OAS ARCH NOTES 86-2:23-6
John Steckley
Sometimes faunal identification from written sources has not been as good as it has from bones. In this short paper early references to two species are clarified usinq linguistic evidence.
Raccoons: How the Leopard Changed…Its Spots.
Recollect Brother Gabriel Sagard, when writing about the different animals he encountered in his stay in 1623-4 in Huronia, wrote of one whose pelt was valuable. After speakinq of wolf pelts, he said that the Huron:
“..,value the skin highly, likewise that of a kind of leopard or wild-cat, which they call Tiron. There is a district in these wide provinces the inhabitants of which we call the Cat-tribe; I think the name was given because of these wild-cats, small wolves or leopards, which are found in their territory. From (the skins of) these wild-cats they make robes or blankets in which they introduce for embellishment a number of animals’ tails, sewing them all round the edge and at the top of the back. These wild-cats are scarcely bigger than a large fox, but their coat is quite like that of a full-grown wolf, so that a piece of wild-cat skin and a piece of wolf’s skin are almost indistinguishable, and I was mistaken once in makîng a choice.” (Sagard 1939:224)
Unfortunately, many scholars dealing with this period have taken Sagard’s confused (and confusing) guess at the animal’s identity at face value and have accepted his “espece de Leopard ou Chat sauvage” (op. cit., p. 382) as actually referring ta a feline. Elizabeth Tooker, in her valuable work “Ethnography of the Huron Indians”, merely transcribed the translation with “a kind of leopard or wildcat” (Tooker 1964:158). Heidenreich, too, led astray by the reference to the “Cat-tribe” or Erie, felt that it was a feline -the cougar- that was beinq described (Heidenreich 1971:203).
The linguistic evidence is conclusive, but not well-known. Sagard’s Tiron (more accurately entiron; FHL34 and 231), the ‘chat-sauvage’ is the raccoon. Such is its meaning not only in Huron, but in Mohawk and Oneida as well (Mithun 1984:266). Interestingly, among the southernmost of the Iroquoian speakers, the Cherokee and Tuscarora, the term referred to the skunk (op. cit., p. 265).
Black Squirrels; Taminq the Black Beast
Also in his description of the animals of Huronia, Sagard wrote of one animal whose fur was highly prized by the Huron:
“They have another kind of animal named Otay, as large as a small rabbit, with fur very black and so soft, smooth, and handsome that it seems to be made of cloth. They set great store by these skins, and make them into robes, and around the edge they put all the heads and tails.” (Sagard 1939:224)
That valued pelt belonged to the black phase of the grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), Sagard did not identify it as such. Perhaps this is because the Huron had a different word for squirrels generally -“aroussen” in Sagard’s writing (Sagard 1939:223) – and as he never entered the more southerly country of the Neutral, the people who hunted the black squirrels and traded the pelts to their northern neighbours.
Even Sagard’s fellow Recollect, Father Joseph de la Roche Daillon, who visited Neutralia in 1626-7, referred to the animals as ‘black beasts’ (Sagard 1866:807) rather than squirrels. In 1639, the pelts were still referred to only as “outay” by the Jesuit writer of the following quote:
“I /a spirit said by a Huron woman to have appeared to her in a vision/a,,…, the immortal seignior general of these countries, and of those who inhabit them; in testimony whereof I desire and order that in all quarters of my domain, those who dwell therein shall offer thee presents which must be the product of their own country, -from the Khionontaterons or tobacco Nation, some tobacco; from the Attiwandarons or neutral Nation, some robes of outay;…” (JR17:165)
It might have been the trip taken in 1640-1 by Jesuit Fathers Brebeuf and Chaumonot to Neutralia that caused them to finally learn what the animal was. For we find the first clear reference to black squirrel being the source of the pelts in 1648. Father Paul Ragueneau, writing of the practice of shamans seeking in visions the unfulfilled desires or wishes of the guardian spirits of sick Huron in order to cure them, reported that:
“Some look into a basin full of water, and say that they see various things pass over it, as over the surface of a mirror, -a fine collar of Porcelain; a robe of black squirrel skins, which are here considered the most valuable…” (JR33:193; emphasis mine)
This late identification of black squirrels as the source of the prized otay pelts is probably one reason why 20th century scholars have tended to overlook the significance of this species to the Iroquoians of Ontario.
The meaning of the word Otay
The name otay or outay was typically written as “8ta,i” in the Huron dictionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries. It is derived from the verb “ata,i”, meaning,’ to have colour’ (FHL42, and Pot 180 #19). This verb was also used in the Huron term for ‘beaver’ -ts8ta,i- (FHL231), with the -ts- giving it the meaning, ‘to be very, or strikingly coloured’.
This term also refers to beaver in other Iroquoian languages: Tuscarora (Mithun 1984:266) and possibly the St. Lawrence Iroquoians (Barbeau 1961:168 #14). For the Seneca and Cayuga of western New York, the same term refers to mink (Mithun 1984,266, and Chafe 1963:54).
It is a generally accepted principle in historical linquistics that the presence of a similar feature -in this case the use of the verb ata,i in the word beaver- in geographically peripheral members of a lanquage family and its absence in more centrally-placed languages indicate that that feature is probably conservative or ‘old’ in the language family (Steckley 1985:14). As the conditions for that situation are met here, it may be speculated that the verb ata,i was first used to refer to beaver and was later extended to mink and black squirrel when similarities -possibly the dark colour and/or use in the making of a robe- were perceived.
References Cited
Barbeau, Marius
1961 “The Language of Canada in the voyages of Jacques Cartier (15341538)” in Contributions to Anthropology, 1959, Nat. Museum of Canada, Bull. #173, pp. 108-229.
Chafe, Wallace
1963 Handbook of the Seneca Language, Albany, The Univ. of the State of New York.
FHL
c1697 French-Huron Dictionary ms.
Heidenreich, Conrad
1971 Huronia: A History and Geography of the Huron Indians 1600-1650, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto.
Mithum, Marianne
1984 “The Proto-Iroquoians” in Extending the Rafters, M. K. Foster, J. Campisi and M. Mithun ed., Albany, State Univ. of New York Press, pp. 259-82.
Potier, Pierre (Pot)
1920 “Radices Huronicae” in 15th Report of the Bureau for the Province of Ontario, Toronto, C. Jones, pp. 159-455.
Sagard, Gabriel
1866 Histoire du Canada, Paris, Librairies Tross.
1939 The Long Journey to the Country of the Hurons, G. M. Wrong ed., Toronto, The Champlain Society.
Steckley, John L.
1985 “An Ethnolinguistic Analysis of Tobacco among the Huron”, in Arch Notes, March/April, pp. 13-17.
Thwaites, Ruben G.
(JR) 1896 The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 73 vols., Cleveland, Burrows Brothers.
-1901
Tooker, Elizabeth
1964 An Ethnology of the Huron Indians, 1615-1649, Smithsonian lnstitution, Bureau of Amer. Ethnology, Bull. #190, Washington.