TRACKS THAT SPEAK

THE LEGACY OF NATIVE AMERICAN WORDS IN NORTH AMERICAN CULTURE

by Charles L. Cutler ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 3, 2002

An abalone-to-woodchuck tour of the Native American contribution to the American vocabulary.

Of necessity, writes the late historian Cutler, Europeans arriving on this continent’s shores borrowed indigenous terms to describe unfamiliar plants and animals, with the result that “you can hardly step outdoors without using words derived from Native American languages.” From those languages come such terms as chipmunk and saguaro, skunk and wapiti, hickory and sockeye, all long at home in the pages of Webster’s. Retracing ground covered in his O Brave New Words! (not reviewed) and familiar to readers of H. L. Mencken’s The American Language as well as other standard books of etymology, Cutler examines these terms with an eye toward cultural history as well as lexicography, and he does so engagingly. For instance, we learn from his pages not only that the word tipi (now preferred to the old spelling of tepee) derives from the Dakota verbal stem ti, “to dwell,” but also that a tipi manufacturer in Oregon sold more than 10,000 of them between 1970 and 1995; that the snow boots called mukluks derive from the Yupik Eskimo maklak, “bearded seal,” the source of the original’s soles; and that succotash, “New England’s most tradition-laden dish,” derives from the Narragansett msíckquatash, meaning nothing more than boiled corn. Cutler favors terms taken from eastern and southern Indian languages such as squaw, the current political squabble over which, he writes, comes from incorrect etymologizing. (It derives, he insists, from the Massachusetts word for woman, not the Mohawk word for vagina.) He does address, however, a few terms borrowed from the peoples of the Plains, Southwest, and Northwest.

Readers of William Safire, Anne Soukhanov, and other language mavens will want to add this slender study to their collections.

Pub Date: April 3, 2002

ISBN: 0-618-06509-1

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION