Boas 1892: Many discoveries in a short article (Part 18: ‘robin’ redbreast)

This common bird was a new discovery in 1892!

Female American robin, Turdus migratorius (image credit: Washington Nature Mapping Program)

(Click here for the previous installments in this series.)

Today’s word from a tiny scholarly piece that’s of outsized importance, Franz Boas’s 1892 one-pager, “The Chinook Jargon“:

‘robin’, < pil k’oatē′n > ( = red-belly)

Convert this to a modern Grand Ronde way of spelling, and you have pʰíl k’wətʰín.

I’m wondering whether this particular Chinuk Wawa expression owes its existence to non-Indigenous input.

• Just for reference, Standard European French calls a robin a rouge-gorge ‘red-throat’ or merle, which just means ‘robin’. This kind of French didn’t have much to do with the Jargon, though.
• French-Cree Michif of the Métis people, who played such a big role in the history of Chinook Jargon, uses the first of these terms, as well as la griiv.
• English has called this bird Robin redbreast since the 15th century, “Robin” being a nickname for Robert!

Meanwhile, in the SW Washington Salish and other tribal languages, I haven’t found any words for ‘robin’ that remotely resemble anything meaning ‘red belly’ or ‘red throat’. I’ll spare you the boring details.

Keeping my idea short & to the point — I suspect that this particular lower Columbia River expression lacks ancient Indigenous roots.

It’s therefore more likely to trace to the early-creolized Métis population associated with our region’s historical fur trade.

ikta mayka chaku-kəmtəks?
What have you learned?