carney. 1997. native american loanwords in american english

7/27/2019 CARNEY. 1997. Native American Loanwords in American English

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Native American Loanwords in American EnglishAuthor(s): Ginny CarneySource: Wicazo Sa Review, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 189-203Published by: University of Minnesota PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1409169 .

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Native American Loanwordsin American EnglishGinny Carney

In 1959 PresidentDwightD. Eisenhowerigneda proclamationd-mittingAlaskato the union as the firstnew state in forty-sevenyears.The "last rontier"-a regionalmost a fifthaslargeas all the otherstatescombined-began absorbingsettlers from "the lower 48" in a man-ner reminiscentof the seventeenth-century expansion of PlymouthColony. Today,almost forty yearsafterAlaska's tatehood, towns andvillageswith curiousspellings-Quinhagak, Tuntatuliak,Unalakleet-continue to greet the cheechakoChinook word for "newcomer").Mas-teringthe nuancesof meaningbetween wordslike mukluka high bootmade of sealskin)and muktukwhaleskin used as food), or subtle sound sdifferences n place namessuch as Chugiak(a smallcommunitynorthof Anchorage)and Chugach (a mountainrange) presentsan ongoingchallenge to those unacquaintedwith AlaskaNative languages.Themajorityof immigrantso Alaskahave been English-speaking, nd their ovocabulary, ike that of America's arliestEuropean ettlers,has lackedwords for the unfamiliarrivers,lakes, birds, fish, plants, and animals 5 189that they have encountered in the "GreatLand."Hence, words bor-rowed fromthe languagesof AlaskaNativeshavebecome, in the wordsof CharlesCutler,"a olorfulandindispensablepartof the modernEng-lish language."'As Cutleris quickto observe,however,the borrowingof EnglishloanwordsfromEskimo and Aleut has declined sharplyinthis century-a phenomenon that has traditionally paralleledshiftsin White-Indianrelationships n America. The purposeof this study,

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therefore,is to examine the history of White-Indianrelationships nLatinAmericaas well as in North Americafor corresponding luctua-tions in loanwordborrowingfrom Native American anguages,and toexploretwentieth-centuryattitudestowardNative Americansand theimpactof these attitudeson borrowing oday."Language,"eclares CharltonLaird,"thriveson friendshipandsocial intercourse,"ut for a timedatingback at least to the firstvoyageof ChristopherColumbus o America 1492), communicationbetweenIndiansand Whites has been "hampered y fearanddistrust."2On theother hand, it was Columbus who led the way for the adoption ofAmerican Indian words into European anguages.3On October 28,1492, forexample,Columbusrecordedthe wordcanoefromcanoa,anArawakword) for the first ime.4In 1555,canoe ppeared n Englishforthe first time in RichardEden's ranslationfrom the Latin of anothertravelogue,TheDecades f theNeweWorlde,r West ndia,Etc., by PeterMartyr.5During the next two centuries it was spelled cannoa, anoae,canow,canowe,cannoe,cannew,conow,connue, onnou,cannowe, aano, canoo,andcanot,but by the end of the eighteenth century,the presentformbecame fixed.6

Expecting o find"cannibalsmongstthem"when he encounteredCaribsfor the firsttime, Columbusfound insteada "peopleso amiableandfriendly hat even the Kingtook a pridein callingme his brother."7Perhaps,asVirgilVogel suggests,the friendlinessandgenerosityof theIndianswasregardedby those of anothercultureasa sign of weakness,as an invitation to take advantageof them;8 regardlessof the whiteexplorers'reasoning,writtenhistory affirms hat they repaidkindnesswith greed.Amongthe treasureshey acquired,however,were the fol-lowingAmerindianwords, eventuallyborrowedby English:9

cacique;rawak,"prince"r "lord";aciqueCaniba; arib,"strongmen,""flesh-eating eople"; annibalcasavi/cazabbi;aino,"a tarchyroot used in makingbreadandtapioca"; assavahamaca; rawak,"bedmadefromthe barkof ahamackree";

A hammocko mahiz; aino, "corn";maize190 - Although Columbus introduced Native Americanwords into

Spanish, he firstEnglishmano use a West IndianwordmayhavebeenT. Paynell.The Tainoguaiacum-asourceof timberandresin-appearsin Paynell'sranslationof a medicalbook in 1533:"Yethath thiswoodeGuaiacumlwayesbeen there used."10Apparently, n the case of thisparticularword, knowledgeof its medicinalpropertiesaccompanied tinto the English anguage,for modernphysiciansstillconsiderthegua-iactest Hemoccult the most accurateand reliable commercialscreen-



