Trip of the Tongue (9 page)

No other information was provided. So I was left with two possibilities, either “bend at the bottom” or “at the bottom of the bend.” A quick look at a map helped clarify matters: Puyallup is, as you might be able to predict, located just south of a bend in a river. Based on this translation, I could see how Puyallup might originally have been a simple place name with the basic, geographically descriptive meaning “at the bottom of the bend of the river.” Later, the name could then have been adopted for the Indian tribe that historically inhabited the area, the dialect spoken by said tribe, and the river that, however elliptically, gave the location its name. This made sense to me. A definition of “generous people” would be plausible only if the sequence of attribution were reversed—if
Puyallup
first served as the name of the people and then was used as the name of the place.

The traditional name of the Puyallup Indians, however, is not Puyallup but S'Puyalupubsh. Although the tribe translates this word as “generous and welcoming behavior to all people (friends and strangers) who enter our lands,” their language program suggests otherwise:

In other words, the traditional name for the Puyallup Indians was “people of the place at the bottom of the river bend”—or, even more simply, “people of Puyallup.”

I was reassured by the unassuming nature of the translation. But just to be sure, I turned to the Lushootseed dictionary, the result of years of collaboration between the distinguished if relatively little-known linguist Thomas Hess and Vi Hilbert, an elder of the Lushootseed-speaking Upper Skagit tribe. Here, I confirmed the geographical reading. I looked up
Puyallup
and found myself redirected to
puy
—“curve, bend.” A note went on to explain the meaning of
S'Puyalupubsh
in the driest of fashions: “They are called the people of the bend because their river is full of bends.”

This is hardly the stuff of cocktail-party banter. Which is exactly why I believe it.

It seems likely that “generous people” is a folk etymology of very long standing, probably since even before 1916. But it's worth pointing out that Henry Sicade, the source of this translation, did dedicate his life's work to education. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who'd try to pull a person's leg just for the sake of leg-pulling. Moreover, his translation was plausible enough to gain widespread credence within the Lushootseed-speaking community. And the -
allup
of
Puyallup
could easily be linked to
alap
, which has the rough meaning of “you folks.”
^s
Though I never did find a
puy
-type word that might mean something like “generous,” I don't doubt one exists provided you're willing to accept a vague enough relationship.

The confusion surrounding Puyallup puts me in mind of Lake Chaubunagungamaug in Webster, Massachusetts. The lake gained some degree of notoriety on account of its full name, which is acknowledged as the longest place name in the United States: Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. Its renown was augmented by its widely asserted translation: “You fish on your side; I fish on my side; nobody fishes in the middle.”

In a 1990 letter to the editor published in the
New York Times
, this translation was roundly dismissed by Ives Goddard, one of the foremost experts in Algonquin languages and curator emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History. Not only was the forty-five-letter name partly the result of a cartographic error, he wrote, but the translation itself was also the fanciful elaboration of a newspaperman named Lawrence J. Harvey. (In his defense, Harvey made no secret of his fabrication.) Goddard acknowledged that Nipmuck, the language that gave us Chabunagungamaug, is “very poorly known,” but he nevertheless felt confident in suggesting that a more accurate definition of the name might be something like “lake divided by islands.”

So we have on one hand the careful, considered opinion of a highly respected linguist. His proposed translation is straightforward and descriptive, sensible characteristics considering the fact that the lake itself probably predated a need for territorial negotiation. On the other hand, we have a reporter with no linguistic credentials who freely admitted that he made the thing up. But his version is way more fun. Guess which one shows up most frequently?

Linguistic data very rarely factor into plausibility when it comes to popular translations of words from indigenous American languages—or any languages at all, for that matter. It's understandable. Quirky, memorable stories are more fun. Who wants to go digging for a more boring truth? I can't help but think, however, that languages such as Lushootseed, Nipmuck, and Mi'kmaq are particularly prone to willful misunderstandings for reasons beyond their mistake-masking obscurity.

Consider, for instance, the pervasive myth of the however-many Eskimo words for “snow.”
^t
It's clear that one reason this fiction has proven to be so irresistible is that it makes for good copy. But I wonder if it would have been quite so pervasive if it didn't also dovetail with the idea that Native peoples have a unique and profound relationship to nature. I wonder if Lake Chaubunagungamaug would be such a novelty if not for the cliché that a single word in an Indian language corresponds with a prolonged stream of English. I wonder if linguistic fallacy reveals as much about the perception of the culture of the language as it does about the language itself.

In his letter, Ives Goddard specifically condemned “supposed literal translations that encourage the stereotype that unwritten languages can only use simple-minded logic and elaborate explanations to communicate even fairly simple ideas.” His plea seems to have fallen largely on deaf ears. Fourteen years later, the very same paper published a new translation of the lake's name, courtesy of Paul Macek, a local historian: “English knifemen and Nipmuck Indians at the boundary or neutral fishing place.” Today, as far as I can Google, incidence of Macek's definition already far outstrips Goddard's.

This is an aspect of language death I hadn't previously considered. It isn't just the language that is lost but also control of the linguistic narrative. This isn't to say that misconceptions about widely spoken languages never crop up. And linguists have as little luck turning the tide against these fallacies as Goddard has had with Lake Chaubunagungamaug. But it is substantially more difficult when you don't have a written corpus to consult or extensive data to cite, leaving endangered languages far more vulnerable to distortions from cultural and ethnic stereotypes.

