37 The "Bowrey" Dictionary and Henry Kelsey

H. Christoph Wolfart University of Manitoba

David H. Pentland University of Calgary

The collections of the British Museum include what appears to be the earliest substantial document of Cree: a pamphlet of seven pages in folio, without any overt indication of author, date or place of printing. The only explicit iden­ tification is the title: A Dictionary of the Hudson's-Bay Indian Language. Thomas Bowrey This dictionary of approximately 600 entries has long been associated with the name of Thomas Bowrey. For Algonquian- ists, the most important citation is that of Pilling (1891: 54-55) who, if he had any doubts about the dictionary's authorship, expresses them only by the explicit mention of his sources: Ludewig's Literature of American Aboriginal Languages of 1858 which, he claims erroneously, followed the Bibliotheca Britannica of Robert Watt, published in 1824. Bowrey also appears as the author in most general biblio­ graphies, notably Sabin's Dictionary of Books Relating to America (vol. 2, 1869) and both editions (1956, 1973) of Peel's Bibliography of the Prairie Provinces. Apart from a few oblique remarks, Algonquianists have ignored the Dictionary of the Hudson's-Bay Indian Language, and not even its presumed author—otherwise unknown in early North America—appears to have elicited much interest. The only question about Bowrey's authorship was raised by the editor of his papers (Temple 1905:xli) who concludes rather diffidently that "if the Dictionary ... were really the work of Bowrey, then he must also have voyaged to North America." Thomas Bowrey was a "free merchant" whose life spanned many voyages to India (mainly between 1669 and 1679) and a number of European enterprises. His interest in philology, which seems to have been restricted to the East Indies, is attested primarily by the Dictionary English and Malayo, Malayo and English, to which is added some short grammar rules ... which he had printed in 1701. The attribution of the Dictionary of the Hudson's-Bay Indian Language to Bowrey obviously reflects the fact that the only known copy of the Cree dictionary has, for most of its life, been bound into Bowrey's Malay dictionary. While the cataloguers of the British Museum were first to take Temple's hint and sever the connection (in the second edition of the General Catalogue of Printed Books, 1931-54), the first printed catalogue of the British Museum library, published in 1787, also is the earliest source to have ascribed the author and date of the Malay dictionary to the Dictionary of the Hudson's-Bay Indian Language. 38