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ing test available for detecting occult blood in feces." That guaiacstems from an Arawakanword, however, is a little-known fact in theworld of medicine.Health care professionalsmight be likewise surprised o learn

that the medical term tularaemiaas an Amerindian oot. LinguistLairdexplains:Nahuatltullin ecameSpanishtule, namefora tall bull-rush,which with the Spanishsuffix-ar,meaning"place-where,"became the name of a Californiacounty,TulareCounty.This was the scene of the discoverythat the dis-ease which was decimatingrabbitsandgroundsquirrelswas the so-called "rabbit isease" hat waskillinghumanbeings also. With the Greeksuffix-aemia,the disease be-cametularaemia.12

NumerousNahuatlwords,in fact,haveentered BritishEnglishthroughthe Spanish anguageandpersisttoday in AmericanEnglish.Inan arti-cle published n 1938,Dr.GeorgeWatson of the Universityof Chicagolisted the following loanwordsand the dates to which they have beentraced:3avocado 1751(mentioned n GeorgeWashington's iary)chicle 1854chili 1836chocolate 1604coyote 1834ocelot 1682tamale 1854tomato 1604To this list of LatinAmericanderivatives H. L. Mencken addsNahuatlloanwordsmesquite,escal,eyote,apota, ndtequila,longwith a >word of disputed origins, barbecue;'4nd MargaretSchlaugh (1960)includeshurricanethroughSpanishhuracdn,romQuichejurakan),otato(Spanishpatata, romCaribbatata),and tapiocaby way of Portuguese oandnativeBrazilianipioca).'5Inmostcases,borrowingwordsfromthe conquered ndigenesof i 191LatinAmericaduring nitialWhite-Indiancontact was simplya meansof namingunfamiliarplants, animals,or foods;in some instances,how-ever, there is a strong correlationbetween an appropriatedword andmonetaryvalue.The word chocolates a good example, for perhapsno

other word in the English anguagehas taken a morecircuitousroute tothe United States, nor recalls so poignantly the annihilationof thepeople fromwhich the word originated.'6As Peter Limburgreminds



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us, duringthe time Cortes and his conquistadorswere plundering heMexican heartland (1520), chocolatlwas "so highly valued that thecacao beansfrom which it was made served ascurrency.One hundredbeanswas the priceof a slaveamongthe Aztecs."'7Cortesnoted thatastrangebeveragemade from these beans seemed popular among theAztec nobles and rich men, and that the mighty Montezuma, theAztec emperor, drank his chocolatl rom goblets of gold that werethrownawayafterone use, thusdemonstratinghis wealthandpower.18Naturally,a sample of cacao beans was among the treasuresCortestook with him when he returned o the motherland n 1528, and hotchocolate (pronouncedcho-co-lah-tayy the Spanish)soon became apopularbeveragein Spain.

By the earlyseventeenthcentury,the chocolate fad had spreadto England,France,and Italy, and in 1664, Samuel Pepys noted inhis diary that he had been to a coffee-house to drink "jocolatte.""Verygood,"was his comment.19Although the North AmericanIn-dian (northof Mexico) contributionof loanwords s rich,Cutlernotesthat it does not approach the abundance of loanwords in EnglishfromLatin AmericanIndian anguages.He attributes his contrasttothree specificfactors,environment,civilization,and culturalreceptiv-ity, which distinguishthe conquest of the Spaniards romthat of theEnglish-speaking olonists, and arguesthat "thesocial hierarchiesofthe LatinAmericancivilizationsmeshed [more] readilywith those ofthe European nvaders."20Laird,an outspokencritic of Englishcolonization, is even moreexplicitthanCutler:

Hadthe Indo-Europeananguages riumphedovertheAmerindianonguesin three centuries-and we mustthinkof the conquestas stillcontinuing-we shouldknowlittlemoreof Amerindianhanwe know of the ancientCelticlanguagesand dialectsobliteratedby the invadingAngles

> and Saxonsin Britain,ittle morethan we know of the Gal-lic speechoverrunby the Romans n whatis now France.2'o Although Laird is certainly justified in decrying the ongoing

politicalattemptsto regulateIndian anguagesin America, t mustbe192 5 remembered hat culturalbeliefs aredeeply entrenched.Any attempt,therefore, to understandWhite-Indian relationships in the UnitedStatesmust be precededby some knowledge of the philosophiesthatshapedthe values of both the Indiansandthe New Englandcolonists.The contention of John Smith (1580?-1631) that (civilized) whitepeople should rule the world, for instance, was a prevalentbeliefamongearlysettlersin America.22Indian eaders,on the otherhand,foundsuchideasincredible.In



