Absolutely Rosemary! I was going by most of what was reported being (supposedly) direct quotes of what the travellers said at the time, and consequently would have been in a contemporary, local, Canadian, dialect - which would have been based on English, but with the liberal addition of French, German, Gallic and numerous other middle European words added in. As the "quote" was spoken about "the indians" it may well have used a word from an Indian-Canadian dialect which would have inherited a greater density of old French from long association with Fur Traders, Voyagers, etc., etc. (Canada didn't become a multi-cultural society just recently because politicians decided it made good soap-box rhetoric. It started several hundreds of years ago.) The background is an essential factor in any research, particularly when the subject is detailed and involves the people of the time. I did point out it was a suggestion and we know that Gwen is an experienced researcher, able to separate the "grain from the dross." (She also knows better than to get "hung-up" on spelling.) Malcolm Archive CD Books Canada Inc. President: Malcolm Moody PO Box 11 Manotick Ontario, K4M 1A2 Canada. (613) 692-2667 WEB SITE: http://www.ArchiveCDBooks.ca FACEBOOK: http://tinyurl.com/ACDB-Can-on-Facebook On 27 Sep, 2010, at 2:57 AM, can-ont-simcoe-request@rootsweb.com wrote: > Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 02:53:47 -0400 > From: "Rosemary Jorgenson" <rpj@shaw.ca> > Subject: Re: [CAN-ONT-SIMCOE] Recollections of Henry Fraser's Son > To: <can-ont-simcoe@rootsweb.com> > Message-ID: <9919BF9A2D36440A9D3E0C6CD8FD662C@acerf441e6fc4f> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > You also need to know if he could spell the word he wanted to use and what > his penmanship was like. I believe you are back to a "best guess" based on > the content of the message itself and the sentence in particular. What makes > the most sense is what I would go with since there is no way to get a > definitive answer here. > Rosemary >