Ikta Dale McCreery yaka t’ɬap (Part 2)
Always worth paying attention to are the things our Michif friend Dr. Dale McCreery hears from people in Bella Coola, British Columbia…
There’s Canada’s Indigenous saint, Kateri Tekakwitha, in the lower right corner of this “la Toussaint” graphic!
(Image credit: l’Unité pastorale Carouge-Salève-Acacias)
I really enjoy publicizing totally Pacific Northwest things folks say, whether they’re in Chinuk Wawa, in a tribal language, or in Métis French or regional English.
Today we get a nice blend of all of the above!
In 2017, Dale mentioned listening to some old recordings. He pointed out a number of neat words people used, here shown the way he wrote them in a Facebook post (my added comments are in italics):
- ilahee – used to refer to the land the house was built on (paid a dollar a month for the ilahee).
This of course is Chinook Jargon íliʔi ~ ílihi. - trace – haven’t heard that used too much, was used for trapping trails.
A very old-time word for ‘a trail, a path’, as in the phrases ‘a buffalo trace’ etc.! - boone Daniel – boone somehow implied stingy?
This one’s totally new to me — any of our readers have information? - church-chief – chach tayee?
Dale’s thinking this is an indication of a Jargon phrase; there certainly were Indigenous people in BC who were ‘church chiefs’ if not traditional hereditary chiefs. I’ve only found a phrase “church tyee” in one source, an 1877 reference to the Lingít (Tlingits) of Wrangell, southeast Alaska, not so far away from Bella Coola… - Chilkootin – koot rhymes with hoot, not a way I remember hearing the word said before.
This is the “Chilcotin” region of adjacent interior BC. - putting rooms in a house?
I don’t know this phrase. Could it be about ‘letting / renting rooms’ out? - “putting a ‘petition’ from stem to stern”
I understand the nautical ‘stem to stern’ as meaning ‘thoroughly; completely’, but how it applies to petitioning, I don’t know? Any ideas, readers? - An answer to a woman who had lost a child – “by n by catch one more”.
This is apparently fluent pidgin-style English, likely from a Native or Chinese immigrant speaker. It clearly means ‘some day (you’ll) have/get another one’. Small consolation, in the moment… - latusaa – big sunday??
Here’s a Métis French word for a popular Catholic holiday, la Toussaint, ‘All Saint’s (Day)’. It’s known as a loan in central & northern BC tribal languages.
Plenty of regional flavour here, eh?
Hmmm…I have some ideas on some of the terms, as you have them discussed here: “Boone Daniel” is an American influenced description of a guy who can make his way around in the bush, as far as I recall; “Chilkootin” (also by 100 other spellings) is actually Tsilhqot’in (Tsiw-co-teen); “by n by catch one more”, in a world where having one more child to feed and care for, where life is tougher than it ever was, because communities (which are required for raising children) are much disintegrated, the reality of being pregnant a lot, losing one, and then having one was not lost on folks who come from typically big families …not so much Brit Euros, as they preferred the “family Lite” approach.
J.
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