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1635, an Indian Wicomessechief) responded to the Maryland gover-nor'sdemandthat Indiansbe subjectto Englishlaw, saying,"since hatyou are heere strangers,and come into our Countrey, you shouldratherconformyourselvesto the Customes of our Countrey,then im-pose yours upon us."23Indeed,the people ofJamestown,Virginia,had no choice but toconformto the customs of their neighbors duringtheir firstmonths inAmerica,for without the generosity and help of Chief Powhatanandhis people, the colonists would have died of starvation.For a periodofsome fifteenyears,Whites andIndians ived together peaceably,and itwasextremelyadvantageous o the Virginia ettlers to learnthe Algon-quian languageof their neighbors. During that time of friendlyrela-tions, Indianwords made their debut in John Smith's"ATrueRelationof Such Occurences and Accidents of Noate as Hath Hapned in Vir-ginia Since the FirstPlanting of That Collony" (1608). After citingseveral Powhatanplace names and rivers he had encountered in histravels(i.e., Waranacomoco,amauncke,ayankatank),mithdescribes hePowhatan"Emperour roudly lying uppon a Bedsteada foote high ...and covered with a great Coveringof Rahaughoumsraccoonskins]." nthe same account, he writes, "The EmpereurPowhatan, ach weekeonce ortwice, sent me manypresentsof Deare,bread,Raugroughcuns."24Several researchershave noted the discrepancies in Smith'sspelling of raccoon;25ven a cursoryglance at his writing,however,re-veals a similar ack of perfectionin his English orthographies."Ibe noscholer,"wrote Smith,who readilyadmitted his lack of formaleduca-tion;26 et, in spiteof what RobertMcCrum,WilliamCran,and RobertMacNeil describe as an "often curious and tortuous"process of pum-meling polysyllabicIndianwords into StandardEnglish,27John mith'sfamiliaritywith Indian language and culture "produced he greatestnumber of Indian loanwords in the early seventeenth century."28Whenwar broke out in 1622 between Indians and the settlers, however,Smith-once friend and advocatefor the Indian-proposed enslaving Sthe Indiansas the Spaniardshad done in Mexico, and the borrowingof >words in Virginia came almost to a complete halt.29

Accordingly,along the easternseaboard,very few Native wordswere borrowed for nearly two centuries, by which time the Indians ?were "enforcedlypeaceful."30 ccordingto the firstcensus in the NewWorld(1790), the populationof the colonies numberedapproximately 5 1934,000,000 people, 95 percent of whom were living east of the Ap-palachianMountains,and 90 percentof whom were fromvariouspartsof the BritishIsles.3'When these settlers firstarrived n America,theywere dependentupon the Indiansfor theirvery survival.Also, havingnames for all the unfamiliarhingsandplacesin their new environmentwas vitally importantto the English, for as Lairdpoints out, "havingone'sown set of namesfor [everything]must have encourageda con-



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viction of belonging to a natural rinitymadeup of God, our people,and the world."32Now that their numberhad increased,the words"civilization" nd "savages" ominated their speech; understandably,friendlycontact with the Indiansdeclined,with a subsequentdecreasein loanwords.When the Indians were no longer a threat, toleranceincreasedand Whites renewed theirinterest n Native languages.33Frequently,Native wordscould be adapted o the Englishtonguefairlysimply,as in the case of these Algonquian erms:34

seganku segongu squunck skunk1634)askutasquash squontersquashquash1643)misickquatashacatash succotash1751)wampampeag wampumpeag wampum1647)otchock wuchak woodchuch woodchuck1674)

"Occasionally,hough, the colonists gave up,"notes BillBryson."Fortimethey referred o anediblecactusby its Indianname, metaquesunauk,but eventuallyabandoned he fightandcalled it aprickly ear."35ome-times, instead of borrowingan Indianword, the settlerssimply trans-lated it into English.Lincoln Barnettmentions two such expressions:firewaters a literal translation of the Algonquian scoutiouabou;alefacesEnglishfor the Ojibwaywabinesiwin.36nothercases, a wordjust nevertook hold in Englishspeech. One suchwordappeared n the writingofAlexanderWhitaker(1585-1616?), an Anglican clergymanwho cameto the newly established colony of Virginiain 1611. "Their Priests(whom they call Quiokosoughs)re no other but such as our EnglishWitchesare,"Whitakerdeclared.Inthatsame accounthe wrote, "Theystand in great awe of their Quiokosoughs,hich are a generation ofviperseven of Sathansowne brood."37Unfortunately,Whitaker'sun-timely death by drowning(at age 31) may have deprivedthe Englishlanguageof at leastone Algonquian oanword!LikeWhitaker,contends David Lovejoy,most Britishpeople of

