Studies in the History of the Language Sciences 116 “And he knew our language” Missionary Linguistics on the Pacific Northwest Coast Marcus Tomalin JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY “AND HE KNEW OUR LANGUAGE” AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E.F.K. KOERNER Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin [email protected] Series III – STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE LANGUAGE SCIENCES Advisory Editorial Board Cristina Altman (São Paulo); John Considine (Edmonton, Alta.) Lia Formigari (Rome); Gerda Haßler (Potsdam) John E. Joseph (Edinburgh); Douglas A. Kibbee (Urbana, Ill.) Hans-Josef Niederehe (Trier); Emilio Ridruejo (Valladolid) Otto Zwartjes (Amsterdam) Volume 116 Marcus Tomalin “And he knew our language” Missionary Linguistics on the Pacific Northwest Coast “AND HE KNEW OUR LANGUAGE” MISSIONARY LINGUISTICS ON THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST COAST MARCUS TOMALIN University of Cambridge JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American 8 National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tomalin, Marcus. And he knew our language : missionary linguistics on the Pacific northwest coast / Marcus Tomalin. p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series III, Studies in the history of the language sciences, ISSN 0304-0720; v. 116) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Haida language--Discourse analysis. 2. Haida Indians--Languages. 3. Indians--Languages--History. 4. Indians of North America--Missions--Haida Gwaii (B.C.) I. Title. PM1271.T66 2011 497'.28--dc22 2011007659 ISBN 978 90 272 4607 3 (hB; alk. paper) ISBN 978 90 272 8683 3 (eB) © 2011 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company • P.O. Box 36224 • 1020 me Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O. Box 27519 • Philadelphia, PA 19118-0519 • USA So there certainly is no lack of activity in our little boat, but is there any purpose? Is the tall figure who may or may not be the Spirit of the Haida Gwaii leading us – for we are all in the same boat – to a sheltered beach beyond the rim of the world, as he seems to be, or is he lost in a dream of his own dreaming? The boat goes on, forever anchored in the same place. Bill Reid, “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii’’, in Solitary Raven: The Essential Writings of Bill Reid, ed. by Robert Bringhurst (Vancouver, B.C.: Douglas & Mcintyre, 2009), p. 246 Table of contents Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations xi chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Missionary linguistics 1 1.2 The languages of the Pacific Northwest Coast 3 1.3 The Haida language 5 1.3.1 Dialects 8 1.3.2 Orthography 8 1.3.3 Personal pronouns 10 1.3.4 Numeral classifiers 11 1.3.5 Verb morphology 12 1.3.6 Word order 13 1.3.7 Haida linguistics: 1911–present 14 1.4 The Kwak’wala language 23 1.5 The Tsimshian language 25 1.6 Summary 27 chapter 2 Culture and contact 31 2.1 Haida Gwaii 31 2.2 Discovery and exploration 35 2.3 The arrival of the missionaries 42 2.4 Disease and demography 51 chapter 3 Initial encounters 55 3.1 Explorations 55 3.2 Comparing and contrasting Tsimshian and Haida 58 3.3 The Lord’s prayer 75 3.4 The acquirement of the tongue 81 3.5 Preparing the ground 85 viii Missionary Linguistics on the Pacific Northwest Coast chapter 4 Analysing and assessing 87 4.1 Language and mission 87 4.2 Hall and Kwak’wala 88 4.3 Harrison and Haida 92 4.4 Phonological associations 97 4.5 The noun phrase domain 100 4.6 The verb phrase domain 110 chapter 5 Translating scripture 119 5.1 Mission and translation 119 5.2 The Haida scriptures 121 5.3 Souls and spirits 130 5.4 Social hierarchies and power structures 140 5.5 Ideology and dialogue 148 chapter 6 Anthropological approaches 151 6.1 A strange relationship 151 6.2 The influence of the missionaries 155 6.3 The influence of the anthropologists 166 6.4 Exploring shamanism 171 6.5 Consequences 177 chapter 7 Conclusion 179 References 187 Index of biographical names 199 Index of subjects and terms 201 Acknowledgements The work presented in this book has its origins in the mid 1990s when I lived in British Columbia, Canada. Since then, many people have contributed to my understanding of missionary linguistics in the region. In no particular order, I should mention Derek Peterson, John Barker, E. F. K. Koerner, Jeff Leer, Jordan Lachler, Robert Levine, Ian Roberts, Theresa Biberauer, Peter Matthews, Rosita Worl, Nika Collison, Luu Borsario, and the Haida elders of Haida Gwaii. I am particularly grateful to Marie-Lucie Tarpent who offered lucid and timely advice concerning the Tsimshian data. In addition, the text of this monograph has ben- efited considerably from helpful comments and suggestions from three anony- mous reviewers chosen by the editor of the series in which it appears. Throughout this project, I received attentive assistance from the staff at the Munby Rare Books Room in the