1786: What a long Strange trip! James Strange’s journal on the PNW coast (Part 2: Vocabulary)

The voyage of the Captain Cook and the Experiment is documented in the book, “James Strange’s Journal and narrative of the commercial expedition from Bombay to the Northwest coast of America” (Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press, 1982).

Part 2: ADDITIONS TO CAPTAIN COOK’S VOCABULARY OF THE NOOTKA SOUND LANGUAGE IN 1786

I find much of interest on pages 119-129, in the lexicon that Strange titles “Additions to Captain Cook’s Vocabulary of the Nootka Sound Language in 1786”.

For example, similar to Cook’s vocabulary — which was the first ever recorded by a non-Indigenous person — the letter k gets used as a syllable coda (ending) to represent non-English sounds including glottal stop /ʔ/ and voiceless lateral fricative /ł/.

But here, I want to focus on entries that appear to be not single words, but complex phrases.

There may very well be more phrases in Strange’s list, but my low expertise in Nuuchahnulth keeps me from quickly spotting them. I’ll need help from Wakashan speakers & scholars, and time spent by me with the dictionaries and grammars of Nuuchahnulth that I have access to.

The presence of complex structures in 1786 may indicate an emerging pidgin language, having a grammar with syntax and suchlike rules.

There were extremely few perceptibly phrase-sized units to be found in Cook’s 1778 list, as we might well expect from a first-contact document. Notably, Strange titled his list “Additions to Captain Cook’s Vocabulary”! And there are quite a number of them. This tends to support a view that a pidgin language had been solidifying at Nootka Sound since first contact, as does Strange’s evaluation (pages 104-105):

From Our daily intercourse with the People of Nootka, we had
acquired so much of their language, before we left the Sound, as to be
enabled to Comprehend almost every thing they said to us, & likewise
to make Ourselves understood by them.

Here are the items I’ve spotted so far as being of interest in this light — 

• Page 119:
  • (NB mamook is translated as ‘weaving or knitting’, indicating that the word was encountered by the mariners mostly in a context of women at work. This word of course later became Chinook Jargon’s mámuk ‘work; do; make’.)
  • sootsineek haweelkh ‘to wash for a Friend, or to make clean for the sake of a Friend’
    • • (Just prior to this phrase, sootsineek has an entry of its own as ‘washing’.
      • Haweelkh has an implicit entry of its own on page 130 as ‘friend/friendship’.)
  • chookgwakutsaponeeak ‘enter — An invitation to go into a house’
    • (Nuuchahnulth has čukʷaa ‘come’;
    • I don’t know yet if the remainder of this long “word” is to be considered a separate “word”.)
  • souwak haweelkh ‘intimate Friends, literally one’s Friend’
    • (apparently suw’aaq ‘you’ [predicative?]
    • + haweelkh — thus, perhaps ~ ‘you are a friend’?)
• Page 120: choochat soomah ‘to kill, or catch Fish’
  • (I don’t know yet what choochat is; 
  • Just preceding this is an entry for soomah ‘fish’.) 
• Page 121:
  • sooguolchee quotluk, sooguolchee Sekemaille ‘run and Bring the Sea Otters Skin, run and Bring the Iron’
    • (The preceding entry is sooguolchee ‘bring, run and Bring’.
      
    • The word quotluk for ‘sea otter pelt’ is well-known from other sources, if not defined by Strange.
      
    • Sekemaille is known, too, from other sources as the ancestor of Chinook Jargon’s chíkʰəmin ‘metal; iron’.) 
  • tahok Maquilla kahsheetl ‘Maquilla is afraid of Death, or of being kill[ed]’
    • (The preceding entry is tahok ‘signifies Fear or a person very much afraid’.
      