The British Museum Dictionary The two dictionaries were part of the bequest of Sir Hans Sloane which led to the foundation of the British Museum in 1753. An avid collector and a mainstay of the Royal Society, Sloane had a life-long interest in the affairs of the New World. Although he was apparently not a shareholder in the Hudson's Bay Company, his library includes several manu­ scripts related to Hudson Bay and the Hudson's Bay Company, notable among these Radisson's Relation du voyage a Hudson Bay of 1684. On the other hand he also owned a set of maps by Bowrey and it was he who sent a French correspondent Bowrey's table of oriental characters of which only two copies were printed. Thus it is not surprising that both Bowrey's Malay dictionary and the Dictionary of the Hudson's- Bay Indian Language found their way into Sloane's library. The evidence of the British Museum catalogue of 1787 suggests that the two dictionaries were already bound together at the time of Sloane's death; his own catalogue indicates that they were acquired separately. We can only speculate that to some member of his staff the difference between one Bay and another (that of Bengal and Hudson Bay) may have seemed less important than the common aspect exhibited by two dictionaries of "exotic" languages. The binding, which appears to be early eighteenth century, may well have been executed in 1737 when, according to a note bound into the Sloane catalogue, "there had been considerable Error in the binding of these tracts ..." Dating is a crucial step in the attribution of an anony­ mous work; it seems particularly important in this case where at least three spurious dates are scattered through the literature. While most sources give the date of the Malay dictionary, 1701, Eames (cf. Pilling 1891:iv) is cited in the National Union Catalogue of pre-1956 Imprints (143:244, 1971) as giving a date "about 1750"; and Ludewig (1858) and Sabin (1869) agree not only on the misspelled name Bowrie but also on a date of 1776. Like the binding, printing and paper point to the early part of the eighteenth century. For example, while a ligature fk ("long s" with k) is to be expected from about 1720 on (cf. McKerrow 1927:314-315), the Dictionary uses only the individual letters sk ("round s" and k). The watermark which appears in folio 7 has been identified with a type current mainly between 1690 and 1710, and although bibliographical evidence of this kind can hardly be taken as conclusive, it should not be ignored. An explicit and incontrovertible terminus ante quern exists in the manuscript catalogue of Sir Hans Sloane's library. The books are listed in the order in which they were acquired, and while Bowrey's Malay dictionary appears on page 532, suggesting 1703 as the approximate date of acquisition, the Cree dictionary is entered on page 1651; according to the expert staff of the British Library (to whom we are indebted for a great deal of technical help), this fixes the date of entry, and presumably of acquisition, circa 1718. ^ Without any doubt, therefore, the so-called "Bowrey" dictionardecades oyf wathse eighteentindeed printeh centuryd well. within the first two 3 9 Henry Kelsey A dictionary of "the Hudson's-Bay Indian Language" printed early in the eighteenth century cannot fail to bring to mind the lost dictionary of Henry Kelsey. As the first European to see the prairies (in 1690-92) and as a major figure (from 1694 to 1722) in warfare and furtrade alike, Kelsey needs no introduction. But in the face of these accomplishments it is easy to overlook his widely attested familiarity with "the natives language". Kelsey's dictionary is best known for its disappearance. Whether it was deliberately suppressed, as Robson (1752:72) claimed in the context of the parliamentary enquiry of 1749, or whether it was simply used up in Hudson Bay, remains an open question. It is certainly curious that no contemporary extracts or references appear to exist, and at the very least one might have expected the Hudson's Bay Company to preserve a copy. Whatever the circumstances of its disappearance, the existence of a dictionary by Kelsey is attested in a post­ script to the Committee's letter sent to Hudson Bay in the spring of 1710: wee haue sent you your dixonary Printed that you may / the Better Instruct the young Ladds with you, in ye Indian Language, // (H.B. Co. Archives, A 6/3, fo. 102) This is the only piece of direct evidence; if any printer's bills, proof copies, a manuscript in Kelsey's hand, etc. exist, we have been unable to find them. Attribution In attempting to identify the anonymous Cree dictionary in the British Museum with Henry Kelsey's lost dictionary, we can prove both "motive" and "opportunity": Kelsey had written a dictionary, and there are few potential authors to choose from during the first two decades of the eighteenth century. More specific evidence is needed, however, if the attribution is to be made with confidence. The dialect of the British Museum dictionary is the "Woods Cree" which was not displaced from the coastal region until the end of the eighteenth century: the reflex of Proto- Algonquian jT is h, *sk appears as 3k and the distinction of s_ and S^ is generally maintained. These features, however, are not sufficiently distinctive to permit the attribution of the dictionary to a particular author. The most we can say is that the dialectological circumstances are compatible with the identification of the two dictionaries. The same is true of the choice of words included, with their emphasis on maritime matters. The most personal link, if indeed it is an index rather than an accident, is Kelsey's own Cree name. Among 600 words denoting articles and actions of daily furtrade routine, the entry giant seems incongruous, an intrusion. Were the word miStapew intended in its usual shamanistic sense (cf. Preston 1975), one would expect a different gloss or a word of elaboration, as appears in many other entries. This leaves the tantalising hypothesis, never to be proven, that giant 4 0