> the seventeenthcenturybelieved that the Indianswere remnantsof theTen Lost Tribes of Israelwho had forgotten their God and wanderedeastwarduntileventually,eitherby a landbridgeor ice floes, they hado reached North America.38f immigrants o the New Worldwere notalreadyconvinced that Indians were the devil'soffspring, they were194 3 quicklypersuadedby the gyrationsof the pawwaws,ndianpriestswhobecame one of the primaryobstacles to converting Indiansto Chris-tianity. Furthermore,militarysetbacks duringboth the Pequot Warof 1637 and the King Philip'sWar of 1675 were attributed to thepawwaws,who "summonedupernatural ssistancefor theirpeople."39

Actually, James Rosier, who published A TrueRelationof the MostProsperousVoyageMade This PresentYeere 605by CaptaineGeorgeWaymouth,is credited with introducing the word powwow BaughWaugh n the text)



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into the Englishlanguage.His descriptionof the priests may explainthe colonists' terrorof them:One amongthem ... suddenlycried with a loudvoice,BaughWaugh:then the women falldowne, and lie uponthe ground,and the men all togetheranswering he same,fall a stampingroundabout the firewith both feet, ashardasthey can, makingthe groundshake,with sundryout-cries,andchange of voice andsound.40

In the case of powwow, oth the spelling and the meaningunderwentchanges. From its originalmeaningof "priest"literally,"hedreams"),powwowraduallybecame a term for "aceremonyto conjure he cure ofdisease, success in war, etc., markedby feasting, dancing, etc.";andtoday,almostanyconference orgathering,especiallyof Native Ameri-cans, is referred o asa powwow.41In spite of culturaldifferences and the distrust that existed be-tween Indiansand Whites, seventeenth-centuryrecords seem to indi-cate that both madecyclic efforts to learnthe languageof the other.Inhis "Good News fromNew England" 1624), EdwardWinslow wrote:"As or the language, t isverycopious, large,anddifficult.As yet [i.e.,to September 10, 1623],we cannot attainto any greatmeasure hereof:but can understand hem, andexplainourselvesto theirconverse withus."42 Obviously, these firstawkwardattemptsat communication be-tween Native Americansand Englishsettlers had an astoundingeffecton AmericanEnglish,foraccordingto the estimate of languageschol-ars,some 1,700 wordsenteredthe Englishlanguageduringthe seven-teenth century.43The eighteenthcenturywascomparativelybarrenof Indian oan-words, at least partly,concludes Cutler,becauseof culturalmisunder-standings between Whites and Indians. Instead of new loanwords,racial nsultsbecameembeddedin the Englishvocabulary.44 edman n1725 and half-breedn 1760 emphasizedthe racialdistinctionbetweenWhites and Indians;Indian ift, originally an expression signifying apresentforwhich anequivalent s expected,wascorrupted o mean(asit does today), a gift that is taken back;45 ndianhostilities-real or oimagined-prompted wardance1711),warwhoop1739),warpath1755),war ong 1757), warhatchet1760), warpole 1775), warclub 1776), and 3 195warpost 1776), andfinally, n 1792,warparty.46Joining this host of "war"words in the eighteenth centurywasthe wordMohock,irstrecordedbyJonathanSwiftin hisjournal( 1712).Accordingto Swift,the Mohocks ereruffianswho "play he devilaboutthis town every night, slit people'snoses, andbeat them."47 he Gentle-mansMagazine,n 1768, declared that these hoodlums were so calledbecause they mauledpassersby"inthe same cruel mannerwhich the



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Mohawks, ne of the Six Nations of Indians, might be supposed todo."48The New WorldDictionaryraces Mohawk o the Narragansettmohowauuck-literally,theyeat animatethings"-and Brysonhas un-covered "nofewerthan 142spellings"of Mohawk.49

Stories aboundconcerningtribalnames;but Lairdgives a practi-cal reason for the confusion surrounding he spelling of these namesand other loanwords:Consideringthat those who recordedIndiannames hadtheir own accents andspellings,thatthey were often care-less and sometimesdrunk, hatthey usuallyrecordedanameonly frommemoryand withoutphonetic symbolsorphonetic devices,one need not be surprised hat the samewordhadbecome popularas ChippewandOjibway.50By the earlynineteenthcentury, philologists were beginning tobe interested in more than loanwords and tribal names. Men like

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864) found "strikingprinciples ofagreement"between grammatical tructuresof Indianlanguagesandthe Hebrew language.Furthermore,Schoolcraftbelieved that gram-mar"expressedhe ideation of a people and carriedwith it the artsandideas of a race."51

Such Enlightenment deas were possiblyThomas Berger'snspi-ration for a passage in his popularnovel LittleBigMan (1964). JackCrabb'spa, speakingto his friendJonasTroy,says,Remembert is written in the Book of Mormon that theIndincomprises he lost tribes of Israel.That accountsformy difficulty n speechwith them noble specimensalongthe Platte, knowingnot awordof Hebrewthough I intendto give it studywhen we reachSalt Lake.52

