southern English, short e is often raised to short i and short i
is NOT lowered to short e, but in L & C, there's evidence that it works
both ways.) In short, in order to draw conclusions about native
pronunciations from early transcriptions in English, one has to know a
lot about 1.) the pronunciation of the journalist's dialect, and 2.) the
journalist's orthographic habits.

Alan