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I love humming birds.they are the cutest birds i have ever seen.this explanation on them has really helped me with my presentation.
This info looks dubious, and should be removed as OR if unable to be sourced:
Native American oral history tells that Ben Franklin's political cartoon turned military banner of a severed snake entitled Join, or Die, sought to create a Union to "manage Indian relations" and depicted fractured colonial support for Native American suppression leading up to the French & Indian War/Seven Years War. Join, or Die, and the subsequent serpent flag Don't Tread on Me became the dominant spirit image of the white man in the Native American psyche[citation needed], and the expression "white man speaks with forked tongue" is said to originate from these symbols that flew during Native American massacres[citation needed]. The first known quotation of this phrase is by Chief Joseph (1840-1904) of the Nez Perce, whose peaceful people suffered under broken treaties and deleterious US policies.
On the contrary, it can probably be sourced that most North American languages have had the traditional expression 'to speak with forked tongue' - including the languages that went extinct even before Chief Joseph was born. And it can certainly be sourced that many tribes would call their military opponents "snakes" well before Franklin, and probably before white men. So better research needs to be done. Til Eulenspiegel ( talk) 12:13, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
(Logged out) - Okay, just stumbled across some good stuff researching it myself... The account of the 1811 Astor Expedition by Washington Irving has lots of great material in it, including a quote showing the expression was already in use in the NW by then, at least... I'll keep digging, and revise the article... Til Eulenspiegel ( talk) 12:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
173.67.199.157 ( talk) 16:41, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
There are appearances of this phrase in Europe that are unlikely to relate to contact with American Indians:
"And he hath the art of cleaving. He shewed it in the beginning, when he made the Serpent, lingnam bisulcam, a forked tongue, to speake that, which was contrary to his knowledge and meaning, They should not die; and as hee did the Serpents, so hee can doe others." [1]
Moreover, this metaphor would not likely make any sense to a native American. The word "fork" derives from an implement invented hundreds of years ago in Europe. Subsequently, the notion of a "fork" meaning a "split" derived from that implement ("fork in the road," "fork in the river"). While it's possible that some other word in one or more Indian language(s) referred to the same geographical feature, or maybe the split of a snake's tongue, I have scoured the usual sources and can't find anything more than "probably" as an origin's attribution.
The phrase also appears in Milton's Paradise Lost:
"According to his Doom: He would have spoke, But Hiss for Hiss return'd with forked Tongue To forked Tongue, for now were all transform'd..." [2]
There's some convincing research that shows these and other references long pre-date the use by Jackson, and none of them remotely suggest this was ever a native American idiom.
References
![]() | This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I love humming birds.they are the cutest birds i have ever seen.this explanation on them has really helped me with my presentation.
This info looks dubious, and should be removed as OR if unable to be sourced:
Native American oral history tells that Ben Franklin's political cartoon turned military banner of a severed snake entitled Join, or Die, sought to create a Union to "manage Indian relations" and depicted fractured colonial support for Native American suppression leading up to the French & Indian War/Seven Years War. Join, or Die, and the subsequent serpent flag Don't Tread on Me became the dominant spirit image of the white man in the Native American psyche[citation needed], and the expression "white man speaks with forked tongue" is said to originate from these symbols that flew during Native American massacres[citation needed]. The first known quotation of this phrase is by Chief Joseph (1840-1904) of the Nez Perce, whose peaceful people suffered under broken treaties and deleterious US policies.
On the contrary, it can probably be sourced that most North American languages have had the traditional expression 'to speak with forked tongue' - including the languages that went extinct even before Chief Joseph was born. And it can certainly be sourced that many tribes would call their military opponents "snakes" well before Franklin, and probably before white men. So better research needs to be done. Til Eulenspiegel ( talk) 12:13, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
(Logged out) - Okay, just stumbled across some good stuff researching it myself... The account of the 1811 Astor Expedition by Washington Irving has lots of great material in it, including a quote showing the expression was already in use in the NW by then, at least... I'll keep digging, and revise the article... Til Eulenspiegel ( talk) 12:59, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
173.67.199.157 ( talk) 16:41, 18 September 2015 (UTC)
There are appearances of this phrase in Europe that are unlikely to relate to contact with American Indians:
"And he hath the art of cleaving. He shewed it in the beginning, when he made the Serpent, lingnam bisulcam, a forked tongue, to speake that, which was contrary to his knowledge and meaning, They should not die; and as hee did the Serpents, so hee can doe others." [1]
Moreover, this metaphor would not likely make any sense to a native American. The word "fork" derives from an implement invented hundreds of years ago in Europe. Subsequently, the notion of a "fork" meaning a "split" derived from that implement ("fork in the road," "fork in the river"). While it's possible that some other word in one or more Indian language(s) referred to the same geographical feature, or maybe the split of a snake's tongue, I have scoured the usual sources and can't find anything more than "probably" as an origin's attribution.
The phrase also appears in Milton's Paradise Lost:
"According to his Doom: He would have spoke, But Hiss for Hiss return'd with forked Tongue To forked Tongue, for now were all transform'd..." [2]
There's some convincing research that shows these and other references long pre-date the use by Jackson, and none of them remotely suggest this was ever a native American idiom.
References