The search for a universal anguage,as Bergerrecognizes, was rootedin the Enlightenmentbelief in "universal onsciousnessand facultiesofperception," ndit waspopularlybelievedthat the studyof Indian an-? guageswould shed light not only on the Indian's louded pastbut alsoon the historyof man.53196 5 Bythe 1830s, there was anincreasing endencyto judgeprogressin racialterms,54o which Secretaryof the TreasuryAlbert Gallatin(1761-1849) responded:"In he progressive mprovementof mankind,muchmore[positionsof power]has been dueto religiousandpoliticalinstitutionsthan to races."55 isillusionedwith Americangovernmentandunwillingto supportAndrewJackson,whom he detested, Gallatinturnedto the science of philology. Adamantlydenying the theory ofIndian nferiority,he devoted all his sparetime to the classificationof



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Indian tribes by languages.56He believed that in ethnology lay thepotential not only for humanbeings to retrievetheir past but also toshape a better future,but as Biederreasons,Gallatinwas a man out ofstep with his time.57

Most nineteenth-centuryIndian oanwords n AmericanEnglishhave a distinctivelyWesternflavor,reflecting,of course, the resultsofAmericanexpansion.Evenso, Cutler lists 145 Native Americanwordsthat enteredthe English anguageduringthis century.58Structurallinguists Edward Sapir (1884-1939) and LeonardBloomfield 1887-1949) set the pace for the twentiethcenturyby con-firming hat "primitive"ndian anguagesareby no meansprimitive nthe sense of being rudimentary r unevolved;on the contrary, hey areextremelycomplex languages.59One of the problemsof studyingIndian anguages,however,hasbeen a growing tendency toward what Geoffrey Pullumlabels "anti-intellectualmodes of discourse and increasing ignoranceof scientificthought."60 he specific problemto which Pullumalludes is suggestedby the title of his book, TheGreat skimo ocabularyoax.Ina paperpre-sented at the 1982 annualmeeting of the AmericanAnthropologicalAssociation, LauraMartin (Cleveland State University) introducedthis topic, usingscientific data to refutethe persistent,but false,notionthat Eskimoshave manywords (up to two hundred,depending uponthe source)for "snow";he blamedanthropologistsand linguists"whoshould know better"-not secondary schoolteachers-for keeping a"folkbelief"alive.61

That the folklore about Inuit/Yupik snow"wordspersistsis notsurprising, orcontemporaryAmericansareverycuriousaboutIndiansand their language.In fact, the recently released NativeNorthAmericanAlmanacDetroit:Gale Research nc., 1994)devotes some twentypagesto a scholarlywork on Native North American anguages.There is agrowing enthusiasm for Indianplace-names,and today most schoolchildren are aware that more than half the states in the union bear 3Indiannames.

Traditionally,however, many have disapprovedof borrowingNative Americanwords. Noah Webster, orone, argued hat "theharsh,gutteralsounds of the natives" ught not to be retained.62 ome settlers 0found Indiannamesboth uncomfortablyalien and uncouth in sound.63Theodore Roosevelt insisted, "We have room but for one Language 3 197here and that is the English anguage,forwe intend to see that the cru-cible turns our people out as Americansof Americannationalityandnot as dwellers n a polyglot boardinghouse."64Roosevelt was not alone in his goal to turn Americainto thewhite man's and, and although linguistichistoriansof AmericanEng-lish list thousandsof loanwords from the indigenouspeoples of Northand South America,65most citizens of the United States today would



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be hard-pressedto list half a dozen (excepting place-names).Thesentiment of many contemporaryAmericans, n fact, is reflectedin atourismessay that Saul Bellowwrote forHolidayMagazine1957) con-cerningthe impactof Native Americanson the state of Illinois:They have left theirbones, theirflints,andpots, theirplacenames... andlittle else besides a stain,seldomvivid, on the consciousness of their white successors ...There aremonuments o them here andtherethroughoutthe state,but they areonly historicalornaments o theprideof the present.66Bellow'sdepictionof Native Americansas "historical rnaments"seems particularly ignificant n light of his more recent involvementin U.S. English, a pressuregroup designed to promote English as"the one officiallanguageof the country."Foundedin 1987 by Sena-tor S. I. Hayakawa,this group quickly gained 350,000 members,in-

cluding such distinguished "advisorysupporters"as Bellow, AlistairCooke, and Norman Cousins, and received annual donations of $7.5million. By late 1988, accordingto BillBryson,Hayakawa's rganiza-tion had managedto have Englishmade the official languageof sev-enteen states,67and even more recently, Lynn Sherr of ABC Newsreported:

