1906: California Hobucket mamook iskum dhuoyuatz
A photo of an apparent Chinuk Wawa speaker, tucked away in a multi-volume work on West Coast ornithology, is rare evidence of an uncommon, useful Jargon phrase…
Here we see “California” (Kalipódiya) Hobucket, a Quileute tribal member employed by a scientific expedition, digging birds called petrels out of their nests in the side of an offshore sea stack.
In the Quileute tribal newsletter, anthropologist Jay Powell observes that the reason for this man’s nickname isn’t (now) known. I’d suggest we have new evidence — it could be from his working for a visiting well-funded California scientist.
The title of the photo is < CALIFORNIA MAMOOK ISKUM DHUOYUATZ: In other words, the Indian (“California” Hobucket), is digging out Beal Petrels >.
That word < DHUOYUATZ > must be the local Quileute language’s word for the birds. I’m unable to locate it in the Quileute dictionary yet, and the unorthodox spelling isn’t speeding the process of searching. (I’m starting with the idea that < DH > represents Quileute /d/ or /t’/, or even /t’ł/.) And there’s no entry for the fairly obscure English word ‘petrel’ in that dictionary, nor a corresponding word glossed as generic ‘bird’, nor — since petrels supplied this kind of food — anything under ‘egg’. There seems to be a root shaped like t’oy meaning ‘to pick up’, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten yet.
Chinuk Wawa < mamook > of course means literally ‘make; do’; it can be put before a main verb to form a sort of causative expression. < Iskum > is ‘get; take’.
It’s somewhat rare to find the two together, especially outside of the Grand Ronde, Oregon, community, whose dictionary gives the local (I broadly call it the ‘southern’ dialect) pronunciation munk-ískam ‘gather it up, accumulate (something)’, for example berries or money.
That’s just what California is doing in the image. And so we have a nice example, complete with photographic illustration, of this phrase being used in the ‘northern’ dialect of Jargon.
Today’s nice little Jargon lesson is found on page 2016 (!) of “The Birds of California” (!) by William Leon Dawson (1873-1928) “of Santa Barbara” (San Diego, CA: South Moulton Company, 1923).
(Image credit: “William Leon Dawson: A Biography“)
A biography of Iowa-born Dawson published during his lifetime says he lived as a youth in Washington state (Ahtanum in Yakima County from age 12; Seattle from age 14), so he may have been a good speaker of Jargon before he engaged California Hobucket.
By virtue of growing up Quileute in the late 19th century, California was already extremely likely to speak good Jargon.
So I see today’s little phrase as fairly reliable information.
What have you learned?
Mahsee maika Lektlik wawa, David Maybe you have seen my December Kwashkwash Squawk in the Quileute Bayak newsletter, which relates to what you are asking. I can’tare suggesting that California’s name as Chinook Jargon. He would have been about 12 years old when A. W. Smith opened the Quileute Indian School in 1884 and the first issue on the curriculum was to give the attendees civilized names (e.g. from American History or the Bible. He didn’t give any of the kids chidokw t’isikwolh (a Chinook name). But he also didn’t give any others the name a state unless we count Washington, which is both a name from American history and a state. Ther rest of the Hobucket kids continued to be called Hobucket, but California became, Quileute style, both his first and last name. The old people couldn’t pronounce it (no Rs or Ns in Quileute, so he became Kalipodiya in tribal usage.
Now the issue of the petrel. Funny you asked about it. I got a word back in the early ’70s (o’owa’) from Old Man Woodruff, in La Push. He had done a lot of work commercially digging clams down around Kalaloch and he told me that at Destruction Island in the steep hillsides there is a bird that builds their nests and “fly right into their nest at full speed. I thought he sounded like it was a kind of a duck but he wasn’t clear about it. He said, “There are LOTS of those birds at DI (Destruction island), I also heard that California used to spend time at DI. And recently a birder told me, “I wonder whether that DI bird you aske about is a petrel?.
So maybe you can help me answer a 50 year old Quileute question, eh. But the last word in the sentence California mamook iskum dhuoyuatz. On might find the (o’owa) root in the middle of that, but wake kumtuks naika..
If you don’t have the 2008 edition of the Quileute dictionary, let me know and I’ll send you one. p
If you don'[t have th