Cherokee term for 'china clay'

[Koontz John E]

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006, A.W. Tüting wrote:
> ... He owns a Chinese medal unearthed in the East Coast area (former
> Cherokee/Catawba territory) and is reflecting about linguistic
> relationship of the term for 'china clay' in former southern Chinese and
> the Native American languages respectively. ...

Well, it never hurts to look, though I'd be concerned in the provenance of
his artifact.  It doesn't sound like he has any way of proving where it
came from.  The web site is full of specifics like depth in soil and
distance from coast, but oblivious to anything of actual archaeological
use.  "The brass medal was discovered under 4 inches of soil in a scantly
populated area several hundred miles inland from the east coast of
America. After almost 600 years, the medal shows no apparent signs of
corrosion, other than a tight coating of soil."  How did it get from these
remarkable coordinates (several hundred miles inland, 4 inches down)  to
him?  How was its arrival dated to the pre-Contact period?  Even if its
provenance is established, it's been easy to get Chinese artifacts, even
ancient ones, to Eastern North America by the usual trade mechanisms from
c. 1550 or so.

> Here's what he is stating:
>
> "The most fascinating fact is the Cherokee term for  china clay is
> ¡§unaker¡¨, similar to what Chinese call  °îªd ¡§uk-na[ke]¡¨ in  southern
> dialect. Is it a coincidence?

For those who need it (like me), this decypher to (Cherokee) "unaker"
and (Chinese southern dialet) "uk-na[ke]."  Does Cherokee really have a
special word for "china" or "porcelain"?  "Clay," perhaps in various
colors, and "pot(tery)" would be more likely.

> This happened before the arrival of the Europeans. The Chinese name
> uk-nake was used up to Ming dynasty.

I suspect he's relying on his linguistic resemblance and the date of
the medal for dating, which will not get him very far, especially since he
seems to have no way to prove where the medal came from.

I sincerely doubt that it took the Chinese 10,000 years to learn to make
porcelain.  This would mean the initiative was started sometime around
9,000 BC, right?

As far as the special qualifications of the Catawba as potters, I don't
think they or the Cherokee were making porcelain, let alone Ming vases, in
the Contact or pre-Contact period, but I believe a lot of nice loooking
pottery was being produced all over the Americas before Contact though I'm
vague on the dating of the earliest examples.  In most places in the
Eastern part of North America native ceramics were replaced rapidly by
European pots after contact.  This is one of the frustrations that
ethnohistorians and archaeologists have in trying to associate
archaeological sites with historical peoples.

I looked at the links Dr. Lee provides, and it appears that his Cherokee
word comes from this one:

http://www.smokymountainnews.com/issues/11_01/11_14_01/mtn_voices_macon_clay.shtml

The text here mentions "Cherokee clay or unaker."  It sounds like it might
be quoting Thomas Griffiths in the 1760s, in which case there is a strong
possibility that the word so closely resembles the southern Chinese
(Cantonese? Min?) word because it is the Chinese word, being used by the
Griffiths (or whoever is being cited) as a contemporary technical term.
I assume "Cherokee clay"  refers to the particular source of the clay
being exported, while unaker is the technical term for the grade or type.
Unaker is probably intended to spell a contemporary Chinese pronunciation
of u-na-ke.  The orthographic r would indicate that the final e is
pronounced, but the r itself would be silent.  A modern specialist might
have said "kaolin clay from a source on Cherokee lands."  A modern
specialist would also not use -r like this.  This is the usage that you
see in Lewis & Clarke's "Ma-har" for "Omaha."

Incidentally, I think kaolin is pronounced kei'-ol-<lax i>n, I think, in
American English.  A remote cousin once took my family on a tour of the
kaolin processing plant in Wyoming where he worked.

Anyway, we have no evidence that the word is Cherokee, and from the
context, every reason to suspect it is Chinese.

It is definitely true that 18th Century (and earlier) Europeans liked
Chinese ceramics and conducted an extensive trade in it as well as
devoting significant efforts to learning and/or reverse engineering the
Chinese process to permit local manufacture, even of second rate
porcelain.  Locating nearer sources of suitable clay was part of the
process.  Nothing cuts into your margins like shipping something heavy and
fragile around the world in a wind-propelled boat, and even manufacture in
Eastern North America and shipping from there would have been cheaper than
bringing it from China.