Do-ka-batl story, and more Lushootseed-tinged CW
A hat tip today to Jim Mattila, who has sent me some more historic articles that relate to Lushootseed speakers and Chinuk Wawa!
The above book is a good place to read more Changer stories, from a much more reliable teller (image credit: Amazon)
Today’s piece is one of the countless popular periodical articles that Walter Shelley “El Comancho” Phillips penned during a prodigious career.
It was published in Forest and Stream magazine, a source that has brought us a significant quantity of previously unknown Jargon material; this is from the March 9, 1895 issue, pages 183-184.
The subject matter is “Do-ka-batl the changer”, i.e. the important myth character dukʷibaɬ, which is Dxʷləšucid / Txʷəlšucid (Lushootseed Salish) for ‘changer’.
(If anyone reading this has specialized linguistic knowledge of that language, I want to ask you if that -(i)baɬ suffix is much used, or if it’s maybe archaic. I have reasons. LMK.)
I don’t reckon I’m going to transcribe this article entirely. It’s legible below.
But I will highlight a thing or two.
Page 183 mentions the “singgamble”, a local Puget Sound term for slahal that I’ve been suggesting may have been Chinuk Wawa.
On that page we also see Iwana John, a Native companion of Comancho, quoted as saying:
“A-a-h snugwillimie, has de-la-a-a-te ahncutty –” Oh, yes; I forgot; you don’t understand Chinook [this is absurd, as Comancho published a ton of good CW material! but it’s a conceit to accomodate the broader reading audience], so I’ll translate it. A long, long time ago”…
Taking a closer look at that:
- The first word in the bolded quotation could be taken as Chinuk Wawa á, or as Salish ʔa• ‘ah, oh’.
- The next two words are Lushootseed. I haven’t managed to figure out < snugwillimie >. Perhaps it could be ~ ʔəs-dukʷ-il-bixʷ, a word not in the Bates-Hess-Hilbert 1994 dictionary, but ʔəs-dukʷ-il is given there as ‘not normal’ or apparently ‘supernatural’; -bixʷ is a suffix that can mean ‘people’. Hello, Lushootseed experts who were reading this? Is this a formulaic story starter perhaps?
- That < has > might be haʔkʷ ‘ago; a long time’, but it more closely resembles < haac > ‘long’ (in physical extent) — maybe a Settler misunderstanding, and adding another data point to the pattern where it seems Seattle-area pioneers mixed a pidginized Lushootseed in with their CW.
- Of course < de-la-a-a-te > is the Jargon intensifier dlé(y)t ‘really; very’, itself intensified by the conventional PNW Indigenous speech trick of hyper-lengthening the stressed vowel.
- And < ahncutty > is CW ánqati, ‘long ago; in the remote past’.
Thus, “a long, long time ago”…
Now, read on. I’ll talk to you again at the end of the story.
I have to jump back in and comment that < Too-lux > and < Quoots-hoi > are actually (Lower) Chehalis Salish words, known to us from James G. Swan’s 1857 memoir. So Comancho is, as typical for him, getting mighty fanciful.
His < Klook-wa > is kind of a puzzle, too. I would bet that Comancho is trying to use the Nuučaan’uɬ word (i.e. from a southern Vancouver Island Wakashan language) tɬ’eekoo ‘thank you’, once again going for “real Indian” color over strict local accuracy. This is a Nuučaan’uɬ word that plenty of Settlers found easy to pick up. I really don’t think Comancho is saying CW ɬax̣á(w)ya(m) ‘goodbye’ here!
As you probably know, < tilicum > is Settler CW for ‘friend’ — tílixam more often meaning ‘people; person; one’s relative’ for other speakers of Jargon.
One more neat fact, since we’re veering off into neighboring tribal lore: in Lower Chehalis Salish, the normal word for ‘deer’ is literally ‘the jumper’!
snugwillimie may be related to Quinault snic̓ɑɡwilɑyɫ family, friends, loved ones
Thanks for your idea, Lezlie! Could the Qn word possibly be something like snəč̓agʷilayɬ / snič̓agʷilayɬ? That would look to be ~~ s-nəč̓a-gʷi-layɬ ‘the ones who are companions and offspring’, to my eye. Neat stuff! Dave R.