The movement is growing.Twenty-twostateshave [now]madeEnglishtheir official anguageandin recentmaga-zine polls, 73 percentof the readersof U.S.NewsandWorldReportnd 65 percentof people polled by TimendCNN,supportedEnglishas the official anguage.68Sadly,the rhetoricof many twentieth-centuryAmericans-someof them linguists-only perpetuates he angerand intoleranceof pre-vious centuries.Ina 1987 document headed ENGLISHFIRST, groupof legislators, representingsome twenty states, unleashed the follow-

ing claims:0N< Tragically,many immigrantshese daysrefuseto learn198 1 English.They never become productivemembersofAmerican ociety. They remainstuckin a linguisticandeconomic ghetto, many livingoff welfareandcosting

workingAmericansmillions of tax dollarsevery year.c Incredibly, here is a radicalmovementin this coun-trythatnot only promotessuch irresponsiblebehavior,butactuallywants to give foreign languages he same sta-tus as English-the so-called"bilingual"movement.69



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One can only guessat the responsehad suchwords been utteredby anAlgonquiansachemchief) when the English-or, in some cases, non-English-ancestors of the this document'sauthorsbegan arrivinginthiscountry!

Ironically, he EnglishFirstmovementemergedfrom an era thathaswitnessed anunprecedentedrise of Englishacrossthe entire world.To represent Englishas a "pure"anguageand to hold that other lan-guageswill corruptour own is akin to the pre-romanticbelief that fic-tion was "anartistically nferiorand/ormorallycorruptingkindof liter-ature."70ustas the highly criticized works of JamesFenimoreCooperenriched the English language with Indian words during the early1800s, Native American literaturetoday is a fertile source of newwords andconcepts.David Simpson, however,suggeststhat the Native American"isdramatized in American iterature] . . only because he is posited asdisappearing; e is thusopen forimagingwithin the terms of a tragicalromanticism,as the embodiment of values that arebeing lost."Thesevalues, argues Simpson, can be safely lamented because they arethoughtto be vanishing,but they can never"emergeasa crediblechal-lenge to the new nation."71 ertainly,Hollywood has made a fortuneexploitingthe theme of "thevanishingIndian," nd it is the rareNativeAmericanwho has not heard-usually fromahighly literateadult-theincredulousresponse,"Why,I didn'tknow there were any real ndiansleft!"One method of keeping the Native American nvisible is to stiflehiswords,for "tokilla language s to killapeople,"and aslong as some-one insists on speakingforhim,the Indian sessentially powerless.Currently,AlaskaNatives arefacingthe kinds of conflict indige-nous people have alwaysencounteredwhen new settlers have movedin, and they are under the same pressuresto assimilate as were theIndian ribes of nineteenth-centuryAmerica.Researchers ndscholarsneed to accept the challenge of preservingthe scores of Native lan-guages still spoken in Alaska and need to begin keeping meticulous 5lUrecords of new loanwords that are entering English from Eskimo, ;Indian,andAleutlanguages.

Dictionariesneed to be updated.For nstance,two Native wordsthat have been in common use throughoutAlaska for at least twenty oyears are not yet listed in English dictionaries:camai sh-mai), "wel-come,"andquianacoy-ana),"thank ou."The OxfordEnglish ictionary s 199listsqianaas "an nventedword,"used as a trademarkor synthetic ny- rlons, and gives 1968 as the date of origin. Currently isted in RandomHouseDictionary1987) are the followingAlaskaNative words:cheechakoatenderfoot/newcomer);also,chechako,heechaco[1895-1900] Chinookkashimamen'scommunityhouse); [1850-55] Yupikqasgiq



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kuspuka lightweightparka,wornby Eskimowomen);[nodate]Yupikqaspeqqiviutsoftwool of muskoxen, used forknitting scarves,etc.); [1955-60] Inuit

mukluksoft boot worn by Eskimos, often lined with fur);[ 1865-70] Yupik maklakumiak a women's boat); [1760-70] InuitThese are only a few of the words one encounters every day in theforty-ninth state, and as Alaska Natives begin to study their own lan-guages again, the English language is certain to experience anotherpeak in borrowing words-at least until the Alaska oil is gone!

In the introduction to this essay, reference was made to the de-cline of loanwords from the languages of Alaska Natives in this cen-tury. Perhaps no one can provide better insight than an Alaska Nativehimself. In a 1991 letter to the AnchorageDaily News, Joel Blatchfordlamented governmental rules and regulations that now prohibit AlaskaNatives from fishing and hunting on lands they have subsisted on forthousands of years. "I went downtown," he wrote, "carrying a signwhich read, 'Federal, city, and state governments should hire more Na-tives.' People said to me, 'Natives don't need jobs; they get everythingfree.' Others yelled out, 'Get back where you came from.' I replied, 'Icame from Alaska, and the only place left is my mother's womb.'"72

Like his Native brothers and sisters of earlier centuries, unfortu-nately, Mr. Blatchford may someday find himself living in a land thatboasts hundreds of Eskimo, Aleut, and Indian place-names but whoseoriginal inhabitants are considered "only historical ornaments."