It was with this in mind that I made plans to visit my next destination, a town called Forks. I hadn't originally set out to go to Forks, but once I realized how close I was, I couldn't resist. And so, on a chilly, rainy morning, I headed west to the Olympic Peninsula and the town that teenagers—and teenage vampires—made famous.

I told myself I was heading to the area because I was interested in the Quileute language. And it's true that I wasn't
un
interested. Linguistically, Quileute is something of an outlier, unrelated to any of the other languages in the Pacific Northwest. In other ways, however, the language is tragically representative of Native languages in the area. Down to its last few speakers, Quileute faces imminent extinction.

My plan was simple: I'd roll into town, grab a bite to eat, and visit the Quileute reservation at La Push. If I had time, I'd check out the Timber Museum. And then, just before I left, maybe—just maybe—I'd take a quick peek at a couple of the town's more popular tourist attractions.

Suffice it to say, not two hours after I arrived in Forks, I found myself sitting in the back of a giant tour bus emblazoned with the words “Dazzled by Twilight.”

Forks is a small town of just over 3,000, located about fifty miles southwest of Port Angeles, the nearest sizable city. Originally a busy little logging center, until recently Forks was most famous as the birthplace of Leann Hunley, an actress on
Days of Our Lives
. But then, in 2003, an aspiring writer named Stephenie Meyer Googled something like “the rainiest place in the U.S.” The Internet gods sent her to Forks, and so she decided to set her stories there. The rest is history.

Today, the
Twilight
series is a worldwide cultural phenomenon, and fans from all over flock to Forks to pay pilgrimage to the books' real-life milieu.

When I decided to go to Forks, I'd thought I had some idea what I was getting into. I was no stranger to—or enemy of—pop-culture compulsion. I mean, I grew up with
Star Trek
and
Buffy
and
The X-Files
. I'd been there; I'd read the fanfiction. But as soon as I drove into town, I started to get a sense that this was not at all going to go as I had expected. First there was the sign on the Olympic Suites Inn: “Edward Cullen Didn't Sleep Here.” I remember laughing because I assumed it was meant to be bitchy—like, obviously Edward Cullen didn't sleep here because he is a fictional character. Later I was informed that the joke was actually that Edward Cullen didn't sleep there because he is a vampire, and vampires don't sleep.
Obviously
.

Tourism in Forks has skyrocketed over the past few years, and the town has largely embraced its good fortune. Almost every hotel, restaurant, and shop I saw had some sort of
Twilight
merchandise or advertisement. Even the local pharmacy; even the local Subway. To give you an idea of the level of frenzy that Forks was able to inspire in its visitors, one of the most popular things to do in town, as far as I could tell, was to visit the town welcome sign. It reads: “The City of Forks Welcomes You.” That's it. Nothing about
Twilight
. Nothing about Edward Cullen. Even so, every time I drove past I saw a steady stream of visitors posing for photos in front of the sign. I even have one of myself, looking mildly bemused.

At my first stop, the Forks Chamber of Commerce, I watched as four separate staff members—each of whom sported at least one piece of
Twilight
-related flair—struggled to keep up with customer demand, frantically distributing maps and ringing up merchandise. Even though it was fairly early in the day, when I went over to take a peek at the guest book I saw that dozens of people had already been in. Many of the visitors were from Washington, but I also spotted entries from France, Spain, Switzerland, and China.

In the comments section, nearly everyone identified their position on the Edward-Jacob spectrum. There were more than a few exclamation points involved.

Outside, a group of people were crowding around “Bella's truck,” an old-fashioned red pickup that had been installed in the parking lot. It wasn't the truck used in the movies. It was just an old pickup that was by virtue of a sign and some geographical happenstance enjoying a second life as a tourist attraction. When I saw it I very nearly let out a groan of dismay. You see, I hadn't actually been expecting much from Forks beyond a bit of comic relief. But once I saw that stupid truck I knew I wouldn't be able to get away without thinking about more serious questions of popular narrative and representation.

Before I left, I decided to check out the Forks Timber Museum just next door. When I opened the door, the woman at the front desk looked up in surprise, shielding her eyes against the light. “Are you sure you mean to be here?” she asked, not unkindly.

No,
I found myself thinking.
I'm really not.

The Quileute Indian Reservation is a single square mile of land about fifteen miles west of Forks. The main population center on the reservation is the village—such as it is—of La Push, so named due to its proximity to the mouth of the Quileute River. In the nineteenth century, French traders frequently came to the area, and many of their words were incorporated into Chinook Jargon, the local lingua franca. One of these words was “mouth”:
la bouche
became
la push
, and so the settlement got its name.

Quileute is one of only two Chimakuan languages—the other, Chemakum, has been extinct since the 1940s. Its primary linguistic claim to fame rests in its sounds: Quileute is one of only five known languages in the entire world that contains no nasal sounds. So no
m
, no
n
, no
ng
.

More intriguingly, Quileute is one of several area languages that uses a very peculiar type of systematized wordplay. The renowned linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir first observed this phenomenon among the Nuu-chah-nulth (also known as the Nootka). They would, he noticed, regularly change the consonants in certain words depending on certain physical characteristics of either the person being addressed or the person being discussed. The same thing happens in Quileute. For instance, if you were talking to someone who's cross-eyed, you'd put a
-
in front of every word. If, though, you were talking to a hunchback, you'd use the prefix
v-
. Short men, funny people, and those with difficulty walking all get their own initial sounds. Whether this might indicate a language accustomed to individual differences or extremely opposed to them, I couldn't begin to say.