Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/512

508 difficult k and tl sounds, so characteristic of the Kootenay language, is also much appreciated by the Indians. This will be easily understood when one learns that, in the mouths of the whites the word for 'horse,' k'kātlahaatltsin, is made over into kallahalshin, or worse, while the distinction between words of entirely different significations, e. g., g • ūstet, 'trout,' and k • ūstet, 'tamarack,' is altogether ignored. His attention to these points caused the Indian to dub him 'The man who talks straight.' A third name conferred upon him recorded the fact that he never lied to them. In another the Indians called attention to his very dark hair, 'The man with hair like an Indian'—the possession of which was another bond of union with them. A fifth, and more formidable name, 'He uses the long stick'—he owed to the anthropometric apparatus which he carried with him. By use of these various names the coming and going of the writer was heralded all over the Indian country and the natives soon came to know him well and understand the reason of his presence among them. Some of the white settlers have also received interesting nicknames, one prominent individual, who had a glass eye, being termed 'The man who takes out his eye,' and the Indians are clever in their imitation of his manipulation of it.

To hear a white man blundering along in his efforts to speak Kootenay correctly is one of the best quarter-hours the Indians ever enjoy. Even the wives and children of white men who have married squaws extract considerable amusement out of the linguistic mistakes of their husbands and fathers. Any one who believes that the Indian never laughs will be heartily undeceived after a session of this sort. The inability of the whites to master the numerous gutturals with which the Kootenay language is provided is a never-ending source of laughter. The Indians went off into roars of merriment over such mistakes as saying inisin (horsefly) for inisimin (rainbow); k'ūpi (owl) for k'ūpōk (woodpecker); hāhās (skunk) for hāhā (crow), etc. When some one said for känkūptsē (bread baked in a pan), the perfectly unmeaning tankūptsē, it reminded the Indians of a real word, t'ānkūts (grouse), and they indulged in a fit of laughter. When the writer mispronounced the word g • ūstet (trout), on one occasion, an Indian went off into the woods near by and returned with a diminutive 'tamarack,' the name of which is in Kootenay k • 'ūstit, pronouncing that word correctly, as he handed him the shrub. The writer's desire, which the Indians fully comprehended, to obtain a large vocabulary and a considerable body of texts of myths and stories in the native language led naturally enough to the very embarrassing demand that he should read every word and every sentence over and over again until he could repeat them all without the slightest error—this was worse than the child's well-known demand for the repetition of its favorite