Tweets,

Actually, re Indian names for local peaks. Rainier was known in Puget
Sound Salish (aka Lushootseed) as taxuma, with the "x" sounding more or
less like the "ch" in German "doch." Mt. Adams today is usually called
"pa'tu" in Sahaptin, which means simply "snow-capped peak but which now
is used as a proper name. "Klickitat" is a corruption of "hlataxat" (the
"hl" sounding like the "thl" of "athlete"), which is the name for the
falls/fishery on the Klickitat R. just above its mouth. Mt. St. Helens
was known in Sahaptin as "lawilayt-hla'" which means "the smoker," more
or less. Mt. Hood could be just "pa'tu" also or "wayi'st" [sounds pretty
much like "why-east," for which I can offer no etymological analysis yet.

I'm all in favor or resurrecting Coyote's names for these places, if we
can figure out a reasonable way to spell them!

Gene Hunn.

On Wed, 26 Apr 1995, Jon
Anderson wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, 26 Apr 1995, Stuart MacKay wrote:
>
> > Being a direct descendent of St. Helen, I feel that my family has been
> > cheated out of a considerable inheritence by preventing us claiming the rights
> > to the extensive mineral deposits in the area :-)) Maybe the change of
> name had something to do with land claims, n'est pas ?
> > Apart from English names displacing the names that "native" peoples
> already had...
>
>
> The good citizens of Tacoma have been proposing for years that Mt Rainier
> be officially re-named "Tahoma", as it was called by the local Salish.
>
> I fully support that effort, and would also like to see the Chinookan:
>
> Klickitat - not Mt Adams
> Lillooet -- not Mt St Helens
> Wy'East --- not Mt Hood
>
> There are many others (Does anyone know the Kalapuyan or Mollalla name
> for Mt Jefferson in Oregon?).
>
>