NOTES

1 Charles L. Cutler, 0 BraveNewWords! ativeAmericanoanwordsnCurrentnglishNorman, Univer-sity of Oklahoma Press, 1994),13. Cutler'sbook is the first bookpublished on the more than 1,000North American Indian,Eskimo,and Aleut words in the Englishvocabulary.He also surveysmorethan 1,500 Latin American Indianloanwords.

2 Charlton Laird,LanguagenAmerica(New York:World PublishingCompany, 1970), 311. SinceColumbus sailed into the NewWorld, the English language hasindirectly borrowed more than1,500 words from LatinAmerican

Indiantongues, Spanish or Por-tuguese being the most frequentintermediary.As H. L. Menckenillustrates,however, etymologistshave not always agreed uponthe source fromwhich a specificloanword is derived; see H. L.Mencken, TheAmericananguage(New York:Alfred A. Knopf,1945).

3 Cutler, O BraveNewWords! 4.4 Christopher Columbus, TheLogofChristopherolumbus,rans. RobertH. Fuson (Camden, Maine: Inter-national Marine Publishing Com-pany, 1987), 95.5 Cutler, O BraveNewWords!5.

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6 Mencken, TheAmericananguage,178-79.7 An account of the explorers'amazement at the hospitality ofArawakan"savages"s recorded inTheColumbusetterfMarch14th,

1493 (Chicago: Newberry Library,1953), 6-10, quoted in VirgilVogel, ThisCountryWasOurs:ADocumentary istoryoftheAmericanIndian New York:Harper &Row,1972), 34.8 Vogel, ThisCountryWasOurs,33-34.9 My source of currency for theseloanwords is Webster'sew World

Dictionary ftheAmericananguage,2d ed., ed. David B. Guralnick(1986).10 Quoted in Cutler, O BraveNew

Words!4.11 Nurses Reference Library,Diagnos-tics(Springhouse, Pa.:Intermed,1982), 828.12 Laird,LanguagenAmerica, 12.13 George Watson, "NahuatlWordsin American English,"American

Speech,Apr. 1938: 108-21.14 Mencken, TheAmericananguage,177. In a chapter titled "The Be-ginnings of American,"Menckendevotes one full page to a discus-sion of the word barbecue,nclud-ing a suggestion by one linguisticauthority that the word camefromthe early Frenchsettlers ofthe Mississippi valley. Menckenconcludes, nevertheless, that bar-becues derived from a West Indianword, barbacoa178).

15 MargaretSchlaugh, TheGiftofTonguesLondon: George Allenand Unwin Ltd., 1960), 97.16 By the time of Cortes's death in1547, he and his conquistadors,

aided by the equally destructivemicrobes of smallpox and otherEuropeandiseases, had succeeded

in wiping out almost 95 percentof a population that had lived andflourished in Mexico for thou-sands of years. For a detailed his-tory of White-Indian conflictsfrom Columbus to the present, seeDavid E. Stannard'sAmerican olo-caust New York:Oxford Univer-sity Press, 1992).17 Peter R. Limburg,Stories ehindWords: heOrigins ndHistoriesf285EnglishWordsBronx,N.Y.: H. W.Wilson Company, 1986), 186.18 Ibid., 185; Cutler, O BraveNewWords!8.19 Quoted in Limburg,Stories ehindWords,186.20 Cutler, O BraveNewWords! 0, 52.Cutler'sexplanation implies thatthe Spaniardsbelieved more

strongly than did the English thatthe culture of the Indiansofferedsomething of value. Fora morecomprehensive discussion of cul-turalbrokers-intermediarieswho are receptive to other cul-turalworlds-and their role inpreservingindigenous languages,see John L. Kessell, "TheWaysand Words of the Other: Diegode Vargasand CulturalBrokers nLateSeventeenth-Century NewMexico," in Betweenndian ndWhiteWorlds,MargaretConnell Szasz,ed. (Norman: University of Okla-homa Press, 1994), 25-43.

21 Laird,LanguagenAmerica, 2.22 "It s more easy to civilize them by

conquest than by fairemeanes,"Smith wrote. "Whatgrowing statewas there ever in the world whichhad not the like? Rome grew byoppression, and rose upon thebacks of her enemies: and theSpaniardshave had many of thosecounterbuffes, more than we";quoted in Vogel, ThisCountryWasOurs,40. In 1845, New Yorklawyer/journalistJohn L. O'Sulli-van (1813-95) coined a term forthis philosophy: ManifestDestiny.