Cambridge University Library, the Special Col- lections department of the McPherson Library in Victoria B.C., and the Special Collections and Archives department of the University of Birmingham Library. I am also grateful to David Watson of the Cambridge University Cartography Unit for creating the linguistic map so promptly, and to Sarah MacDonald and Rita Tomalin for their expert proof-reading. No doubt there are remaining errors in this text, but I take solace in Horace’s aphorism, “non enim omnis error stultitia est dicenda’’. Some of the topics discussed in the following chapters were given a preliminary airing in articles which appeared in Historiographia Linguistica, BC Studies, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and The Journal of Religious History (see bibliography for details). They have been reworked here with permission. This book is dedicated to my extended family in Canada, and especially to Bob, Di, Sarah, Jeremy, Simon, and James. Thank you all for introducing me to the wonders of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Marcus Tomalin Cambridge, March 2011 Abbreviations Linguistic: 1p first person INTRANS intransitive 2p second person M Masset (dialect) 3p third person NP noun phrase ABS absolutive OBJ grammatical object CAUS causative PA past tense marker CL classifier POSS possessive marker DEF definite marker PRES present tense marker DEM demonstrative marker PRO pronoun ERG ergative REFL reflexive FOC focus marker RELPR relative present FREQ frequentative marker S Skidegate (dialect) IMMPR immediate present marker SUBJ grammatical subject IMP imperative marker TEMP temporal designator INDEF indefinite marker TRANS transitive INF infinitive marker VCMP verb compound INS instrumental VP verb phrase Miscellaneous: AMNH American Museum of Natural History (N.Y.) ANLC Alaska Native Language Center BAE Bureau of American Ethnology BC British Columbia BC Archives British Columbia Archives (Victoria, B.C.) BCP Book of Common Prayer BIA Bureau of Indian Affairs CMS Church Missionary Society CMS Archive CMS Archive (Birmingham, U.K.) HBC Hudson’s Bay Company KJV King James Version (of the Bible) NT New Testament OT Old Testament RV Revised Version (of the Bible) chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Missionary linguistics Although the extensive language-focused studies produced by missionaries over the centuries have often been (and are frequently still) dismissed as being un- worthy of serious consideration, missionary linguistics has gradually emerged over the past few decades as an independent area of academic enquiry. The main purpose of this research is to explore the linguistic analyses devised by succes- sive generations of missionaries based in many different countries around the world from the 16th to the 20th centuries. While there is a lingering belief that missionary linguists simply adopted some kind of Graeco-Roman grammatical framework, and mindlessly attempted to fit the indigenous languages they en- countered into this pre-existing format, this view is largely inaccurate, as many recent studies have demonstrated.1 Marianne Mithun offered the following sym- pathetic summary of this work in her important monograph The Languages of Native North America (2001): The early missionary grammarians were faced with challenges for which they could not have been fully prepared. The best equipped were trained in classical languages, and they naturally sought to understand the structures of the new lan- guages they encountered in terms of those they already knew. Nevertheless, many did remarkably well, recognising phonetic and grammatical distinctions not present in European languages. […] Missionary work has continued throughout North America to the present and resulted in valuable records of the languages, not only vocabularies and liturgical materials, but also grammars, dictionaries, and sometimes texts. (Mithun 2001: 5) So far, the main studies of these materials have focused on the work of missionar- ies based in New Spain, South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. 1. Some of the most influential recent studies include Nowak (1999), Gray & Fiering (2000), Zwartjes & Hovdhaugen (2003), Zwartjes & Altman (2004), Tomalin (2006), Zwartjes, James, & Ridruejo’s (2006), Tomalin (2007), Zwartjes, Marín, & Smith-Stark’s (2009), and Tomalin (2009). An excellent collection of articles about missionary linguistics appeared in Historio- graphia Linguistica 36: 2/3 (2009). 2 Missionary Linguistics on the Pacific Northwest Coast Also, the various Catholic denominations – and especially the Jesuits and the Oblates – have received particular attention. By contrast, the languages spoken on the Pacific Northwest Coast have been comparatively neglected, and this is unfortunate since the socio-political implications of the (Protestant) missionary activity in this region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries has been extensively reassessed.