    • Kahsheetl is known from other sources as the ancestor of Chinook Jargon’s kákshit ‘hit; break; beat’ etc.; compare p. 127 kahs heetl ‘is killed’.) 
• Page 122:
  • eneetssheetl Euhguat ‘return, come back to the Village; an invitation’
    • (The verb eneetssheetl isn’t defined separately, but it’s clearly not in a native Nuuchahnulth command form, instead being a 3rd person indicative;
    • the preceding entry is Euhguat or Euguot ‘a Village’, i.e. the place now known as Yuquot.)
  • sukhssheetl weena ‘to kill or shoot the Strangers’
    • (The verb here, too, is a 3rd person indicative, as are most in these lists.
    • We know weena ‘stranger(s)’ from other sources.)
  • pohtkleetl tootsma ‘the woman [sic] are running away from fear’
    • (I don’t yet know what pohtkleetl is;
    • page 121 has kloots amma, tootsma, or hootsma ‘a Woman’.)
  • sheetlok hasoooa ‘they are going away to a great distance’
    • (I don’t yet know what sheetlok is;
    • page 124 has an entry hasōōoa ‘a great Way off without defining any determinate distance’.)
• Page 123:
  • klwahmess Naas ‘the Sovereign of the Sky, God Almighty’
    • (I don’t yet know what klwahmess is;
    • we know Nass from many sources as ‘sky; weather’ and such.)
  • teekatsuk or teeshcheetl moxie ‘throwing a stone’
    • (I don’t yet know more about teekatsuk/teeshcheetl 
    • or moxie.)
• Page 124:
  • eutsuss eetssok ‘go away, go out; as out of the house: this is spoke in Displeasure’
    • (I don’t yet know the meaning of either eutsuss 
    • or eetssok.)
  • hanook enekitsum “This may either signify, take care of Enekeelsem [sic] or Enekeelsem will take Care of you.”
    (Note the indeterminacy of interpretation.) 
    • (I don’t yet know about hanook, 
    • but enekitsum occurs many times in the narrative, e.g. on page 10 as “Enkitsun, the ‘God of Snow'”.)
• Page 125:
  • enekitsum haweelkah ‘an expression frequently used, and probably means that Enekeetsem protects their Friends’
    • (Again enekitsum, 
    • and again with the word understood as ‘friend’.) 
  • akha or ekho takna ‘his, this, that or my Child (Son)’
    • (Compare takna seekya below.)
  • chee-chee-chee-cheequaquatl ‘teeth, or bones with which they ornament their Chests &c.’
    • (Looks like too many chee‘s in a row to be native Nuuchahnulth reduplication within a single word.) 
  • takna seekya ‘a female Child, or Daughter’
    • (Compare akha/ekho takna above.) 
  • euwatl haweelk kloohsk ‘a friend’s medicine, or medicine from a Friend is good’
    • • (I don’t know yet about euwatl;
      • again we have the word glossed as ‘friend’.
      • We know kloohsk from many sources as the ancestor of Chinuk Wawa’s łúsh.)
  • humummunnaksheetl ‘drinking’
    • (The preceding entry is humumma ‘a large Snail shell’;
    • we know the nnaksheetl is a verb for ‘drink’.) 
  • eksheetl ehque ‘polishing with a Shark’s skin’
    • (I don’t know the meaning of either word yet, but eksheetl has to be a verb.) 
  • honeekeea kawutsass ‘eating Fish out of Trough’
    • (I don’t yet know about either word.)
• Page 126:
  • klemasheetl makyo klamaht ‘warming water with red hot stones which they lift by the wooden tongs’
    • (The preceding entry is klamaht ‘wooden Tongs’;
    • I don’t yet know about the other 2 words.)
  • sutsak steelhk ‘the setting of the Sun’
    • (I don’t yet know about either word.)
  • seekootlash tseehate ‘bring the arrows’
    • (I don’t yet know about seekootlash;
    • the third entry following is tseehatle ‘a Musket, or an Arrow’.)
• Page 127: kitcheatleesh kaoomene or kaoomenē kah heetl ‘the Pigeon is killed’
  • (Compare p. 121 kaoomen or kaoomenē ‘a Pigeon’.
  • Also compare p. 121 kahsheetl ‘Death’ or ‘being killed’.)

