Maybe a skooch more to the etymology of wálamsh ‘Rogue River tribe’

A word you might not have noticed in the awesome 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary of Chinuk Wawa is wálamsh ‘Rogue River tribe’ (from southwest Oregon). 

I myself haven’t had much occasion to talk about or ponder “Rogue River”…

Rogue River (image credit: Giphy)

Today, though, I noticed its etymology is shown as “related to wa•lamkskni•, designating Rogue River Indians”.

First off, let’s honour the fact that wa•lamkskni• is recognizably a Klamath-language word. Compare Klamath so•lčoq[-]kni• ‘Lower Rogue River people’ (which is formed on the borrowed Chinook Jargon noun sáltsəqw ‘ocean; coast’ with the suffix for ‘people’). Same suffix for ‘people’.

Second, M.A.R. Barker’s Klamath dictionary specifies wa•lam[-]ks[-]kni• as denoting the Upland Takelma for some speakers; for other, generically “Rogue River”-area Indigenous people. The root used in that word seems to be uninterpretable within Klamath, as I understand Barker; I haven’t found a similar place/tribe name in Takelma.

Third, the Grand Ronde Chinuk Wawa pronunciation of the tribe name needs to be accounted for if possible. Why does it end in just -sh, rather than the apparently original /kskni•/? Other Klamath-etymology items in GR CW are more faithful to their source forms, e.g. muwatʰwas ‘Modocs’ (actually ‘Pit River Indians’).

Here I’m inclined to offer up the idea of the Lower Chehalis Salish suffix -mš / -məš ‘people’ (used in names of tribes, such as ɬəẃáĺməš ‘Lower Chehalis’!). This word-ending may perhaps have been fairly well known around Grand Ronde Reservation, considering the sizeable number of LoCheh words in that community’s Southern Dialect. Could (some) GR folks have heard the Klamath word as wála[-]msh?

For that matter, I can’t ignore the chance that some at GR took the word as relating to wá[-]lamt, the original Clackamas Chinookan name of the Willamette River. Clackamas speakers, too, were prominent in the community. Going upstream on the Willamette (rhymes with “damn it”, thank you 2012 dictionary makers!) will get you most of the way to Rogue River country…

Bonus fact:

Rogue Rivers, and other SW Oregon tribes, also came to be known as inatay-tilixam (‘other.side-people’) at Grand Ronde, because they got settled across the South Yamhill River from the Indian Agency.

𛰅𛱁‌𛰃𛱂 𛰙𛱁𛱆‌𛰅𛱁 𛰃𛱄𛰙‌𛰃𛱄𛰙?
qʰáta mayka tə́mtəm?
kata maika tumtum? 
Que penses-tu? 
What do you think?
And can you say it in Chinuk Wawa?