grizzly bears

[Alan H. Hartley]

David Costa wrote:
> I'm posting this query on behalf of Michael McCafferty:
> 
> 
> French voyageurs in the upper Missouri called the grizzly bear "l'ours
> blanc" ('white bear'). According to Patrick Gass and J. Ordway, two
> members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, this name came from the
> "Natives".
> 
> Does anyone know an Amerindian language in which the name for the
> grizzly corresponds to "white bear"?

Some excerpts from two entries from my "Lewis and Clark Lexicon" with 
citations from Moulton's edition of the journals (no help on the native 
source, I'm afraid):

BEAR, BROWN or WHITE or YELLOW = (GRIZZLY) BEAR.

many tracks of the white bear of enormous size [13 Apr 05 Lewis 4.031]

a verry large bair which the natives and the french tradors call white 
[5 May 05 Ordway 9.143]

the Brown, the white and the Grizly bear of this country are the same 
species [13 Jun 05 Lewis 4.286]

a large white, or reather brown bear [14 Jun 05 Lewis 4.292]

BEAR, GRIZZLY  The large brown bear of the North American West (Ursus 
horribilis), distinguished from the smaller, much less aggressive, black 
bear. The journalists heretofore generally write white bear. Grizzly 
originally meant 'gray.'

a Brown or Grisley beare on a Sand beech [5 May 05 Clark 4.114]

Alan