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23 Quoted in Andrew White, "ARe-lation of Maryland" Ph.D. diss.,University of Michigan, 1966), 36.24 Giles Gunn, ed., EarlyAmericanWritingNew York:Penguin Books,1994), 96, 97.25 Lincoln Barnett,TheTreasurefOurTongueNew York:Alfred A.Knopf, 1964), 178; BillBryson,Made n AmericaNew York:William Morrow and Company,1994), 23; Cutler, 0 BraveNewWords! 8.26 Quoted in Cutler, 0 BraveNewWords! 2.27 RobertMcCrum, William Cran,and Robert MacNeil, TheStoryofEnglishNew York:Penguin Books,1986), 121.28 Cutler,0 BraveNew Words! 2.29 Ibid., 32.30 Laird,LanguagenAmerica, 12.31 Albert C. Baugh,A HistoryoftheEnglishLanguageNew York:D.Appleton-Century Company,1935), 415.32 Laird,LanguagenAmerica, 1.33 Ibid., 312.34 The date given in the word list isthe date of first use according tothe Dictionary fAmericannglish(Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1944).3536

Bryson,Made nAmerica, 4.Barnett,TheTreasurefOurTongue,179.

37 Gunn, EarlyAmericanWriting,105,106.38 David S. Lovejoy, "SatanizingtheAmerican Indian,"NewEnglandQuarterly,Dec. 1994: 604.39 Ibid., 610-11.40 Quoted in Cutler, O BraveNewWords! 5.

41 New WorldDictionary ftheAmericanLanguage.42 Quoted in EdwardArber, ed., The

StoryofthePilgrim athers,606-1 623(London: Ward and Downey Lim-ited, 1897), 591.43 Barnett,TheTreasurefOurTongue,180.44 Charles Cutler,"'IHave Spoken':Indianismsin CurrentEnglish,"

EnglishLanguage otes,Mar. 1992:72.

45 Both Cutler ("'IHave Spoken,"'74) and Mencken (TheAmericanLanguage,81-85) offer intriguingideas concerning the origin of aterm that appearedin the lastdecade of the eighteenth century:Indian ummer. utlerconcludes that"whatever ts origins, the expres-sion probably derives its stayingpower froma common nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century view of Indiansas a dwin-dling people, transient as theinterlude named after them."

4647

Cutler,"'IHave Spoken,'"73.Quoted in Cutler, O BraveNewWords! 3.

48 Mencken, TheAmericananguage,185.49 Bryson,Made nAmerica, 3.50 Charlton Laird,TheMiracle fLanguageNew York:FawcettPublications, 1957), 99. Lairdalso lists twelve variantspellings

of Meskwaki, tribewhose namemeant Red-eartheople.Foradescription of this tribe'snamechange (by the English) to theFox, and a discussion of how theSnake ndiansof the Northwestacquired their name, see Laird,TheMiracle fLanguage,9.

51 Robert E. Bieder,Science ncountersthendian, 820-1880 (Norman:University of Oklahoma Press,1986), 189.

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52 Thomas Berger,Little igMan(NewYork:Dial Press, 1964), 5.53 Bieder,Science ncountershe ndian,24.54 Ibid., 35.55 As quoted in ibid., 49.56 Ibid., 29.57 Ibid., 54.58 Cutler, 0 BraveNew Words! 8-91.59 Barnett,TheTreasurefOurTongue,270.60 Geoffrey K. Pullum,TheGreatEskimo ocabulary oax(Chicago:University of Chicago Press,1991), 166.61 LauraMartin, "'EskimoWords

for Snow':A Case Study in theGenesis and Decay of an Anthro-pological Example,"AmericanAnthropologist,une 1986: 420.

62 David Simpson, ThePolitics fAmericannglish, 776-1850 (NewYork:Oxford University Press,1986), 166.63 Cutler, O BraveNewWords! 0.

64 As quoted in Mario Pei, TheStoryofLanguageNew York:J. B.Lippin-cott Company, 1965), 259.

65 See Cutler, O BraveNewWords!;Barnett,TheTreasurefOurTongue;Mencken, TheAmericananguage;and Mitford M. Mathews, TheBe-ginningsfAmericannglishChicago:University of Chicago Press,1931).

66 Saul Bellow,"IllinoisJourney,"HolidayMagazine,Sept. 1957, 62.

67 BillBryson,TheMotherTongue(New York:William Morrow andCompany, 1990), 239-40.6869

LynnSherr,20/20, Dec. 15, 1995.Quoted in Pullum,TheGreatEskimoVocabulary oax, 113.

70 John McWilliams, TheLastoftheMohicans:CivilSavagery ndSavageCivility New York:Twayne Pub-lishers, 1995), 14.

71 Simpson, ThePolitics fAmericanEnglish,16, 17.72 Joel Blatchford,letter, Anchorage

DailyNews,Mar. 3, 1991, B3.

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