is included because of an encounter with two "grizzled bears" which, Robson (1752:72n) reports, "obtained him the name of Miss-top-ashish [mistapeSiS] or Little Giant." The strongest argument is found in the comparison of the British Museum dictionary with the Kelsey Papers (1929) which include a number of Cree words and one Cree passage amounting to three lines. The Kelsey Papers are almost entirely in scribal hands (contrary to the assertion of the editors); the only exception is the Cree passage on page 58 of the manuscript which comparison with his signatures in the Hudson's Bay Company Archives has shown to be in Kelsey's own handwriting. This passage is not only the one directly verifiable proof of Kelsey's literacy in Cree; it also provides us with an authentic, unassailable sample of his transcriptional style. English text is always subject to correction or modifica­ tion by copyists or printers, but no such interference (aside from inadvertent errors) needs to be taken into account for Cree words. Indeed, we can safely assume that words in a strange language would have been copied as faith­ fully as possible, whether by the copyists of the Kelsey Papers or the printers of the Dictionary. Thus any corres­ pondences between the Cree words in the two documents acquire an importance quite disproportionate to their number. As it happens, the first word of the Dictionary also appears at the beginning of the one coherent Cree passage in the Kelsey Papers, the passage which is in Kelsey's own hand; our reading is based on the manuscript (page 58), with periods inserted in lieu of blanks. The two words are exactly the same: ca.kith.tha kahki5a[w] 'all'. A single identity, no matter how striking, gains in value if it is supported by recurrent correspondences which are of a less obvious nature and thus relatively more immune to borrowing or distortion. Both documents use 'i' (or 'j') to represent the Cree diphthong ay_ in word-initial position; both commonly indicate pre-consonantal h, both write 'au' for the long vowel a, and both tend to leave off post- vocalic w at the end of a word. All four of these features are exemplified in a word from the Kelsey Papers: j.aih.tte.naunneew.ee ayehtinaniwi[w~7 'there was an event a gathering'. The representation of the ending -ikan, as in clkahikan- 'axe|, is probably the strongest piece of linguistic evidence to link the Kelsey Papers and the Dictionary. While hardly conspicuous enough to be copied or distorted intentionally, this suffix is so common in any collection of Cree nouns denoting objects that it might easily have been carried over from one set of notes to the next. Yet none of the contemp­ orary sources exhibit the form shared by the British Museum dictionary and Kelsey's book. Gorst's vocabulary of 1670-71 (in Oldmixon 1708, cited after Tyrrell 1931:396) contains three instances of -igon, ?£. at,least one wor<3 ending in -eigein is found in the text iSmf*X1 1931:387> of his journal. In 1743 Isham (Rich 1949) uses several variants, e.g., -i.gan, -ig.gan, -igan, -iggan, but never represents the last vowel other than as -egana . . Graham m 1767 (Williams 1969) consistentl1y writes 41 The Dictionary contains nine instances of -iggen and in the Kelsey Papers (page 15 of the manuscript) the form Wonny/seewahiggens occurs in a context ("... wch songs are called Wonny/seewahiggens ...") which makes it seem very likely that the final ^£ is a carry-over from English. Although the word itself remains to be analysed satisfact­ orily, the suffix -iggen is unambiguous. Thus the form -iggen is exclusive, it seems, to the Kelsey Papers and the British Museum dictionary. The Kelsey Dictionary A Cree dictionary of 600 entries which dates from the beginning of the eighteenth century is an important document irrespective of its author. Although its primary role is that of a source for historical and comparative studies in Algonquian, the Dictionary of the Hudson's-Bay Indian Language also deserves to be studied synchronically, as an instance of linguistic practice in the early eighteenth century; in a limited way it is even possible to identify specific models, such as Lahontan's Algonquin dictionary of 1703. The edition which we hope to present shortly will also include a fully documented version of the dating and attribution arguments which we have outlined here. In attempting to show that the Cree dictionary in the British Museum which has traditionally been associated with Thomas Bowrey is in fact the one surviving copy of Kelsey's dictionary, our concern has been historical and philological rather than strictly linguistic. In summary, we can be certain that Kelsey was literate in Cree and had a dictionary printed by 1710; that the British Museum dictionary was in existence by 1718; and that it is Henry Kelsey's personal style which appears in the British Museum dictionary.

NOTE

We wish to thank first of all W. Cowan who kindly agreed to read this paper for us at Fredericton. For permission to cite and reproduce materials from their collections we are grateful to the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, the British Library, and the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. We owe a special debt to the expert staff of the British Library, especially A. Gould and M. Nickson, who should not, however, be held responsible for the conclusions we have drawn from their observations. The archival research on which this study is based was made possible by the Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Manitoba (Wolfart). The earlier support of the Canada Council, through Research Grants (Wolfart) and a Doctoral Fellowship (Pentland), is also gratefully acknowledged. 42

REFERENCES

DOUGHTY, Arthur G. and Chester Martin, eds. 1929 The Kelsey Papers. Ottawa.

LUDEWIG, Hermann E. 1858 The literature of American aboriginal languages. With additions and corrections by W.W. Turner, ed. by N. Trubner. London. MCKERROW, Ronald B. 1927 An introduction to bibliography for literary students. Oxford. PEEL, Bruce B. 1956 A bibliography of the Prairie Provinces to 1953. Toronto. 2nd ed., 1973. PILLING, James C. 1891 Bibliography of the Algonquian languages. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 13. Washington. PRESTON, Richard J. 1975 Cree narrative: expressing the personal meanings of events. National Museum of Man Mercury Series 30. Ottawa. RICH, E.E., ed. 1949 James Isham's Observations on Hudsons Bay, 1743. Hudson's Bay Record Society 12. London. ROBSON, Joseph 1752 An account of six years residence in Hudson's Bay, from 1733 to 1747. London. SABIN, Joseph 1869 A dictionary of books relating to America. Vol. 2. New York. TEMPLE, Sir Richard C, ed. 1905 A geographical account of countries round the Bay of Bengal, 1669 to 1679, by Thomas Bowrey. Hakluyt Society, second series 12. Cambridge. TYRRELL, J.B., ed. 1931 Documents relating to the early history of Hudson Bay. Champlain Society 18. Toronto. WATT, Robert 1824 Bibliotheca Britannica; or a general index to British and foreign literature. Edinburgh. WILLIAMS, Glyndwr, ed. 1969 Andrew Graham's Observations on Hudson's Bay 1767- 91. Hudson's Bay Record Society 27. London.