[or-roots] Re: The New Baby and Chief Joseph

[Jeepstr43]

Hello to you two and everyone else as well.  I thought I would wade in on
this before it gets nastier.  I realize I am taking my life in my hands, but
just couldn't resist being the peace maker.

First of all, on the question of where the Nez Perce Band lived.  You are
both right.  I can imagine that if you were to ask Chief Joseph where he was
from, his answer would be where ever he was at that moment, but if you have
a quote from him that says where he considered his stomping grounds to be
then I would love to have it for my collection.  This was a wandering band .
The "tribal land" if you want to nail it down to being some sort of
ownership or place covered about 17 million acres.  For this I suggest you
look at the following sites I have listed for your web perusal and
education.

http://www.lewis-clarkvalley.com/indian.html
http://www.nezperce.org/2frameMain.htm

Before the White man came to settle the northwest the Nimi'ipuu lived in
peaceful groups traveling seasonally with the deep canyons cut by the Snake,
Clearwater and Salmon rivers.

The Nimi'ipuu traveled across Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.  The Nimi'ipuu
aboriginal territory was approximately 17 million acres or approximately 70
thousand square kilometers or 27 thousand square miles; including the
Clearwater River Basin, and the South and Middle forks of the Salmon River
Basin.

"Remembering the Past

The band of Nez Perce Indians who made the Wallowa Valley their home
traditionally gathered fish, game, and wild plants. They followed changing
seasons to headwaters of rivers and high mountains of the Wallow as in the
summer and returned to deep canyons of the Snake River and its tributaries
in winter.

At Walla Walla in 1855, Indians from many Northwest tribes, including almost
all Nez Perce chiefs and sub-chiefs, signed a treaty leaving the Wallowas
and large chunks of land in the present states of Idaho and Washington to
the Nez Perce. In 1863, with the discovery of gold and increased settler
pressure, a new meeting of Nez Perce bands was convened. The government
asked the Indians to reduce their lands by almost six million acres.
Accepting a reservation approximately one-tenth of what they agreed to in
1855.

Several chiefs, including Old Chief Joseph, father of the famous Joseph,
walked out, and from that time on became known as 'non-treaty' Nez Perce.
After this walkout, an Idaho Nez Perce chief named Lawyer and other chiefs
were browbeaten into signing a treaty on behalf of all Nez Perce. Government
folks reported
to Washington 'the job was done.'

Joseph never accepted the 1863 treaty. He did continue to befriend Wallowa
settlers and government officials. But he also looked for a way for his
people to remain in the Wallowas of Oregon. In fact, in 1873, the government
briefly decided that Wallowa lands had not been legally ceded and ordered
the removal of white settlers. Howls from settlers and Oregon politicians
caused a quick reversal of that decision.

Following the defeat of Custer in 1876 a new discipline was imposed on
Indians by the US Army. Joseph's band of Nez Perce and all others must
constrain themselves to the boundaries of the 1863 reservation. But after
searching the confines of a greatly reduced territory Joseph found no land
suitable for his people that was not already occupied.

After discussions in May 1877 General Howard incarcerated the Nez Perce
spokesman, Toohoolhooltzote. Young Chief Joseph then decided his people
would have to resettle away from the reservation lands in Idaho to preserve
their culture and religion. As a result of this some dissension broke out.
Some Nez Perce preferred to settle in Lapwai to avoid retaliation by the
U.S. government, while others prepared to travel to buffalo country or
Canada for freedom. In June 1877 near the reservation young warriors killed
some white settlers. One of the warriors was the son of a man killed by a
settler. The 'Nez Perce War' - really a 1200 mile retreat ending 40 miles
short of Canada - ensued."



Second, as to the word Papoose.  Like all words adopted by another language
it has changed since it's original Native American form.  English is a
"melting pot" language that adopts many words from many languages as do
other languages. The Nez Perce were peaceful and thier their language was
spoken in a variety of forms by many neighboring tripes and they, according
to Aoki, also incorporated words from other tribes, this exchange included
the Umatilla, Walla Walla and Cayuse Indians. Take a look at the following
site for information about that.

http://www.nezperce.org/2frameMain.htm

About one hundred years ago, the Cayuse language was lost. Only a few words
were recorded by U.S. Army soldiers but not enough to recover the grammar
Go to http://www.umatilla.nsn.us/aoki.html  for a fascinating story of Dr.
Aoki's visit to the Umatilla Indian Reservation in his work to restore their
language.In 1996, (I think) the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation  embarked on an ambitious journey to revive, preserve and teach
the original words of their forefathers. Tribal elders began by  teaching
weekly classes in 1996 in the Umatilla, Walla Walla and Nez Perce languages,
but the Confederated Tribes want to expand on that effort with a more
structured approach.

 Using money from tribal gaming, the Confederated Tribes  hired a linguist
Noel Rude to develop dictionaries and lesson plans, and purchased 10
Macintosh computers to create a language lab for teachers and students.

Rude, who was being courted by the Warm Springs Indians as well as the
government of Bolivia, chose the Umatilla Indian Reservation, where he has
worked on-and-off with elders for more than 20 years. He was hired as a
consultant for six months, but that contract is expected to be extended in
the spring for development of a second phase of the language program.

