Becoming tsimshian: The social life of names

297 Pages·2008·8.113 MB·English

by  Christopher F. Roth

BECOMING TSIMSHIAN

BECOMING TSIMSHIAN
THE SOCIAL LIFE OF NAMES
CHRISTOPHER F. ROTH
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
SEATTLE AND LONDON
THIS PUBLICATION WAS SUPPORTED IN PART BY THE DONALD R. ELLEGOOD
INTERNATIONAL PUBLICATIONS ENDOWMENT.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roth, Christopher Fritz.
Becoming Tsimshian : the social life of names / Christopher F. Roth.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn978-0-295-98806-1(hardback : alk. paper)
isbn978-0-295-98807-8(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Tsimshian Indians—Name. 2. Names, Tsimshian—History.
3. Tsimshian Indians—Social life and customs. 4. Tsimshian language—
Etymology. 5. Naming ceremonies—British Columbia. I. Title.
e99.t8r67 2008 971.1004!974128—dc22 2008006187
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and 90percent recycled from at least
50percent post-consumer waste. It meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
ø
Library Materials, ansi z39.48–1984.
Frontispiece:Tsimshian button blanket, collected by Lt. George T. Emmons. Courtesy of
the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, cat. no. 16.1/1614.
Cover image (detail):Button blanket, possibly Gitksan. Private collection.
CONTENTS
A Note on the Orthography vii
Acknowledgments xi
1 Introduction 3
2 Names as People 30
3 Names as Wealth 102
4 History and Structure in Tsimshian Lineage Consciousness 160
5 Descent, Continuity, and Identity under Colonialism 205
Appendix A. Glossary 221
Appendix B. Tsimshian Houses 227
Notes 235
Bibliography 247
Index 267

A NOTE ON THE ORTHOGRAPHY
T
he orthography used here is a version of the Sm!algyax spelling
system used by the Ts!msyeen Sm!algyax Authority, the (erst-
while) Tsimshian Tribal Council, as well as the treaty offices of
the individual Tsimshian bands in British Columbia. Its pedigree can be
traced to Lonnie Hindle and Bruce Rigsby’s Gitksan writing system,
which was also used as a template for Nisga!a orthography (Hindle and
Rigsby 1973; Rigsby 1986:46–50). It was first adapted to “Coast
Tsimshian” by John Dunn (1978:iv), with modifications such as the sub-
stitution of ¬ for hl. In the 1990s the Dunn system was updated as
Sm!algyax materials (beginning with Marsden 1992) were prepared for
School District No. 52 in Prince Rupert. Modifications at that point
included deleting some diacritics for allophonic distinctions (as is the
case for nearly every instance of a ~a, a distinction with a vanishingly
small phonemic load) and the indication of syllabic constants with an
underline (as in -m). A “Draft Glossary” (Dunn, Tarpent, et al. n.d.) to
accompany those materials was, when I began working with the
Tsimshian, the most reliable source, although it is necessarily less com-
prehensive than Dunn’s earlier Dictionary (1978) and has been suc-
ceeded by a successful community-based dictionary project (Ts!msyeen
Sm!algyax Authority 2001a, 2001b), which has modified the orthogra-
phy in a slightly different direction from that used here or in, say, Mars-
den (1992). (See Stebbins 2001 for insights into the organic nature of
vii
Tsimshian orthographic development and of some of the gray areas in
spelling choices.)
The following list shows phonetic realizations for the symbols used
here, not counting letters that have their cardinal values as in English.
The list is not meant to exhaust the phonological nuances of Sm!algyax;
I do not, for example, incorporate Jean Mulder’s suggested palatalized
and labialized series (1994:20); labialization, if truly phonemic, has
nowhere near the phonemic load it does in Gitksanimxand Nisga!a. Nor
do I distinguish here between preglottalization and postglottalization.
Also, Sm!algyax makes no phonemic distinction between voiced and
unvoiced stops or affricates, so that /p!/ often comes out as [b], /t!/ as
[d], and so forth. But the allophonic distinctions between voiced and
unvoiced, corresponding to English phonemic distinctions, are preserved
in Sm!algyax spellings to make the system friendlier to those users of
Sm!algyax (i.e., virtually all of them) who are habituated to the conven-
tions of English spelling. With those caveats in mind, this key provides
ready understandings to anyone familiar with the language and enables
those unfamiliar to pronounce Sm!algyax serviceably well. (Among pub-
lished sources, see Dunn 1979:vi–viii and Mulder 1994:19–28for more
on Tsimshian phonology.)
Symbol Sound
æ [e] (but [ï] ~ [!] in glottal or postvelar envi-
ronment)
aa [æ:] ~ [ε:]
dz [dz] ~ [d!]
e [e] ~ [ε]
ee [e:ə] ~ [ε:ə]
g [G] (equivalent to a uvular [g] or voiced [q])
(dropped in some intervocalic positions)
i [I]
viii A Note on the Orthography
ii [i:ə]
k [q]
k! [qʔ]
l [l]
ɔ [ɔ] ~ [ɒ ]
ɔ: [ɔ:] ~ [ ɒ :]
s [s] ~ [sˇ]
ts [c]
ts! [cʔ] ~ [cˇ]
u [u]
uu [u:ə]
ü [ɯ] (unrounded [u])
üü [ɯ:] (unrounded [u:])
w¨ ["] (unrounded [w])
x [ç] ~ [x]
! [ʔ] or a glottalization of the preceding conso-
nant
A Note on the Orthography ix