Self-contradictions: Both logical possibilities exist for “mamook-tlaHowyum”
I couldn’t be more pleased to discover this sorta (semantically) minimal pair. 
Mess up / have pity (image credit: Medium)
Two of the common meanings that a prefixal Causative mamook- can give are (A) “to make” something happen and (B) “to treat” someone or something a certain way.
Look at these, in Northern Dialect spellings, and pronounced identically:
- mamook-tlahowyum (verb) “to mess up” something or someone
(“make pitiful”) [from a letter by Willie McCluskey, Swinomish] - mamook-tlahowyum (kopa) (verb) “to take pity (on); to have mercy (on); to do a favor (for)”
(“treat as pitiful; torture”)
Funny but true: you wind up with an enantioseme, 2 identical forms having opposite meanings!
The Southern Dialect is another one that has both of these senses. See the fine 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary for munk-ɬax̣áyam.
This little illustration nicely shows us that mamook- (or munk-) doesn’t have some easy, single-word definition in English. Nor should it have one. It’s a grammatical affix — potentially as hard to “define” as English -ed — for pity’s sake!
