1897, BC: words for ‘breast(s)’, and Red River Métis

You may recall, I’ve previously written about the word tit in Northern Chinook Jargon.

Now here’s quite an interesting spelling of an older word for the same thing — titush:

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Tanas son, tanas man mamuk halak iaka
‘In the morning, the boy opened his’

siahus: iaka tanas ihi kopa iaka mama;
‘eyes; he giggled at his mother;’

iaka tiki titush: pus iaka kopit makmak, iaka
‘he wanted the breast; when he was done nursing, he’

tiki gitop, pi iaka mama ilo tiki [Ø]. Ukuk
‘wanted to get up, but his mother didn’t want that. That’

son ayu iaka tiki titush: chako pulakli
‘day he wanted the breast a lot; come nighttime,’

iaka tlus slip.
‘he slept well.’

— Kamloops Wawa #159 (December 1897), page 188

The other spelling we find in the same newspaper is tatush:

Pi
‘And’

iht kluchmin patl tlus iaka tomtom iaka wawa: “O aias tlus
‘a woman whose heart was full of goodness said: “Oh, how excellent’

ukuk klushmin iaka lolo maika ankati pi iaka patlash tatush
‘was that woman who carried you (in her belly) long ago and gave the breast’

kopa maika pus maika tanas.”
‘to you when you were a child.” ‘

— Kamloops Wawa #18[a] (March 1892), page 70

Kopit tatush, then, which says literally ‘be done with the breast’, means ‘to be weaned’ onto solid food:

Tanas man pi wiht ukuk ilip tanas
‘It’s the young people and the youngest,’

kopit tatush* klaska komtaks makmak, klaska ST
‘just weaned onto food, that God’

iskom pus wawa drit, iaka mamuk mitlait iaka
‘will choose to tell the truth; he’ll put his’

wawa kopa klaska labush”
‘words into their mouths.” ’

— Kamloops Wawa #136 (January 1896), page 19

We don’t find the older, Southern-dialect pronunciation *tutush* in the documents I’ve found of the Northern dialect.

Instead, we have forms that are more or less English-influenced.

Settlers definitely knew the Jargon word for ‘breasts’, and freely named various parts of the Northern landscape with it. Usually this got spelled as < tatoosh >, following the practice of the most popular dictionaries.

Father Le Jeune’s titush in his Kamloops Wawa newspaper suggests that that Frenchman associated the Jargon word with the locally heard English word tit.

So he may not have known the Métis-Canadian French word *tutush*, and I should imagine that this is because the Kamloops-area Métis who he was acquainted with had relatively few ties with the Red River Settlement, where that word traces back to.

I’ll reiterate that point — Chinook Jargon itself has plenty more Red River Métis connections than do some other Métis communities that are located nearer to Red River!

Don’t you think?

íkta mayka chaku-kə́mtəks?
Ikta maika chako-kumtuks? 
What have you learned? 
And, can you express it in Chinuk Wawa?