Gibbs’s (and Gill’s) “arbutus” is misleading
I got to thinking, how weird is it that “arbutus” is in some Chinuk Wawa dictionaries…
This is an English translation that’s provided for the word “lahb” by George Gibbs 1863 and the legions of Chinook dictionary pirates such as JK Gill 1884.
I know “arbutus” as a beautiful, but not particularly common, native tree growing near us when I was in grad school at the University of Victoria, BC. But not particularly common, I say. So why would there be a word for it in Chinook?
Let’s think about this. What did “arbutus” mean to English-speakers in Chinook Jargon land (OR, WA…) in the late 1800’s times when these dictionaries were published?
Perhaps not Arbutus menziesii, the lovely tree I was talking about:
Image credit: Washington Native Plant Society
Instead, I reckon folks were thinking of “the trailing arbutus…beneath the pine“; “the sweet arbutus trails“; (Epigaea repens), which is not a PNW plant:
Image credit: Adirondacks.org
Note, most references to “arbutus” in OR, WA newspapers are poetic or literary, and not referential of the Pacific Northwest in the first place.
The first definitely PNW reference in the Library of Congress Chronicling America database of newspapers is in 1879 in Washington, where a person is looking to complete his collection of “Puget Sound woods” and wants to know where to find “arbor vitae, yellow cypress, arbutus, and aspen“. Also referring to arbutus as a tree is an 1892 WA article.
These occurrences come too late to reflect Chinook Jargon usage, not to mention that I doubt folks ever made much economic use of Arbutus menziesii trees!
The actual reason for George Gibbs and his mindless imitators to translate Chinuk Wawa < lahb > / larp as “arbutus” is not a tree but this creeping plant…
Image credit: Wildflower.org
Arbutus uva-ursi used to be the current scientific name of what we usually call kinnikinnik (also spelled kinnikinnick) nowadays, in the Pacific NW. This is the plant that lahb / larp designates. (Scientifically, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, bearberry.)
This was a plant used in pipe-smoking by Métis/Canadian workers in the fur trade in this region, who primarily spoke French.
Thus, their word for it, l’herbe (“the herb”) applied to this species — not to trees, nor to Epigaea repens.
(And it’s a normal Canadian/Métis pronunciation to say larb, which winds up being larp in Jargon. Compare larb/narb in Michif.)