Under the contract, Rude, who earned his linguistics Ph.D. from the
University of Oregon, is expected to develop an audio and/or video tape
collection of language texts and grammar descriptions with corresponding
written English translation.

He also is expected to produce preliminary dictionaries for the Walla Walla,
Umatilla and Nez Perce languages. (The Cayuse took up the Nez Perce tongue
when their native language died.) Further, Rude will develop weekly lesson
plans and organize the teaching of classes in each of the three languages.

There is a great book on the language that is for sale if you have the $165
for it.  http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2855.html  This site is for the
U  of C and they describe and sell the book that was ultimately produced by
a Dr. Aoki  It is available in the WSU library and probably all other larger
libraries, especially those connected with universities.  You can get a call
number for it at the following site at the WSU.
http://griffin.wsu.edu/search/a?a   Then callyour local library and see if
they have it.

More to the point, the actual word PAPOOSE is pretty well discussed at the
following site.  I have quoted from a discussion of it for you and others on
the list.  This is a perfect example of how a word starts out in one
language, gets attributed to another, ends up in another form in yet another
language.  Read all the way through this and you can see how, by tracing
back words we can finally arrive at the source.  I hazzard a guess here as
well that a Native Speaker, trying to communicate to persons who did not
speak his or her language, might very well have said "biboozi" and the white
listner may very well have heard "papoose".  My proof of that is my
experience teaching camp songs to children.  I taught a German song called
Rosen Fra Frune.  When I listened to the children singing I could clearly
hear they were saying Frozen Raw Prunes.

anyhow, her are the explanations of the source of Papoose and the web site
where you can go to learn more.  The discussion her all arose out of a
question posted to the list regarding the use by Mr. Rogers on national
television of the word papoose.

The explanation Frances Wakefield gave on a tape here at the
Archives of Traditional Music is that the word (papoose) is Ojibway: "boozi"
is a verb meaning "begins a journey/gets on and rides"; "biboozi" means
"comes to get on and ride"; the participial change give "baboozi": "someone
coming to get on and ride" (the double "o" is
pronounced twice as long as a single "o"). Given the fact that
the Europeans who tried to write down the sounds of Ojibway
didn't always do so methodically (and often didn't agree with each
other even when they WERE systematic), the transition to
"papoose" is pretty easy to understand. And of course if you
spell it like that, it's easy to understand the way English
speakers pronounce it.


According to Charles L. Cutler, O BRAVE NEW WORDS! (p. 37), "papoos" is the
Narragansett word for "baby." He also cites its first occurrence in English
in 1634, in William Wood's NEW ENGLAND'S PROSPECT, where it was spelled
"Pappouse."


The Webster's here in the office says it's from Narragansett, a New England
Algonquian language. I don't know if it has cognates in other Algonquian
languages. Of course, "Mr." Rogers is quite wrong to attribute it to Native
American (language)s generally, and is overlooking the issue of the
suitability of the term in English, however respectable its pedigree outside
English. Perhaps the show would issue some sort of correction?


Actually, a lot of English words for Native American people (or social
roles), artifacts, animals, etc., come from East Coast Algonquian languages.

Another source says:

Papoose is Narragansett or Massachusett. It shows up in connection
with pilgrim discussion of Indians in the early 1600's. (The only similar
Ojibwe word I know is bebiins which Ottawas don't much use. They say
"binoojiins".) (By the way I think the Narragansett word shows that bebiins
is NOT a borrowing from English.

The final word comes from a French linguist who says
"No, papoose is not a Narragansett word, it seems, but Micmac. Bernie
Francis, Micmac speaker from Sydney (New Brunswick?) knows it (and it
will probably be in Micmac dictionaries as well, but I cannot check
here).

I think it is also in Lescarbot's History of New France (1609), who
gives a list of Micmac words. This was in the time that a Micmac-Basque
pidgin was used between Europeans and Natives in Nova Scotia and the
Gulf of Saint Lawrence around 1600. It may have been transmitted from
this pidgin to New England. Just last month Ives Goddard (Smithsonian
specialist in New England Algonquian languages) and I discussed this
word, as he does not believe it could be from New England languages
(like Narragansett). It appeared to be a Micmac word.


Did you notice how few responses about native languages/words
come from linguists? Everybody thinks that because she (or he) can
speak a language they are thereby qualified to make pronouncements about
someone else's language. It's sort of like saying that because everyone's
body uses chemical reactions to live, we are all qualified to explain
chemistry to whoever asks. It's just unfortunate (in a way) that linguistic
explanations don't blow up the way amateur chemistry does.


On the more positive side, I was taken by Francis Wakefield's
folk etymology. It may not be correct, but it definitely is art. It's
worth pointing out that what mothers do with babies is not e-boozihaad
but bemoomaad (i.e. they don't load them on vehicles, as Francis suggests
they carry them on their backs (bimoom-, one of the nicer words of Ojibwe is
bimoomaawaso, (s)he carries (her) baby on her back, and the name for a baby
carrier--bimoomaawasowin.)

In closing, I have been delighted with your "discussion", but I suggest you
try not to shed too much of one another's "red ink" the life blood of all
writers. :-)  I love language and words.  You both obviously also love
language.

Joan