Last ‘cow’: Wintu and Chimariko at the farthest southern reach of CJ
I see one of my favorite college professors documented the farthest southern reach of any Chinook Jargon word!
Map from Wikipedia
Harvey Pitkin’s 1985 “Wintu Dictionary” (Berkeley: University of California Press) contains on page 362 this entry:
mu•smus cow, cattle, elk, moose ? (perhaps from Modoc from Chinook Jargon; cf. English ‘moose’ (Trinity County dialect)
A slightly earlier reference, Alice Schlichter’s 1981 “Wintu Dictionary” (Department of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley), offers this similar but differently compelling entry for the word:
mu•smu•s (Chinook Jargon through Shasta) cow; elk, moose (< Engl moose)
I feel both scholars were on the right track, in that they realized Chinook Jargon had likely never been spoken by any considerable number of Wintu folks.
In particular I lean towards Schlichter’s analysis, because Shasta (see my previous article on those “Rogue Rivers” and Chinuk Wawa) is a closer geographical neighbour to Wintu.
The slightly more northerly Modoc / Klamath people, in turn, are likely to have provided Shastas with knowledge of the Jargon. (See here, for example, about the large CJ influence up there.)
Professor Pitkin’s 1963 PhD dissertation implicitly also assigns a third intermediary source from much farther north, Nez Perce people speaking Chinook Jargon, in a bibliographic note:
103. [Heizer, R.F.] 1942. Wallawalla Indian expedition. California Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 1-7. /Introduction of Chinook jargon in historical period, 1844-1847./
That article doesn’t actually mention Chinuk Wawa. But it’s an interesting hypothesis by Pitkin that that language could have been brought to Wintu territories by speakers of Sahaptian languages from Oregon, Idaho, and Washington.
I would think instead that the earlier Hudsons Bay Company fur-trapping expeditions would have to be credited —
Except, I know of no evidence that the Jargon was in fact ever established in the Sacramento Valley. There simply wasn’t any sustained HBC presence, by which I mean forts, in California to motivate the dissemination of the Jargon there.
Anyhow, keeping score here: the fact is that Wintu is the farthest southern language in which we find Chinook Jargon material in use. It’s just the one word. But that’s real data.
(Atsugewi is the farthest southeasterly language showing CJ influence, by the way.)
So now we know, CJ’s sphere of influence spread from Wintu to Eyak.
As I was finishing jotting these notes, I also found there exists a dictionary of Chimariko, a language isolate spoken next-door to Wintu, and there I also found mušmuš ‘cow’!
Note
A shoutout: Harvey Pitkin’s classes at Columbia University were my first intense exposure to an Indigenous language of North America, because he frequently cited Wintu ways of talking to illustrate various points.
Coincidentally, another of my college professors, the brilliant Robert Austerlitz, worked with Eyak speakers in Alaska back in the day, and his mentions of that language were also among my first experiences of Indigeous languages of this continent.
𛰅𛱁𛰃𛱂 𛰙𛱁𛱆𛰅𛱁 𛰃𛱄𛰙𛰃𛱄𛰙? qʰáta mayka tə́mtəm?
kata maika tumtum? Qu’en penses-tu?
What do you think?
And can you say it in Chinuk Wawa?
Hey! Teach Yourself northern-dialect Chinook Jargon!
And join free Zoom sessions…currently Sundays @ 9AM!
Contact me for the Zoom link.
Hi David,
I thought elements if Cinook jargon would have appeared as far south as Fort Ross, Caifornia between 1812 -1841.
No evidence for that. Russian is never connected with Chinook Jargon in the historical record. And Fort Ross existed only 1811-1840, a time period when CJ was unknown outside the narrow zone near Forts Astoria/George and Vancouver. But there is solid data that Russian left a local linguistic imprint, on Kashaya (southwestern) Pomo as well as some on Central Pomo.