A Preliminary View of Hydronymic Districts in Northern Athabaskan Prehistory

Abstract

Center Stream drainages and stream names have served as territorial markers and cardinal lines in the Northern Athabaskan cognitive mapping system. I have made a preliminary grouping of seven “hydronymic districts” for 31 Northern Athabaskan languages and dialects based upon patterned shifts in the stems in placenames meaning ‘course of stream’. When expanding into new territory, Athabaskans generally have continued to share boundaries with other Athabaskans. The Athabaskan hydronymic districts reflect alternating choices of solidarity or division within the larger network of languages. The geographical distribution of the hydronyms, combined with etymological analysis, offer some indications of directionality of movement and seriation of innovations during a series of expansions from an Athabaskan nucleus.

Modeling Ancient Population Structures and Movement in Linguistics

“…The center of gravity is on the southern Alaska coast where Tlingit, Eyak, and Alaska Athabaskan meet. Leer (1991) and Kari (1996) proposed a more southern origin, and Leer has presented evidence that unknown, now extinct coastal languages to the north were absorbed by the later Na-Dene spread. Ever since Sapir (1949), Na-Dene-the northernmost stock save Eskimo-Aleut-has been interpreted as the next-to-last entrant to the Americas, but on the evidence of linguistic geography, Na-Dene is not the latest pre-Eskimo entrant but merely the most recent subarctic spread.…”

Lipan Apache Placenames of Augustina Zuazua: Some Structural and Discursive Features

“…It has become a truism that Athabaskan-speaking peoples name their ethnogeographical environment with "care and precision" (Hoijer 1950: 557). Work on Western Apache (Basso 1996), Navajo (Kelley and Francis 1994), Tolowa (Collins 1998), Tutchone (Cruikshank 1990), and Alaskan Athabaskans (Kari 1989(Kari , 1996a(Kari , 1996b clearly reveal the importance of place-naming practices among Athabaskan-speaking peoples. They often reveal culturally .salient geographical features and they suggest something about aboriginal Lipan Apache homelands.…”

Teaching through toponymy: Using indigenous place-names in outdoor science camps.

“…Place-names, especially those designating water bodies, are often based on a system o f words indicating location, which are at times accompanied by affixes that delineate direction as well as distance (Henry and Henry 1969;Lord 1996). The system o f directionals is complex and defined according to the flow o f rivers or the main 84 waterways in a watershed that aid in orienting and guiding people as they travel between places, allowing for a depiction o f the geography o f Athapaskan movement and settlement through toponymy (Henry and Henry 1969;Munro 1945;Kari 1996a). The geographical terms in place-names, for instance, demonstrate how rivers and streams are designated, which is significant in view o f how major rivers or parts o f streams flowing past villages might have once been used to mark territorial boundaries as well as to determine one's whereabouts (Munro 1945;Kari 1996a).…”

“…The system o f directionals is complex and defined according to the flow o f rivers or the main 84 waterways in a watershed that aid in orienting and guiding people as they travel between places, allowing for a depiction o f the geography o f Athapaskan movement and settlement through toponymy (Henry and Henry 1969;Munro 1945;Kari 1996a). The geographical terms in place-names, for instance, demonstrate how rivers and streams are designated, which is significant in view o f how major rivers or parts o f streams flowing past villages might have once been used to mark territorial boundaries as well as to determine one's whereabouts (Munro 1945;Kari 1996a). Designated "the river", these fluvial arteries likely symbolized the pathway o f commerce and contact between different groups o f people (Munro 1945).…”

“…In this sense, rivers and streams are akin to trails that facilitate travel and survival, each marking boundaries and directions through their names. Along with the toponyms that represent other geographical features, river and stream names form "multifunctional sign networks" that are part o f the make-up o f Athapaskan cognitive maps (Kari 1996b: 443;Kari 1996a). …”