• Page 128:
  • (NB claotra ‘the other’ here and on pages 85-86, which tell:”…a Song was required of me. Accordingly I sang the first that came into my head, this was not relished…each man shaking his head told me it was Claotra, that is the other they wanted me to sing.”
    The rarity of < r > (and of plain < l > except as an allophone of /n/) in Strange’s word list of Nuuchahnulth has me thinking about the similarity between claotra and Spanish la otra ‘the other one’ [feminine, perhaps from la otra canción ‘the other song’, maybe due specifically to previous singing parties with Spaniards? Against this idea, let me admit I haven’t found evidence of much Spanish visitation at Nootka Sound between 1775 and 1788. And in fact the Nuuchahnulth pronoun for ‘another’ is the very good match ƛaʔu…but that still leaves the “tra” to explain.)
  • enowass annee ‘go away’
• Page 129: Hey, Wakashan speakers / scholars, please check the numbers above 10. As in other earlyl visitors’ lexicons, they look like a possible mess of misinterpretation! Here they are:

• 11: Saoometeepahaeēēo.

• 12: Ahlkemehapahaeēēo.

• 13: Kutsamelepahaēēēo.

• 14: Moomahtehapahaēēēo.

• 15: Soochamehtepahaēēēo.

• 16: Noopomehtehapahaeeo.

• 17: Athpomehtehapahaēēēo.

• 18: Atlaqualkhmehtepahaēēēo.

• 19: Sowaqualkmetepahaēēēo.

• 20: Sakaits haēēēo.

• 30: Haēēēmehlepatsa keets haēēēo.

• 40: Haēēēo Akkleook.

• 50: Haeeeo metta putta akkleook of [“or”?] Kut-seatlish haēēēo.

• 60: Haee mehlaputkutseak haeeeo.

• 70: Mooeeak haēēēo

• 80: Soocheak haeēēo.

• 90: Haeee metla put soockeak haeēēo.

• 100: Noopock.

• 110: Haeeemehtla put noopok haeēēo.

• 120: Atlpok haēēēo.

• 130: Haeeemehtla put soocheak haēēēo.

• 140: Atlaqualkhuck-haeēēo.

• 150: Haeeemehtla put atlaqualk huk haēēēo.

• 160: Sowaqualkhuk haēēēo.

• 170: Haēēēokh.

• 180: Sukkytzuk haēēē.

• 190: Haeeemehalputs sukkytz haēēēo.

• 200: Atleook haēēēo.

[Strange’s comment:]
N.B .- As much of their reckoning as consists of tens, they frequently enumerate
by signs, in which case haeeeo, is entirely omitted. From twenty to thirty, and from to
Fourty, and so on, the numbers that express the first nine, are used without any
variation. For, having computed nine, it is Customary with them to clap or clasp their
Hands together, which always signifies ten. Thus by two claps we are to understand
twenty, three claps thirty &c.

• Page 130: haweelkh nahaie ‘begging a present of you on account of Friendship’
  • (Cf. haweelkh above, 
  • and nahei ‘friendship’ (Cook p. 455))

Bonus fact:

As we’ve seen in other early journals from the north coast region, the vocabulary used by speakers of the obviously Inuit-Yupik-Unangan family “Prince William’s Sound language” in south-central Alaska with visiting mariners includes at least 2 Nootka Jargon words:

• p. 130’s meek/week ‘no’
• and p. 133’s makook ‘they sometimes used this word in the same sense as it is at Nootka’ [i.e. ‘buy’ etc., known from many other sources].

This fact pretty handily suggests it’s true that visitors here eagerly latched onto, and used, any knowledge gotten by previous ships’ crews.

ikta mayka chaku-kəmtəks?
What have you learned?