Squawfish Squawk Reels In Conundrum Insulting Fish Name Not Easy To Replace

The fish that fishermen love to hate may soon shed the name American Indian women have come to loathe: squaw.

An international committee of fish experts is casting about for a name that will prevent the squawfish from offending Indians, if not anglers.

It’s not easy.

Proposed English names for the bony bait-stealer either lack pizazz or clarity. Native names for the fish, which is indigenous to western North America, don’t exactly roll off English-speaking tongues.

Of course, neither does the scientific name: Ptychocheilus oregonensis.

One of the most pronounceable Indian names - huhssei, in the language of British Columbia’s Southern Carrier tribe - sounds like “hussy.”

“How ironic,” said Dr. Joseph Nelson, the University of Alberta biological sciences professor in charge of the name change. “We quickly dropped that.”

The primary objection to “squaw” is that to some people it implies promiscuity. It offends even Indians who are indifferent about Indian mascots.

“It’s just a downright ugly word and should not be carried forward,” said Colville tribal Councilwoman Kathy Womer. “I don’t think people would enjoy having their mothers or grandmothers or daughters called the same thing if they knew what it meant.”

The word is considered so dirty that Indians trying to change the name of the Squaw Valley ski resort in California tell their supporters not to say the word, but just call it “the s-word.”

To be blunt, the term is widely believed to derive from an Algonquian Indian word for female genitalia.

That interpretation is disputed by Ives Goddard, head of the ethnology division of the National Museum of Natural History’s anthropology department. He said it is “as certain as any historical fact can be” that English settlers in Massachusetts adopted the word from Massachusett-speaking Indians who used “squa” innocuously to mean “female,” or “younger woman.”

Barbara Friedlander-Aripa, chairwoman of the Cultural Resources Board of the Colville Confederated Tribes, cites more recent uses of the word to disparage Indian women: “When the fur trappers or the gold miners or anyone else came and they needed a woman, they picked on the native women and took them by force and gave them the name squaw.

“It hurt the native people very badly and it’s just a word we want to get rid of. Just get it out of here.”

The challenge is daunting, considering that the name is attached to thousands of mountains, streams and other geographic features throughout North America. But the battle apparently has been won when it comes to the squawfish.

“There is great reluctance to change names, but in this case we have been given abundant evidence that the name is offensive to various tribal groups in the United States and Canada, so we have agreed to change the name,” Nelson said.

He heads a seven-member committee of U.S., Canadian and Mexican academics who establish common fish names for two North American organizations: the American Fisheries Society and the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.

Names chosen by these fish experts are recognized by consumer-protection regulations and other laws.

Nelson’s committee was called into action last summer by the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority, which represents 19 tribal, state and federal wildlife agencies in Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon. Those include the Spokane, Kalispel, Colville and Coeur d’Alene tribes.

Frank Young, technical administrator of the organization’s northern squawfish management program, said the Yakama Indian Nation began lobbying for a new name several years ago. The Yakamas and three other tribes in the Columbia River Intertribal Fish Commission passed a name-change resolution that was quickly adopted by Young’s organization.

The tribal organization suggested that everyone use the name the Yakamas began using on their own about two years ago: bigmouth minnow. But the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Authority preferred “pike minnow,” figuring that name has “more pizazz.”

One of the organization’s missions is to encourage anglers to thin out the Columbia River populations of squawfish, which congregate near dams and gobble up salmon smolts. Anglers hate the northern squawfish so much they have to be bribed to catch them, with payments of $3 to $5 per fish.

Ironically, one of three other varieties, the Colorado squawfish, is on the endangered species list. Large storage dams on the Colorado River, unlike run-of-the-river dams on the Columbia, drastically altered water conditions that affect fish survival.

Not even “endangered” status gives the squawfish respect, though. The northern, Colorado, Umpquah and Sacramento varieties are all considered trash fish. People who have never eaten them claim they soak up mud and taste bad.

Washington Wildlife Department biologist Eric Winther, who’s actually eaten squawfish, says the taste is bland and inoffensive. The meat is just far too bony to suit most people, and the bad reputation is hard to overcome.

Young theorizes that the squawfish got its name from men who held the fish and native women in equal contempt. Other explanations range from ribald speculation about lonesome fur traders to the fact that these fish are relatively easy to catch.

One explanation, Winther said, is that the fish makes a noise that sounds like “squaw” when it is pulled out of the water. There may be something to that.

The Spokane and Kalispel tribes’ names for the fish are onomatopoeia, words that sound like it means, such as meow, quack or squawk. In this case, it’s the noise a squawfish makes when it is pulled out of the water and air rushes out of the fish.

“All the squawfish that I have ever caught have done that,” said Deane Osterman, assistant director of the Kalispel Tribe’s Natural Resource Department.

Leaving out phonetic symbols, the Spokane word is q’wec. It sounds like “gwech,” Spokane tribal linguist Pauline Flett said. Osterman said the two-syllable Kalispel word is similar.

Names in some of this region’s other tribal languages refer to the fish’s big mouth or to its boniness. Most of them require more diacritical marks than a French menu, and can’t be reproduced by many English-oriented printing systems - including The Spokesman-Review’s.

Mike Thoms, a University of British Columbia doctoral student who is helping Nelson find native names, thinks some accommodations in spelling are possible. He is promoting the word used by the Sto:lo Nation in the Fraser Valley, just east of Vancouver, British Columbia. Leaving out an accent mark over the “a,” the name is “qw’a:lh.” It means “wide mouth.”

Osterman, a walking encyclopedia of native fish names, also likes the idea of using an Indian name. But Nelson said his committee is convinced a fish name must be easy to pronounce and require no special characters if it is to be accepted in common use.

Still, Nelson said he wants a thorough exploration of native names before settling on bigmouth minnow or pike minnow. He said the committee is leaning toward pike minnow, but there are problems with both of the English names.

Bigmouth minnow might be confused with the bigmouth shiner, and pike minnow is a term anglers in the Canadian prairie provinces use for a small pike, Nelson said. Besides, the squawfish is a minnow - in the same family as the goldfish - not a pike, which is a kind of perch.

To Indian women, just about any new name would be an improvement.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo; Graphic: Tough to pronounce